I shall go first.
First of all, there were actually six of us on the trip because Brandaige brought Elsie and Shaili brought Gaia. Good thing they're girls. But really, they're adorable. Thankfully my mom was taking pictures the whole weekend because I only have pictures of the nieces.
We went to a show our first night in town. They claimed to be the oldest show in Branson, but a sign two blocks up the road said that another show was the first show in Branson. Yeah. The next day we spent at Silver Dollar City, an amusement park for those who have never sampled the goodness of Branson. We went on some rollercoasters by juggling babies and thankfully left the park just as it started raining. We unwisely went to a Golden Corral next door to our hotel. (Don't get it? Branson=the destination spot for the newly wed and nearly dead aka lots and lots of senior citizens who love buffets.) I actually took a picture of the line to send to Darrell, so there's that. We went on a train ride on Saturday. Yes, I have now been to Arkansas. Then we hit up a restaurant on the river we'd been to before, dropped by the Five & Ten store we loved when we were kids and visited, and then stopped by the outlet mall. We ended the night at a fudge shop for ice cream, where they sang for us surprisingly. And I got hit on by a sixteen year old and didn't realize it until after we left and Brandaige and Shaili caught me up. Guess I've transitioned to the whole marriage thing pretty well.
It was great trip and I came back more relaxed than I've been in a long time. Work and life has helped to get me back to my normal state in the last week, but I only have to make it to next year! I'm so glad my mom is an awesome planner and puts these trips together every year. I think this was our twelfth year?
Spiritual experience of the trip: we stopped by a sacrament meeting before we all had to head to the airport to fly home Sunday. I was finally almost over a bad headcold I'd had all week, so I decided to skip watching the primary program and spend our hour at church in the bathroom with food poisoning. Now, this presented a problem as you can imagine. Flying doesn't usually bother me at this point, but I did not want to spend two flights and a layover in that state. Didn't sound too doable in my mind. So we had a lady pull her husband and son out of the meeting to come give me a priesthood blessing. Ten minutes later I barely even could remember being sick. By the time we got to our layover in Denver I was eating Quizno's and peanut butter M&Ms. Guess what? The church is true.
Now for Darrell's turn....
Two week catchup on blogging
Happy Halloween everybody
Sorry for the two week delay. Here is a catch me up blogging post, complete
with pics, stories and other miscellaneous nonsense. About two weeks ago, Anberlin was back in
town and we went to the concert. We met
at their concert last April which put us down the path of marriage. We love listening to their music and they put
on a great show.
I hope everyone enjoyed watching a traditional Halloween movie
this weekend. Ours was The Nightmare before
Christmas. For some reason neither Kaela
nor I had ever seen all of it and it was playing on a giant outdoor screen at
Sundance Resort which had set up Halloween theme lift ride. Below the ski lift were various Halloween
themed scenes, zombie crossing, witches hut, car accidents, ghosts floating in
the air. It was kind of cheesy and
wasn’t very scary unless you were close to the ground where you would normally
get off the lift. You were close enough
to let the volunteers have a chance to jump at you or invite you to have your
face carved off or something like that.
Mostly it was just a nice chair lift ride in the cold mountain air. If you decide to go and do something like
that, take a blanket, we were glad we did.
Also make sure you secure all your belongings. Once we got back to the car I reached into my
pocket to pull out the passes that I had borrowed from Infotrax only to discover
that they were missing! I think I
remember hearing them fall but didn’t think anything of it at the time. I talked to the lifties and the ticket office
and they said they would look but it might wait until Monday before they could
really do a good looking. But, the
passes were reserved for the very next day!
I had to get them back. Fortunately,
the passes had one free reprinting in case of this very situation. Hopefully, no one else will lose them this
season, and thank goodness it was something easily solved. When I was talking to the ticket office
people there was another girl who had her cell phone drop out of her
pocket! #biggerproblems.
That was a start to a good weekend for us. Saturday, Kaela and I did a bunch of browsing
for flooring options at some local stores to get an estimate for our
house.
For those of you who don’t know, we are about two weeks away
from closing on our first home. We haven't done a good job publicizing it so far but details
on a house warming parting will be coming.
Anyway, it’s good to get a good estimate on the flooring so
we know what other things we can do now and what will be a later project. Hopefully we can get it nice for us to enjoy
for the next few years.
We also did some mountain biking and went to the temple for
initiatories. Perfect weather for
mountain biking right now. Too bad it
gets dark so soon now.
It’s been really nice to have a weekend with each other here
locally. We are always running around
doing different things. For example,
last weekend Kaela left for Branson, Missouri for her annual girl’s trip with
her mom and sisters. I went with the
scouts to Goblin Valley with the scouts.
I’m proud to say that my ward and leaders are not the idiots who made
national news a week ago by knocking over an ancient goblin. I think it’s so irresponsible that leaders,
who are supposed to be examples of what to do for the youth, are the ones
initiating a vandalous act at a state park and feel that they were justified in
their actions. I’ll stop my rant, it
could go on for a few more paragraphs but I’ll spare everyone.
We played kick the can and capture the flag in the goblins
under a full moon that was so bright you didn’t need to use a flashlight. The next morning we hiked a slot canyon
called Ding and Dang. The boys did great
at climbing up and over the obstacles.
We got to turn the hike into a teaching opportunity for the kids to
practice leadership principles by making the boys be responsible for getting
everyone over the obstacle instead of relying on the leaders. I’m amazed at what these kids can
accomplish. It’s been so much fun being
in this ward’s youth program.
On the way home, the car in front took a wrong turn on
I-70. For those you familiar with I-70
in central Utah, there is nothing out there and we got stuck going 100 miles
out of the way across the state before getting to an exit that would take us
home. I was beautiful country, but an
unnecessary detour. I learned that it’s
important to have a map in your car of the area you are going to be traveling
in. Sometimes you just can’t rely of
having cell service when you need it the most.
Back to me for the finish.
We'll try to keep up blogging the next couple weeks even though it will be crazy for awhile. We may have to settle with mostly pictures of what will be keeping us busy-cleaning, moving, painting, etc. Either next Sunday before the madness sets in or after we get settled we'll give a little more detail about the house. At this point it doesn't seem too real yet. Pretty sure that will be changing soon. Prayers are appreciated in the meantime to help us not go crazy. This is Darrell's busiest time of year, and as you can imagine I have already used my time off for the year with all of our trips. This is the kind of thing that makes me really grateful I've got my best friend by my side. Wouldn't have it any other way.
That's great news about the house!! And if you need ANYTHING please let us know! Seriously. We would love to help move, paint, etc if we can.
ReplyDelete