Utah

We had a whirlwind trip to Utah! We decided to go as a family and make a little vacation out of it, and our kids traveled so well, it always makes me grateful that they endure being hauled around and in new situations all the time. We left at 6:00 on Thursday evening, made one stop in Burley for gas and got down to Lehi around 11:20 at night. My mom had given me the code to get into my Grandma's house, but the code she gave me didn't work. We didn't know what to do at first, tried texting a couple of our friends to see if they were still awake, questioned going to a hotel and spending the money to crash there for the night, and decided to say a quick prayer and try a couple of different numbers that we could think of. It took about 3 tries and Marc found the magic number, talk about an immediate answer to prayer! We stayed at my Grandma's vacant house, it is currently for sale and completely empty, but it was space for us to stay, and let the kids run around. We took it easy in the morning, mainly because Lexi wanted to go back to sleep at 8:30 in the morning. So the kids got to watch a movie and Marc & I took turns showering and getting ready.

Thanksgiving Point was just around the corner, so we took the kids to the Farm Country there. I think we've been a few times too many for the boys, they just weren't interested in spending much time with any of the animals, however, Lexi was very interested from a distance. She loved watching the ducks, and patted the cows a few times. We chose to do a wagon ride this time, although the boys were very disappointed they didn't get to ride the ponies, we were grateful to not have to wait in the line for a half an hour.

After Thanksgiving Point, we drove back to Lehi to feed the kids lunch, picnic style on the floor of the kitchen which they got a kick out of, then continued the drive to Provo. We stopped by Conferences & Workshops to say "hi" to Von & Elaine who have bent over backwards to put in good words/recommendations for Marc. The kids & I stayed the late afternoon/dinner with the Miller family and our friend Tana and thoroughly enjoyed being with good friends again.

During this time, Marc was preparing for and interviewing with Steve & Rob. He was told to plan for a half hour interview and ended up talking with them for over an hour. He felt really good about the interview and we've tried hard not to read into it at all, he's had great interviews before and not gotten the job.

After a delicious meal, we stopped by the Eliasons for a little bit & had a great visit with them. Our kids have great memories of Utah and we kind of took for granted what good friends they had there and how social we were.

We were all dead tired that night, and all 3 kids were up at different times, Lexi up and crying out multiple times during the night. She at least had a padded surface to sleep on! My friend Janette was generous to offer to feed us breakfast early on Saturday morning and we enjoyed chatting while the kids played. Tana & Levi had us over after that to give Lexi a place to nap, and even fed us a huge lunch. We were overwhelmed by the love & generosity shown to us! We loaded up the kids and drove up to Ogden for one last stop at the Anderson's before continuing on to Boise. We've seen Aaron and Ann a couple of times since moving to Utah, but had never seen their house, so it was fun to see where they've settled and catch up a bit.

The weather on our drive home was CRAZY! We had high winds, rain, steamy roads that we could hardly see in front of us, slush, S-N-O-W & bright sunshine! Good grief! I was grateful we had left when we did so it was still light during the snow storm. Nothing like worrying about snow in the late part of May!

Everyone was glad to be home and in our own beds :)