Vacation - Part 3

After leaving the Grand Canyon, we stopped in Page, AZ to eat at McDonald’s and play on their play place. We were there for probably an hour. Then after making another stop in Marysvale, UT, we finally arrived in Provo at midnight. The kids did surprisingly well. We really were so lucky. I’m really glad that this trip was so unscheduled. We didn’t have a specific time we had to be anywhere so it didn’t matter if we took longer to get to our destination. I definitely like getting making the road trip as quick as possible, but I learned that it goes a really long way to let the kids get out and stretch their legs for a little bit.

Saturday morning, Sean woke up bright and early and went on a hike with my brother and a couple of his friends. They hiked 7 miles on Antelope Island. Sean said it was a really cool hike, but he wishes he would have gotten more sleep the night before! 

They got home around 2, then Stephen, Jenny, Hailey, Adelle, Sean, Brayden, Asher and I all headed to Olive Garden. We really didn’t want to have to cook dinner! And, we are on vacation…who says you can’t eat out every day while on vacation? :) After Olive Garden, we went to Dairy Queen because they were having a buy one blizzard, get one for 25 cents. Yumm! That night, Stephen and I went and played volleyball at the church for an hour and a half. We were playing with a really hard ball, and the next day, my arms had a bunch of red speckles of tiny bruises from it. I blamed Stephen, because he kept serving his really hard serve to me! Oh well, I survived :).

Sunday we went to church and that afternoon my friend Melyssa, her husband Zac, and baby Dayne came to visit! They lived only 2 minutes away from my brother, so it was fabulous to see them for an hour or so. After Yss left, Sean, the kids and I went and visited my cousins, the Finch’s. We also stopped by my Aunt Debbie’s house and said hi, then my grandparent’s house, but they weren’t home! Bummer. We ate dinner with the Finch’s and had a blast. My cousin Lisa is an amazing artist. She just recently learned how to make a.maz.ing art with spray paint. She was so awesome and got all of her supplies out and she taught Sean how to do it. It was really cool that he was able to learn this new medium and get some practice! Sunday evening, we played games. Heather Rae and her fiancé Dylan, Maui (Natalie’s beau), Caiti (Sean’s sister), and Travis (Sean’s cousin) came over. Heather and Jenny made a delicious apple crisp and we chowed down! Dylan plays the guitar and Maui plays the ukulele so they serenaded us while we played “Acquire”. Ahh…good games, good music, and family. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Monday morning, Jenny and I made “I Spy” bags to keep our kids entertained during Sacrament meeting. They turned out kinda cute!

Monday afternoon, we went to Tucanos to celebrate Stephen passing his qualifiers. Wow…can I just tell you that that is my new favorite restaurant? It was amazing! I couldn’t believe the selection of food that they had. Seriously, it was brilliant. Stephen, Jenny and their kids, Maui, Travis, Sean, me and our kids were all there. It was so fun! Oh man, I didn’t eat again for the rest of the day. It was awesome.

Tuesday, Jenny and I went to the BYU Bookstore and visited Stephen at work on Campus. We stopped by the Bosh Kitchen Center which was amazing. I bought some stuff for bread making, and I also bought two cast iron aebleskiver pans for only $10 each! I was super happy. Maui works at a bowling alley so Maui, Jenny and her kids, Sean, me and our kids, and my friend Michelle went bowling for free! It was a lot of fun. The kids kind of got sick of it after only one game so we went home afterwards but it was fun while it lasted!

Before dinner we took the kids to the park. They had fun and we got some cute pictures. All of us were happy!

We made pizza for dinner, then had aebelskiver for dessert, since Stephen and Jenny had never had it before. We then watched Stephen, Sean, and Maui play Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. You would think that this would be boring but it was hilarious. They were playing really hard levels and kept doing really funny things. I guess you had to be there, but it was awesome.

Wednesday morning, we took the kids to the “Monte L. Bean Museum” on campus. It is a museum that has real, but stuffed animals. So we got to see a liger, elephant, moose, all up close and personal. It was almost better than the zoo because you got to be right up next to them, and you didn’t have to worry about them hiding! It actually was quite phenomenal. The museum has everything from ducks and peacocks, to bees and butterflies, to fish and shellfish, to African animals, and Arctic animals. I was in awe at how huge the Canadian Moose was, and I was even more amazed at how many animals were in that museum that I didn’t even know existed. There was an entire wall that was filled with animals with antlers…so anything from antelope and gazelle to mountain lion and caribou. It was phenomenal how many different types of animals there were.

 After the museum we packed up the car and got all ready to head home. Mom came into town to go to Women’s Conference, with a long time family friend, Christine Larsen. She got to Stephen’s around 4pm. So we hung out with Mom and Christine for an hour and a half before we headed to Clearfield. We stopped in Salt Lake and said hello to April, a friend I hadn’t seen in a couple years! We stayed Wednesday night at my friend Amber’s house. It was so great to finally meet her husband and baby! She has been married for almost 4 years and I still hadn’t met her husband and she still hadn’t met my babies. They fed us delicious lasagna, cheesy bread and Caesar salad. Then we stayed up until 1 catching up on the past 5 years of our lives! We reminisced a lot about Education week and she reminded me of things I had long forgot! We have definitely had some good times together. It was fun to see her again!

We left Amber’s house at about 7:45 Thursday morning. We headed to Ihop in Layton where we met my friend Jamie. She came and ate breakfast with us! I was so glad I was able to see her while we were in her neck of the woods. After eating at Ihop, we were on our way. We got on the road from Layton at about 9am. We drove straight to Boise, then after taking an hour break at Costco, we drove home. The kids did remarkably well considering. Asher slept a lot of the way and Brayden stayed content with his movies. While at Costco we stocked up on string cheese, and we let him pick one thing to buy. He chose Oreos, so we bought a box of Oreos and even though we’ve only let him have 2 cookies so far, they seem to keep him happy! (I am writing this post while we drive down the freeway. Having a laptop and unlimited time to do nothing is awesome!)

We definitely ate enough food and sugar to last us a lifetime. We will need to detox when we get home. The kids will have to learn to cope again with less food and less sugar. Brayden will have to remember what life was like before a Wii all the time, and I think we will ground ourselves from the car for a couple days. Right now, Brayden is watching Lilo and Stitch, and Sean is driving while listening to Oliver Twist. It is a pretty good book! It’s keeping him awake which was the plan so I’m glad it’s working. We are driving over the Blue’s mountains and Brayden just asked me “Mom? Where’s Haden? Where’s Celia? Where’s Hailey?” I told him they were at their houses then he asked where we were going. I told him we were driving home and he got sad. He doesn’t want to go home. He wants to go see “lots of people” in “Een-claw Washington”. Asher is crashed and is showing no signs of waking. Ahh…life is good. Darla, our GPS is telling us we will be home 9pm. But I’m pretty sure we’ll have to stop one more time for the kids to stretch their legs, and possibly switch drivers.

One thing I really enjoyed on this trip that I didn’t expect I’d enjoy as much is the scenery. It has been really entertaining driving through the forest, and dessert and red rock. The lakes and mountains and cacti and even tumbleweed have been so entertaining. I have always enjoyed road trips, but this trip is definitely my favorite thus far. It really has been so flawless and it has been rejuvenating for my heart and soul.

While on this trip we drove through 27 degree weather, 95 degree weather, sea level and 6,000 ft elevation. We played on the beach and watched snow fall out our windows. We wore shorts, swimming suits and flip flops, and jeans, jackets and hats. We saw family and friends that we hadn’t seen in as long as 5 years. The kids visited new states, and I visited a new country. We saw 7 temples (even if from a distance) and ate out 12 times.

This trip has been really good for us. We definitely have been blessed, and feel that we have been watched and protected on this trip. It is extremely uncommon that we do something and everything goes smoothly. We usually forget something, or lose something, or plan something wrong, or misjudge finances. So we were kind of expecting something to happen. The fact that thus far, the trip has gone almost flawlessly (dumb speeding ticket) is miraculous to us. We really have been truly blessed to be able to go on a trip like this. We are lucky that we were able to take so much time off work, and like I said, we have been truly blessed and watched over.

Perhaps this road trip is the start of a Janeway family tradition…