Our trip to Utah~the drive out

When we realized Michael's sister, Julie, was getting married the Saturday of our kids spring break, we thought we'd take a family trip.  I was so sad that we couldn't all make it to his other sisters wedding in December that I thought it really important to be there.  At first, Michael wasn't sure he could get enough days off, but when he did, we mapped out our plan. 

We left at 4:30 on Friday, March 12th from Austin.  We swapped vans with my mom because hers is much bigger than our cute little Mazda MPV, and we are grateful she was gracious enough to share with us.  It didn't hurt that she also has 2 tvs, a navigational system, heated chairs, and a few other bells and whistles. I was strangely excited for the adventure of the drive.  We weren't sure where we'd stop the first night.  At first we though Abilene, but we ended up pushing it onto Lubbock, which is a 6 hour drive.  Now let me just say that I am AWFUL at long distance driving!  I love to drive, but after about 30 minutes, I get SUPER sleepy, even if I'm not that tired.  Something about the monotony of the road is tough for me. I like to help Michael up, but he ends up doing most of the driving, and I keep him alert with conversation or reading to him.  So, with that said, he doesn't function so well after 11pm most nights at home, so we just weren't up to risking it on the road. 

The kids were pretty excited about a hotel. 

My criteria for a hotel was waffles for breakfast.  Not just muffins, but waffles.  When I called ahead to find one each of the 3 times, that was a major deciding factor.  Michael was so proud of me that I packed my "big camera" under the seats for the drive out.  There were spots on my little orange camera, you will see in picts below.

One of the best things we did (which our boys begged us to do) was to put Cali in the back inbetween the boys.  I wish I had a pic of this, but this is a shot before we did that.  She was SO entertained by them, and they have so much fun getting her to laugh.  They could feed her baby food (though her clothes were quite messy after) and make her giggle.  I LOVED that!

Cali enjoyed this sucker with a mesh fabric.  We put grapes inside and she could chomp and such out the juice.  It was cute to just hear the sucking sound.

Saturday morning, we met up with Michael's brothers family who was making the same drive from their home in Ft. Worth.  For that day, we drove side by side and the kids swapped around a little.  We brought lunch stuff with us, so we just stopped at a picnic table along the highway to eat and relax a bit.  I was stressed because of the cars whizzing by us just a few feet away, but we weren't there too long. Thanks, K, for the pic.

We parted ways when we stopped for the night in Colorado Springs to stay with friends and they went on to Denver.  In CO, we stayed with our good friends, The Blacks.  They had just moved away from us in Texas the month before.  Their daughter, Ashlee, is a dear friend to Alyssa.  The girls had so much fun playing and we had fun chatting it up with them. 

The boys slept under the pool table in the basement and thought that was pretty cool. We actually stayed at Gabe's parents home (whom we know and love as well) because they were closing on their home a week later.  They even had a 10 day old baby...lots going on for them!  We are grateful for their friendship, and we will miss them.  Michael still has dreams of moving to Colorado someday, and they are working on getting us there, now.

I was trying to take a pic of the 2 girls and Matthew wanted to join in.

We went to church with them the next day, and the girls were having a hard time sitting reverently, so I took them for a "bathroom break" and they pretended they were teachers at church with the podium in the empty primary (kids) room.

We got to take a tour of their new home, it is fun to be able to picture in my mind where my friends live.  Their church building was in their backyard with a fence that gave them access--how cool is that?

Cute girls.

We said our goodbye's and left around noon and made the trek through windy Wyoming.  Not so exciting there, but we were pushing on to the bitter end.

The kids saw this snow as we drove by and wanted to get out.  At a rest stop, we let the tromp through a small patch behind a gas station.

Alyssa just ate an ice cream sandwich and I can see it around her cheeks.

We pulled into my grandparents driveway, in Ogden, UTAH, at about 11pm that night.  They had gone to bed and left everything out for us, and we made ourselves at home.  SO happy to have made it there, and truly--it wasn't so bad!  That last hour through the dark canyon was a tough one, but at least the kids were asleep.