Utah here we come

New car on Friday, drive to Utah Monday.

It was nice to see the "under 100" on the odometer for a few days, something I never thought I WOULD see...but you have to put the new car to work sometime, and the Monday after our purchase looked like a good time to do it.

John was crazy busy with work and school and I was needing a little break from the Arizona "fall" i.e. high 90s. So it was a great time for me and the three kids to pack up our new car and go visit Grandma Larraine and Grandpa Jon.

And it was the BEST week.

I cannot say how much I LOVE the freedom to be able to do that.

Some of the highlights:

I made it in town for the farewell party of a great friend, Karen Whitt, before she left for Germany for a few years.

We got to see my brother Jeff and to hang out with Sarah, Jim and their girls. My kids LOVE their cousins. It is especially cute to see the twin cousins (born on the same day) Andrew and Grace.




We did some fun activity every day with my mom (Gardner Village, Children's Museum, Dinosaur Museum, Zoo...). The kids (and I) had a great time.

This was magical. Natalie couldn't take her eyes off the polish. And I love my mom's expression just as much!

And Andrew did not want to miss out. I was a little relieved when he chose green instead of pink.

We played outside!!! The weather was beautiful.

I think her face says it all.

My kids got some great time with Grandpa Jon. He read them stories, helped bathe them and put them to bed.

Living the high life

My parents are in the middle of a kitchen overhaul. And as if that weren't enough, while they had all their cabinet doors off, and before their new dishwashers (yes, there are now two, to my mom's utter delight) were installed, they had a flood.

I should say they had two floods. The plumber had turned the water off while he was working on the dishwasher installation. My mom had tried to turn the sink on upstairs in her bathroom but no water came out. She then forgot to turn the sink off. Later that day, she remembered that she had forgotten to turn the sink off when water started leaking out of a light in the kitchen. Their bathroom was covered in inches of water that soaked into the closet as well.

But that wasn't the end of it. Later my mom was upstairs and heard a rushing sound. She soon discovered that the noise was water pouring out of a busted water line into the kitchen. The kitchen was flooded, the dining room , the family room, and then of course, the basement was getting its share also.

That happened about a day before they were invaded by me and my family. So, we got to participate in some of the cleanup. The wood floors had taken a lot of water and were pretty warped, so the answer to that is this nifty contraption...


...that dehumidifies the wood. It was so loud we couldn't even hear ourselves think. Luckily they put it in on the Thursday we left for Cedar City and removed it on Monday. So we really only had to deal with it for a day and a half. Thank goodness. That was more than enough time.

But, it also meant that we got to do this...



I felt like I was staying at a fancy resort and was eating breakfast on the patio. The air was cool, the birds were singing, you could feel the slight moisture in the air from freshly watered grass, you could smell the flowers and the grass. It was just lovely. The kids were waving and yelling "Hiiiiii" to all the passing early-morning golfers.

I really am on vacation.