First leg of the trip

So we started out early in the a.m. on the 23rd of June. Of course when your intentions are to leave at 5, 7 is usually the reality. You know what, I have to back track a week earlier. Oh and first explain why I am writing today which happens to be Sunday. I typically try to have Sunday be the day that the computer doesn't get turned on, but this Sunday I have everyone home due to a small breakout of the lower intestinal stomach flu, (need I say more?) I'm working on an ode to Mr. Clean and Clorox wipes in gratitude. uhhhh... Oh right a week before we left.
So when I lived in Laramie I made some of the best friends of my life. After about 21 years I came out with a handful that will all be living on my block in the Celestial Kingdom, or at least down the street. One of those is Val Pead. She and her sister, Sarah, taught me about something called unconditional love. Which they showed me on several occasions while I was working out some of my many issues during my "growing up" stage as a grown up. They also showed me how to play. Like all good LDS people do. And laugh, harder than I had ever laughed before. Those were some amazing years in college.
Val served her mission, ironically, in Houston. So almost 10 years later the prodigal daughter returned to her mission stomping grounds and to my house to visit my, in her own words, cute family. She is from a family of 12, 8 boys 4 girls. Needless to say she has great sympathy for Sariah. So exactly 4 weeks ago today, I went to pick her up from where she spent the first part of her trip and brought her here to spend the last part of her trip.
Monday we went to Katy Mills and Val treated us to lunch at Rainforest Cafe, in honor of Sariah's birthday (which was the next day.) Caleb had his ears plugged the entire time, it's a little loud, but the rest of the kids enjoyed it.
Tuesday noon-ish we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's.

Tuesday night Dallas, Stacey and Melissa came over to play games. My kids were in bed, mostly, and it was tons of fun to have grown-up company. And we all ate way to much junk.
Wednesday Val introduced me and Sariah to pedicures. (pretty toes!)
Thursday we took her to the airport.
Friday we went back to the airport to pick up Jason from work. Did I mention that my little kids think that he works at the airport for three weeks at a time? Saturday we spent trying to pack as best we could for leaving on Monday. Sunday was our Sacrament meeting on music. Sariah sang and did a great job, except for the fact that she tried to back out at the last minute and I had to pay her. She is a natural alto like myself, the song was a little high and she was nervous about how she sounded. I also sang. Everything went just great. Sunday night, my sister came to pick up the dog, she generously said she would watch him for us while we were gone. And Dallas came to pick up the key, she had very generously agreed to come and care for the rest of the critters here at home. I think she even watered my plants. Thanks Dallas! Now where was I? oh yeah...finally. Monday morning we were on the road by 7a.m. Ready and excited to spend the next 12 hours driving across Texas. We went by way of Austin and the "hill country" I was actually impressed. It was very pretty. Everyone did really well. Sariah and I colored for a while in the front seat. The back two rows had movies. Heather had given us an extra screen to hook to our portable DVD player. That was awesome, but I had concerns about the child in the front row not being included in the movies, so I went and bought another set. It worked out great. The older two got to watch a movie and the youngers got to watch one too. So we made it to Amarillo around 8 or 9p.m. and stayed at a very nice hotel. We had talked about swimming, but Jason and I were exhausted, and the kids probably would have all drowned. So they were disappointed but survived.


"Ahhh, what a way to relax after spending the whole day in the car..."
To Be Continued...