Update of Our Trip

SUNDAY:

Stephanie and I shot gunned the ten hour drive after I took a short nap after my shift at work. We only stopped twice: once at an overlook to take a picture and once to gas up, eat, and stretch. It wasn't that bad of a drive and very scenic. When we arrived, the kids and Eva woke up and the kids played HARD outside until about 6 in the morning. (They were jumping on the trampoline, running in the yard, laughing hysterically, etc. -- we didn't have the heart to break it up, so we soaked up the time visiting and unpacking a little.)

MONDAY:

I woke up early (especially considering my late night) and relaxed. Eva and most of the kids went to the "Park Lunch" (the city serves free lunch every weekday to all the kids in town.) I stayed home and had some one-on-one time with Chana because neither of us were awake enough to handle it. I played piano! Mom called while Eva was gone to say she needed to go to Ephraim, so as soon as Eva got back from the park, we took her and had a hysterical lunch with Paula. We sat for three hours in Subway laughing so hard I thought they were going to ask us to leave. I spent a few hours at Mom's after that looking at her quilt tops and floorplans for her kitchen, which had a lot of elements that I liked about it. Later that evening, we had a family dinner on Eva's new patio. DJ (thanks for grilling), Brandi, Dillon, Austin, Dale & Mary, Eva & Roger, Chana, Sade, Aubri Kate, Marissa, and Grandma Mona were there with us. We had a total blast while DJ made fresh corn and barbequed chicken on the grill. It was memorable to say the least. They say the one the day before at Paula's was even better. The rodeo queen rode by on her horse and let Stephanie take a little ride.

After everyone melted off, I actually fell asleep early. So far, this is the only day this has happened. Eva, Stephanie and I were reading a novel aloud while we played pedicure and I totally passed out. Stephanie said she made it to the end of Chapter one. I made it to the end of Chapter four. Eva said she quit reading and went to bed at the end of Chapter five. We were all toast.

TUESDAY:

Eva, Stephanie, Sade, the little girls and I rolled to SLC to see Brittany. We hit traffic, got lost several times -- once allowing us to drive by the SLC Temple to show Steph the artictecture -- and arrived two hours late to pick up the BB. We took her and her sister Meagan to Murray park where we played as hard as we possibly could. I went headfirst down the plastic twirly slide and got rug burn where it pulled out my armhairs. The kids told me later... you never go down headfirst on a plastic slide. You learn something new everyday. I can still do the monkey bars. Our picnic afterwards was sandwiches and crackers and cheese. It was very fun. Afterwards, I told the kids we were all going for matching tattoos and while they protested, I drove them to McDonalds where we got ice cream. The playdate was topped off with playing the ugly game (who can find the ugliest item) at a thrift store where we let the kids pick out a dollar souvenir to remind them of the fun day. It rained extremely hard for a few moments and we had a moment of Arizona appreciation for it. After we dropped the kids off back at Ruth's, we were detoured to Karl's house for a few hours. He showed us his awesome house he is improving, his latest equipment, and visited for a long while. We had invited ourselves to Ryan and Lindsey's house with an ETA of 7 pm and then didn't show up until almost 10 pm. We aren't very good house guests. (Especially since we left a hurricane in our wake by the time we overstayed our welcome the following day.) However, Ryan and Lindsey are awesome and stayed up until the pumpkin hour talking. Their home is very beautiful and Lindsey let me sleep with the first quilt she ever made, which was very soft and smelled like a dryer sheet commercial.

WEDNESDAY:

Scrapbooking with Lindsey (I made two wedding pages) while the kids played out back. I also took a quick tour of Candie and Nick's new condo. There was some misunderstanding that the Hatches weren't going to make it to the camp and we didn't want to miss them, so Mom, Aubri, and I stormed Jared's house uninvited while Eva took Stephanie back to her place (I have no idea what they did but Steph forgot her medicine so they had to go where it was.) At Jared's we got a tour of his big house and visited into the wee hours. He has such a big yard and a mini farm that was cool to see. I never saw their wedding pictures and they never saw ours, so we caught up while we browsed them. I love how the last couple times I have spent QT with Jared and Stacey, we can just lounge on the couch and talk like their are no miles between us for hours and hours. I kind of feel guilty for how late I kept them up knowing that Jared leaves for work at 5:30 am. (He might have gotten three hours sleep, tops.)

THURSDAY:

Breakfast with Katie and a tour of her beautiful big home. I love the metal work. She made us breakfast and we enjoyed her company long enough to make her at least two hours late for work and then took her kids by Mary's. We didn't stay at Mary's because I really wanted to get back. We had arranged to meet a bunch of people in the family at Palisade's Lake for some water fun so we shot gunned it back as fast as we could. We got there in time for me to have a ride on the paddle boat before we had to return it. I hear we missed the kids putting a life jacket on the dog to take him on the boat. We stocked up on TONS of snack food for the camp and packed up for an early departure tomorrow.