Fabulous Sisters Day Out

 It's not often enough that my sisters and I spend the whole day together, but yesterday was one of those days. It was so much fun! We met in Spanish Fork, the city we were raised in, and visited many of our old stomping grounds reminiscing our childhood. 

One highlight was when we stopped at our old church building, which has long since been converted into a wedding reception area. The unique thing about the building is that it sits on a corner and the shape represents an open book with the spine facing out. The balcony wasn't there when we were kids.

The four of us at the entrance. 

As we were walking around the grounds, a man approached us and asked if he could help us with anything. Turns out his family owns the building. He treated us with a tour of the inside. 

This is the stage where we performed "Hillbilly Burton Band".

I remember these lights used to hang in the chapel. I'm glad they preserved them.

The chapel was converted into this reception hall.

This is the original pulpit (saved and preserved) that I remember so well.

One of the curved benches was also saved and preserved. It sits in the bride's room, if I remember correctly.

Close to the church is the cemetery where both of my parents are buried, so we couldn't miss the opportunity to visit their grave site together.

After that, we drove up the canyon and walked up the path to "Dripping Rock" where we used to play sometimes. There was no path back then. We had to walk upstream to get to the best places. Jane and I used to pretend that little fairies lived underneath the little outcroppings. We would make little furnishings from twigs for their pretend homes. What silly little girls we were.

You can't see very much from this picture, but in the shadow portion, water seeps out from the mountain and drips into the river. That's why its called dripping rock. It really is quite magical to witness. We used to spend hours playing around there.

Three of us on the trail. (Janice took the picture)

After that little hike, we drove around the power plant (where we lived) and drove up to the forebay where dad would rake debris from the rails as part of his job. This is a picture of our little red house from the forebay bridge above the old spillway (which is covered up now) that we used to slide down during the summertime. That patch of water in the middle of the picture was our swimming pool. Haha!

After a nice drive around the river bottoms (the route we rode the school bus each day), we ate lunch at The Olive Garden. It was so nice to sit indoors where it was nice and cool and just chat with each other for a period of time. (no picture was taken)

After lunch, we drove over to our old High School. A new one is being built, so this one will be torn down soon.

It definitely looks old and the new one will be so nice.

We then drove to Payson to see if we could find a couple of our aunts and uncles homes. Thanks to Janice (and some texting with our cousin Joyce) we were able to find Uncle LeRoy and aunt Eva Hill's home. Uncle LeRoy was my mom's brother - twin to my aunt Ruth. It was difficult to recognize the house because it has been totally refurbished since my aunt and uncle lived there. Janice was brave enough to knock on the door to inquire if we had found the right house or not. Fortunately, the owners were home and they said it did use to belong to our aunt and uncle. They were very friendly to us and the wife knew more about our family history there than we did. She told us about all the changes made on the house. This is how it looks today. When my aunt and uncle owned it, it didn't have the addition to the right side of the house. It is so big and beautiful now.

We ended up locating The Kennison home (uncle Albert and aunt Anna) not far from the Hill's home. Aunt Anna was my dad's younger sister. They had a daughter Karen who was a month older than Jane and I. We used to love going to their house to play with Karen. I remember when they built this house. We called it a "mansion" because it was the biggest house we had been in. It is for sale right now. I looked it up.  It is 3,776 square feet and has 6 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. By today's standards, that's not huge, but it sure seemed huge to us back then. Our little house had only one bathroom and no shower. Could that be considered child abuse? (Not really funny!)

This was the last thing we did on our sister's day out in the Spanish Fork area.

Janice headed south and the rest of us headed north to our various homes. It was fun to have Gayle and Jane drop me off at my home and come inside to see how our kitchen remodel is going. I love living so close to my sisters now. Days like this couldn't have been possible when we lived in California. Living in Utah has been such a blessing in our lives. Feeling so blessed!