Utah trip: the final post

Now that we've been home for a month, I will finally finish blogging about Utah. I have plenty of other stuff to blog about! I was going to be so good at being up to date, but MAN I've been exhausted lately. Of the 31 days in the month of August, I took a nap at least 25 or 26 days. And I've spent a LOT of time just lying on the couch with no energy to do anything (even sit at the computer). Sorry Dan.

***I would like to clarify that I while I frequently use the term "old" in this post, I am not referring to anybody's age. It's just way easier to say "old friends" than "friends they used to play with when we lived nearby."***

So anyhow, the last couple days in Utah we got to visit some friends! We spent two nights with Dan's good friend Joey & fam. Sadly, his oldest son Keaghan was visiting his grandparents in Idaho, so the boys didn't get to see him. But Katy & Kinoah got to play! The first time I met Joey (Dan met him at work) was at Keaghan's 4th birthday party when Kinoah was a teeny tiny baby and I was just barely pregnant with Katy. When we left Utah almost 2 years ago, the 9 months age difference was still pretty significant. Now that they're both 3, they were fast friends and had lots of fun playing! So when we finally made them go to bed, they wanted to sleep together in Kinoah's bed. I didn't think it would last more than a few minutes, but it worked! So I didn't get a picture of them playing together, but at least I got this:

Friday we rounded up some of our old neighbors - the Lows, Smiths, and Hulls (who also happened to be in town) - and went to the park. The kids had a great time playing with their old friends! It was so hot and yucky outside though, so we didn't last all that long. Even sitting in the shade of the neighboring house, it was pretty horrible.

Then we visited the bookstore that our friends the Weists opened since we moved. It was cool! We let the kids all pick out a book to read on the drive home. David tried to pick some really easy ones. He easily passed the level 40 (end of 4th grade) reading test last year (1st grade), so we insisted he get something harder. We "won"...but he still hasn't read it. Maybe I should instead.

After that we drove up to Sandy so Dan could hang out with some old co-workers. I had a hard time deciding what to do with the kids. I wanted to do something fun, but my lack of energy decided that we'd go see Toy Story 3. Which was fun, just not quite what I'd been hoping to do since we could easily do that here. On the way back to Joey's house we stopped at Arctic Circle for ice cream & to play. We used to go there fairly often, so it fit in with my plan to do lots of things we used to do.

Saturday was our day to hang out with my best friend, Gayelinn! We were supposed to stay that night, but her air conditioner wasn't working, and I just couldn't intentionally sleep somewhere hot when there were other options. Some best friend, right? Sorry Gayelinn! So anyway, we played at her house most of the day. Dan took David to go get his IQ tested by Auntie Jen (which confirmed our suspicions that he is very smart, thankyouverymuch), so Gayelinn & I went on an outing with the remaining 5 kids. We had to get Lehi bakery donuts (it was on my list). Then we went to Wines park for a little bit, but it was yucky hot. So we went to Emmett's & Ethel's for cheap ice cream sundaes. There we discovered that they changed how they do their french fries (they used to be soooo gooooood). Sad. Then we went back to Gayelinn's house.

That was when the raining started. It was CRAZY! There was a lot of major flooding on the east side of the neighborhood.

Gayelinn's house is higher uphill than where the flooding was...but her backyard got nice and muddy! Katy & Kyson played in the sandbox after the rain. Ewwww.

The big kids had a good time hanging out together. Ryan said it was his favorite thing about our trip to Utah.

Well, since I'm too picky to sleep in a hot house, we went and spent Saturday night at Auntie Jen's house. She hadn't had room for us earlier in the week, so it ended up being really nice to spend that night there instead.

Sunday morning we got up, packed up the car AGAIN, and drove back to Eagle Mountain to go to church. We were late (when are we not?), then we took off immediately after Sacrament meeting, so we really didn't see that many friends. It was funny to be back in our old ward though. There are SO many kids, so it is SO loud! It wasn't like people were letting their kids be noisy, just the tiny bits of noise from fairly reverent kids added up!

So we were in such a hurry to get on the road after Sacrament meeting, we didn't count the hours very well. We made it to our hotel with a little while before bedtime (usually we get somewhere and immediately everyone crashes). I took the kids swimming in the pool, then we watched Home Alone 2, which happened to be on TV.

I thought Ryan was looking cute while watching the movie. I like the Lovey-on-his-head look.

Katy, how is that comfortable?

Katy all snuggled up and looking sweet. Thanks for the photo bomb, Ryan.

Not too long after this picture, we knelt down for family prayer. Katy said that she thought she was going to throw up. It was out of the blue and she'd been acting totally fine, but I grabbed her and ran. We made it to the bathroom...but not to the toilet. Ewwww (Lucky for me the maid came and cleaned it up! That was a nice change!). Poor thing. I'm sure glad we decided to stop (there was some debate about trying to drive straight through), otherwise we would've been in the car when sickness struck! After that, she was fine for like 28 hours, then threw up one more time in her bed at home. Poor little girl had probably just had it with all the junk food and heat and travel!

Monday we drove the rest of the way home. It was pretty uneventful, other than a short parking-lot-on-the-freeway experience due to the road being temporarily closed, and later some construction traffic. Which at the time was very frustrating, so this probably would've been much angrier if I'd gotten around to posting this a month ago.

Well, that's it for our trip to Utah. I'm not sure why I felt the need to go into such great detail. I'm sure it's boring. Oh well.