Morgan & Mommy Day

I stole a great idea from my good friend Lee Christensen and his wife, Traci. When their girls (they have five of them) turn eight, they get to spend a day with their mom and stay in a hotel that night. On my way to Morgan's baptism last week, I remembered that idea. I am by nature extremely stingy when it comes to spending money, but I got really excited about doing something like that with Morgan. I realized what a neat experience it could be (and hopefully a memory she would keep forever). Since I wanted to make sure the event was directly tied with her baptism, I had to get to work quickly to make it all work out. [Thank you Denise for watching Brynne!!!!!]

The first thing we did was drive to Salt Lake City and go to temple square. We asked a kind stranger (no, this particular stranger didn't have a name tag) to take a picture of the two of us in front of the statue of Christ.
After spending some time on temple square, we discovered that there is a "ride free zone" on the Trax. We hopped on to take a ride.

Morgan had earned a free kids' meal at Applebee's from school, so we took the Trax over to the Gateway mall for lunch. Once again, we found an unsuspecting stranger to take our picture.

For our next adventure, we went to Trafalga in Orem. I was excited for Morgan to drive the go-cart, but then I discovered she wasn't tall enough to do it by herself. Thankfully, she thought it was lots of fun riding round and round with me. I discovered that if you happen to miss the gym on any particular day, you can just go drive the go-cart for five minutes and you get an amazing arm workout! :)

After Trafalga, we checked into our hotel and then had dinner at Red Robin. I had coupons for everything we did during the day, but no coupons for Red Robin. I suggested several other possible dinner spots, but Morgan really wanted the pasta from Red Robin (which she had had only once, when she had earned a free kids meal there!).

After dinner, we spent the rest of the night at the hotel. They had two pools -- one indoor, and one outdoor -- and we spent almost two hours playing in them. I actually put in contacts so I could swim around and have fun. It's been a while since I've let loose in the swimming pool. :)

I had hoped that a large Red Robin meal would sustain us into the night, but we ended up pretty hungry after swimming; so we took quick showers and off we went for a 10 pm run to McDonald's for ice cream. Then we watched a little TV and hit the sack.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel before returning to our normal life. Here's a picture of Morgan on the bed in our hotel room. She got to sit and watch cartoons while I packed.

Thanks Lee & Traci for such a fabulous idea! Morgan and I had a great time together and definitely created some great memories!