Tales from the Road

This is us on our way to SLC from Anaheim. Robert's amazing older brother lent us his humongoid car so that we could drive together from Sara's place. Robert and Ryan are in the front. Creed loved his spot, he kept calling it his mancave.

This is what Creed looked like when we pulled into the McDonald's parking lot in Lehi. He was sound asleep underneath all his stuff.

The texting conversation that brought Dallas to Lehi from Bountiful went something like this:

Dallas: How is the trip going?

Me: Great!

Dallas: Will we see you?

Me: I don't know. We have to drive up to Sara's, drop a few people off, then drive down to Earl's to get our car and then back to Sara's. It will probably be pretty late by then.

Dallas: How can I help eliminate some of the backtracking?

Me: Really? Want to meet us in Lehi and take a few of us to Clearfield?

Dallas: I'll bring the van and meet you there!

Me: We are about two hours away. Bob says we could ride someone on the floor from Lehi if you change your mind.

Dallas: Heck no! I don't want to miss the party!

And with that last statement, I knew that somewhere up the family tree we must be related. We met at the Lehi Roller Mills exit, aka the Footloose exit and it was the Smith's to the rescue again. Dallas is Kate's brother and Doug's son. The Kate and Doug who met us at Disney.

Shout out: Dallas is also our accountant and he can do your taxes no matter where you live. You should use him. He always has to redo people's past taxes when they went to H&R Block or people who come to him who have been doing their own. Translated: He gets them MORE MONEY! His office is called Redwood Tax.

Sara, Jack and I went with Dallas. We stopped at his house and lucky for us Vinny and Shannon were still up. Shannon is my friend with whom I spent a long weekend in Chicago a few years ago. I am so lucky to know the Smiths and I'm beyond happy that Dallas and Robert are friends.

Side note: One time Doug helped me get my wedding ring out of the pawn shop when I had sold it to buy groceries during medical school.

Did you think I was kidding about the bread?

And here Sara models her amazing new knife.

Tip: don't buy junky knives. Good knives in the kitchen can make all the difference. All you need is one great Chef's knife and a paring knife. You can add a bread knife if you make/buy a lot of bread that needs to be sliced. Also, hone your knives every time you use them and have them professionally sharpened once a year. Bob thinks we also need steak knives.

Gandalf! Mountains!

I-80 Sunset

My mom came to see us last week, and I took a few pictures. The photo-dump marathon is still not over.

Question: Why are several of my photographs not showing up in my archives? I noticed as I went back to link to older posts that many of my iPhotos are missing. Any insight?

Magic Kingdom Fun

We packed our kids in the car and headed to California a week ago, via Salt Lake City.

Who doesn't want to escape the subzero temperatures of February and visit someplace warm and sunny?

In Salt Lake, we checked in on Robert's family and swapped cars with his brother. They have 13 children. That's not a typo: 13! Earl and Tifiny were kind enough to lend us their 11 passenger vehicle so that we could drive down to California in the same car as Sara and Ryan and Grant.

Then Ryan drove us all the way there because we had just driven 18 hours in one day.

We spent three days with Mickey and in those three days we . . .

. . . rode Space Mountain 5 or 6 times (but accidentally ditched my mom so she didn't get to ride it at all. I still feel bad about that.) . . .

. . . Astro Blasted Zurg and his minions several times . . .

. . . met up with Scott and Eddie and tried mint juleps (you can keep your nasty toothpaste water. yuck!) . . .

. . . rode the Matterhorn several times . . .

. . . spun around on the Tea Cups . . .

. . . goofed on all things Disney . . .

. . . met Mary Poppins and Burt (she and Winnie the Pooh are among my favorites) . . .

. . . celebrated Creed's birthday . . .

. . . met up with Kate & Doug (who drove up from San Diego after the BYU game) and my mom (how is this the only picture I have of you, mom? Maybe there are more on my camera, these are just from my phone) . . .

. . . and had an all around Magical Time.

The following is mostly for me, but feel free to peek. It's my lazy way of remembering the details:

1. Who are we kidding? The whole thing is for me (and my progeny).

2. George and I rode the Astro Orbiter together. In the middle of the ride he tilted his head back and told me "Mom, dis wocket wide is dumb."

3. February is the month to visit Mickey. We didn't wait longer than 25 minutes for a single ride. Not even the submarine. There is something to be said, however, about visiting during Christmas time and seeing the Haunted Mansion all decked out Tim Burton style.

4. It's a Small World is not as painful as I remember. I quite enjoyed it.

5. I downloaded an app while I was there that told me the wait times for all the rides in the park. I loved it.

6. The app also had all the Hidden Mickeys arranged in a checklist format. The kids had a great time hunting for them.

7. I became thoroughly annoyed by the stupid Hidden Mickey scavenger hunt. (The kids were clueless about my annoyance. Like all good moms, I kept it to myself and continued to help them enjoy themselves.)

8. World of Color in California Adventure is pretty cool. We were in the very front and we got drenched! Luckily we had ponchos. My favorite part of the show was the montage of the disney cartoon moms snuggling their disney cartoon babies.

9. This was our first multi-day visit. I loved it!

10. This was also the first time we bought any food in the park. (Aside from our usual purchase of Bacon Wrapped Asparagus at the Bengal Bar-b-que.) Of course, we still packed plenty of peanut butter sandwiches because food in the park is expensive and Jack is a bottomless pit.

11. Stella had no desire to meet princesses. Instead, she wanted to meet the classic characters: Mickey, Goofy, and Pluto.

12. George met Buzz Lightyear, but had no desire to interact with him or get close to him.

13. Creed celebrated his 10th birthday at the park and wore a button all day to proclaim it to the world. Everywhere he went, people were wishing him a happy birthday.

14. After every ride, Grant had a single word "fun!"

15. Pretty much every ride scared George.

16. Both George and Grant were tall enough to ride the Matterhorn.

17. By the time Stella was George's age, she had been to Disneyland 3 times!

18. Kate, Doug, and my mom took the kids back to the hotel early the last night because it was FREEZING.

18. Kate also came to the rescue with extra clothes from her car for everyone.

19. I wish I had taken better notes, it was such a fun time! Ryan, George, Grant, and Eddie were the first timers. Scott hadn't been since he was maybe 5 years old? It had been almost four years since the rest of us had been (except my mom and the smith's. My mom hadn't been since Scott was there last and the Smith's were there the week before.)

20. It was a surprise! We woke the kids at 3 in the morning on Monday night and after they got in the car we told them where we were headed.

We are a car-tripping family. The kids feel like the vacation starts as soon as we are in the car headed someplace, so even though we spent 5 days in the car for 3 days at Disney, they loved it. I, on the other hand, would love to pay down some of our student loans so that we can fly. The road trip itself deserves its own post. Don't worry Dallas, you're in it!

P.S. Disneyland really is a magic kingdom because as we were in line to ride Alice in Wonderland, Robert pointed to someone in line ahead of us and said "That's got to be Tyler's Twin." And sure enough it was! It is totally weird running into the Twin Brother of someone you know. He was just as friendly as the real Tyler. It really is a Small World After All.