Girls Trip - UEA

Michelle and I decided to surprise the girls with a special "Girls Trip" to St. George over UEA.  They had no idea.  Michelle went and checked her girls out of school a few minutes early and then they came to our house where we loaded all the luggage and waited for my girls to get home.  As soon as they walked up, I told them to go put down their school things and hop in the car for an adventure.  Samantha was a little skeptical since she had made some tentative plans with her friends, but I told her it would be worth it.  They got a little more excited when they saw their suitcases, American girl dolls and cousins in the car.

I guiltily left Peter in Jonas' capable hands, and we were off.

Our first stop was a surprise even to us since it wasn't planned, but Michelle and I were talking about some of the things that we have driven past hundreds of times on our way to or from St. George, but never stopped to see, so we just decided, well, why not now?  So less than on hour into the trip we pulled into the Big Red Barn where the girls all ordered huge ice cream cones, and Michelle and I found a few treats for ourselves as well.

We weren't even there yet, and they were happy as clams.

Our little stop delayed our arrival a bit, but Grandma Judy was there waiting for us.  It was Ainsley's birthday, and Grandma Judy had made strawberry shortcake to celebrate.  Everyone got to blow out a candle, but Ainsley's was the biggest.

Since it was bedtime at this point, the next surprise was matching pajamas for all of the girls and their dolls.

In between all of the surprises, there was still plenty of time for relaxing.  Sitting on the patio enjoying the sun, the view and a good book.  Ahhh.  (Plus I got in a couple of runs and we fit in a few episodes of Downton Abbey.)

Off for our next surprise - dinner at The Pasta Factory.  When the girls saw this phone booth, they all wanted to hop in hoping they would end up in the Ministry of Magic like in Harry Potter.  Samantha even knew what number to dial, but unfortunately there was no actual phone so their plans were thwarted.

We had a few minutes to kill while Michelle tried to hunt down a sweatshirt for Ainsley, so the kids had time to be silly.

Yes, life IS good.

And finally, we ended up at Tuacahn to see Aladdin.  There was a 3D portion -hence the 3D glasses.  The show was fantastic, as always.  Everyone loved it.  The consensus in my family was that Shawn would have loved playing the part of the Genie - and would have been good at it, too.

We only saw Aladdin, but there were just enough holes for everyone's heads here.

It was too late, and the line was too long to actually meet the actors after, so we just snapped a quick photo with them in the background.  Jasmine is behind Samantha's head.

(Despite actually taking my big camera to St. George, I never used, so we just have poor camera phone quality pictures.)

By the next day, we still hadn't had enough fun, so we took the girls  to a movie, too.  Here they are posing with the cast of Hotel Transylvania.  Perfect for pre-Halloween.

In between all of our surprise activities, the girls kept busy playing, riding scooters and making hair elastics, bobby pins and earrings.

It ended up being such a fun weekend to spend with just the girls.  Despite a stolen scooter and a pizza order that was all wrong, I think we would all declare it a success and hope to do it agin.