Last Three Counties in Utah

Last Friday Jeff and the boys were out of school for their Fall Break (a.k.a. UEA or deer hunt holiday). We decided to take advantage of the long weekend to drive over to Vernal to visit Jeff's brother and family. In the process of the trip, I finally made it to Duchesne, Uintah, and Daggett counties, the last three counties I needed to visit in Utah. Ta da!

That puts me at 652 of out of 3141 counties (20.76%), 36 of 50 states, 2 Canadian provinces, and 9 other foreign countries. I have now visited all the counties in Nevada, Utah, and the District of Columbia. You can find the website I use to track my counties and access a map of my U.S. travels on the Scoreboard here.

We had a great time with Nathan and JoLynn and their boys. The kids all played pretty well together and we just enjoyed each other's company. On Friday they gave us the grand tour of the Utah Field House of Natural History, otherwise known as the "dinosaur museum." As museums go, it is really nice. If only Jared weren't afraid of dinosaurs. :-( Saturday we took a picnic lunch and drove north on U.S. 191 towards Flaming Gorge. Our first stop was a hike near Red Fleet State Park to see some dinosaur tracks preserved in the sandstone on the edge of the reservoir. The weather was very pleasant and the hike was enjoyable, but a bit long for the younger kids (3 miles round trip). Jeff had Dallin in our backpack, but we ended up taking turns carrying the three toddlers a lot too. Next time we'll be better prepared. After the hike we had a quick picnic lunch in a scenic spot before heading home. Here are some pictures of the kids and the scenery:

Cheesy Grins














Nathan & Aiden




















Corbin the Lizard















Adam was hungry enough to eat a rock sandwich. Mmm, sandstone!

Oh Canada!

When I was a freshman at BYU, one of my roommates in Heritage Halls was a very fun girl from Alberta, Canada. After two semesters of living with Jacquie, I knew what a garborator was, I knew how to say "eh," and I wanted to go visit Alberta and see if it was as beautiful as she said it was. Almost twenty years later, I finally got my chance.

Earlier this month, Jeff had an academic conference to go to in Calgary, and I tagged along. (Actually, I've been planning this for a year.) There were all kinds of good reasons. Jeff's hotel room and car were paid for, so we just had to buy a plane ticket for me. We were due for an overnighter without kids. I can only think of two we've had since Adam was born almost nine years ago. And we are coming up on our 15th anniversary, so I figured I could justify it as an early celebration. It was wonderful! We definitely need to have getaways like this more often. Jeff's parents were kind enough to tend for us, so I didn't have one worry about the kids (although I did miss them a tiny bit :-). While Jeff was in his conference sessions, I kicked back in the hotel room and read a couple books--something I don't get to do very often. I also explored downtown Calgary a little, although it wasn't much fun to do by myself. My favorite thing was the Devonian Gardens, an indoor arboretum above a three-story mall. And we ate several good meals, the best of which was at the Silver Dragon in Chinatown, about two blocks from our hotel.

After Jeff was done with his conference on Saturday, we took off on the Trans-Canada Highway up into the Canadian Rockies. Originally we had planned to go to Banff and Lake Louise, but one of Jeff's colleagues suggested a less touristy route, and Jeff was all for that. We ended up driving south through the mountains on Highway 40. The scenery was beautiful! We stopped several times and took as many pictures as we had battery power in our camera--I had three sets of batteries that all died, and two sets of rechargeables that weren't charged--argh! The last of our batteries and the light died about the same time, so we headed back up the road to find some dinner in Canmore. We had a simple but entertaining meal in the bar of a Boston Pizza. All the tables were full in the restaurant, and a Calgary Flames-Vancouver Canucks hockey game was showing in the bar. Since we didn't have kids along and we were hungry, we opted for an available table in the bar. Watching the game was fun, but watching the fans was even more fun. There was one guy at a table near us that talked hockey with another guy for at least an hour-and-a-half straight while they watched the game. (He reminded us of Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite.) I don't think the two guys even knew each other. And I'm sure I didn't hear more than three words from their wives the whole time. (They must have been wives. I don't think any two guys would ignore their girlfriends so completely!) Anyway, we enjoyed our meal, our waters (the waitress was probably disappointed with our tip), and the entertainment, and I felt like somehow I'd had a completely Canadian experience.

On Sunday we got a nice little tour of Calgary in an effort to find a chapel where we could watch General Conference. I had a map to the stake center closest to our hotel, but hello--it was closed for remodeling. That particular bit of helpful info wasn't available on the Church web site. We found a phone book and I wrote down addresses for two more chapels that we thought we could find. We didn't have a very detailed map, so it was a little tricky, but we found them, complete with no cars in the parking lots and no satellite dish at either one. It took a trip back downtown to a mall with free Internet to figure out where another stake center was. We made it there in time to watch the Sunday afternoon session, then went straight to the airport for our flight home after a very nice weekend. My only regret was that we didn't have time to drive up there and back. I would have liked to have seen the Cardston Temple and Waterton Park (where Jacquie worked summers) on the way.

Dallas Weekend Adventure

Okay, here's a long story about our short weekend last week.

During the summers of 2003 and 2004, Adam took swimming lessons at the Oakley Pool in Cincinnati with two friends, Peter and Ross Lohrisch, who lived in our neighborhood. At the pool we met and became good friends with two other families, the Sellas and the Russells. When we moved away from Cincinnati, one of the things we really missed (in addition to Graeter's ice cream) was hanging out at the Oakley Pool with these friends. Last summer, the Lohrisch's also moved to Texas and bought a home in Plano. Maryann called me a couple months ago to let me know that John Russell was coming to Dallas in April to guest conduct the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. John, better known to us as "Jack and Alma's dad," was the associate conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra while we lived in Cincinnati. So we made plans to travel to Dallas last weekend to visit my brother, Adam, and his family, to play with the Lohrisch's, and to see John conduct the Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert with the Von Trapp Children, great-grandkids of the real Maria and Captain Von Trapp of "Sound of Music" fame.

Last Friday we planned to leave for Dallas as soon as Jeff and the boys got home from school so we could get to the cousins' house around bedtime. I ran around all day like a chicken with it's head cut off, trying to get all my errands done and get packed and ready to go. I almost made it, but best-laid plans failed again. We got a late start and didn't get to Dallas until about 10 p.m.

Saturday we drove up to Plano and spent several pleasant hours visiting, eating lunch, and swimming with John and the Lohrisch's. Three-year-old Jared provided the first excitement of the day by falling into the pool. Jeff had brought his swimming trunks but hadn't yet changed into them, so when he went in after Jared he soaked his wallet and clothes. Jared was fine, but scared. I'm afraid it's going to be a challenge to get him anywhere near a swimming pool anytime soon.

The second incident of the day occurred as we left Lohrisch's to go back to Dallas. The back tire on the driver's side of our van was completely flat. It took five men and at least a half an hour to figure out how to release the donut from underneath the van and get it mounted. Not wanting to drive too far on the donut, or to have to deal with fixing the tire on Sunday before we drove home, we pulled into a tire store five minutes before they closed Saturday evening. Fifteen minutes and eight dollars later we were on our way again. We made it back to Adam's and Paula's house with about an hour-and-a-half to eat and change before leaving for the concert.

The plan was to take Adam and Ryan with us and leave the little boys with a babysitter that Paula had arranged. I thought I had prepped Adam and Ryan well for the concert by buying the DVD of the Sound of Music, which they enjoyed in the van on the way to Dallas on Friday. However, they were tired from the late night Friday night, playing hard in the pool, and getting pretty bad sunburns--I forgot to apply sunscreen. The third incident of the day was one of those ugly parent-child power struggles when they both threw a fit about wanting to stay home and play video games with the cousins instead of going to the concert. I had actually considered letting them stay home with the babysitter until they started throwing tantrums--especially over video games! Then we were in a situation where we couldn't give in. So we got them dressed and into the van against their will, and we were off into what is known as the Mixmaster--downtown Dallas freeways. We only got turned around once off the last exit and made it to the Meyerson Symphony Center on time. The Meyerson was beautiful--can you see the Starship Enterprise in the lights on the ceiling?! The Von Trapp Children had amazing voices for teenagers, and John was fantastic--fun and energetic as usual. Adam and Ryan settled down and enjoyed the concert, as I thought they would. It was great experience and we really appreciated the tickets John comped us.

After another late night, we enjoyed a relaxing Sunday morning with Adam and his family. It's been so nice to live relatively close to them and get to spend time with each other fairly often. Our boys love playing with their cousins. Family is the best! We went to sacrament meeting with them in the afternoon, then headed home, again hoping to make it by bedtime. Our final excitement of the weekend happened when we stopped for gas in Sweetwater, TX, about 75 miles from home. We noticed that the tire we had gone to so much trouble to repair on Saturday was flat again. Grrrr. And it was pouring down rain. Jeff had no desire to put the donut on in his Sunday clothes in the rain. And he didn't feel good about driving home on the donut in the rain and in the dark either. Fortunately we were in a town big enough to have a truck stop with a service area that was open on Sunday evening. Unfortunately they didn't have the right size tire for our van. Fortunately they were able to refer us to an auto parts store that, amazingly, was open until 8 p.m. on Sunday evening and did have the right size tire. I still can't believe that. Unfortunately, the auto parts store wouldn't mount the tire for us. Fortunately, the truck stop service area did mount the tire for us. We saw some awesome lightning on the last leg of the trip, making it home 7 1/2 hours after we left Dallas, again about 10 p.m. (It's normally a 4 1/2 to 5 hour drive.) I let the boys sleep in Monday morning and took them to school late. When the secretary asked why they were tardy, all I could say was "hard weekend." Hard, but fun. And we got six new counties. :-)