Weekend Activities

This weekend Thomas and I went to the Manti with my family and were able to spend all day Saturday there. It was a long day, but it was fantastic to be there with most of my family and with some of our good friends.
It started out pretty crazy. We woke up to Brad throwing up. He had been sick all night long. Well, he was sick all day long, except he was okay long enough to go down to Manti with us and spend the afternoon there and then on the way back he started getting sick again. We are so glad he was able to go with us.

Also, as we are getting ready, we received a phone call from Tracy telling us that they are on the back way to Santaquin from Tooele, and they have a flat tire. So that means that Tracy was going to ride down with us in the van while Danny stayed behind with the kids, buy a new tire to replace the flat one, and then meet us down in Manti later.

We started out the day going to the Manti Temple and then afterwards all of us ate at Manti House, a restaurant/bed and breakfast there in Manti. (Wow, can I say Manti a few more times? Manti, Manti, Manti)

After that we went home and I'm pretty sure all of us slept on the way home. It was a long, exhausting, eventful day.

The next day, I went to church with my parents and then skidaddled out of there early because we were going up to Salt Lake to see the LDS First Presidency Christmas Devotional which was fabulous. The music was wonderful and gave you goosebumps. The talks given by President Thomas S. Monson, Henry B. Eyring and Dieter F. Uchdorf were amazing. It was just all around a great night. We were able to go with Tracy and Danny, Brad, Emron, and then Thomas and I while my mom walked around Temple Square and played with Aiden in the little kids activity area, which before that night, I had no idea existed.

I'm pretty sure that was the Best. Weekend. Ever. Except for Brad's vomiting and Aiden's absolute hatred of his carseat.

Brad, Body Worlds, Buffet, BYU, Boulders and Ballet

Wednesday we picked up Brad from the airport and then headed out and spent way too much money at Deseret Book and the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City. We killed time until it was time to go see Body Worlds. That's an exhibition of real human bodies that have been skinned and preserved by plastation. Not 100% sure what that is, but from what I understand, the gist is they take cadavers and pump it with plastic to make them last and then you can do whatever you want with them and when it sets, it stays like that. These are a couple pictures from the exhibition we saw.

It was pretty cool. They had different areas where it would show a bunch of livers and the effects different things had on it, or a bunch of hearts that had like one from someone who had a heart attack and a healthy one, etc. Every part of the body was represented and had a bunch of each one to show the effects that smoking, drinking, cancer, obesity, whatever had on them. It's was pretty interesting. There was one part though that I absolutely didn't like. There was a section kind of curtained off that had a bunch of babies. Like an embryo at 2 weeks pregnant, 7 weeks, 12 weeks, etc. all the way up to 38 weeks. It was interesting to see the stages of development, but knowing that all the displays were from real people, it was heartbreaking to see so many unborn babies, or babies that were born prematurely and died shortly thereafter. After that we went back to Dennie's house and hung out there for the night. The boys were going to go to the Miami Heat @ Utah Jazz game, but Brad had been up for like 50 hours straight, so they opted to stay home and watch it on TV so Brad could sleep.

Thursday we went down to Provo to spend time with my parents while the tires on the van were changed. We ate at an old time favorite buffet restaurant, Chuck-a-Rama (Thomas hates that name). And afterwards we went to the Provo Towne Centre Mall and drove around BYU for a while and then went down to my parents house in Santaquin.

Friday we went up to the mountain behind my mom's house. I almost got us stuck in the snow, Thomas fell down on the ice, and all around we froze a little bit.

Aiden's little nose especially froze a little bit. I set the color accent on the camera to red to see if you could pick up his little red nose, and you absolutely can.

Thomas, Aiden and I on the bridge over the little creek near Trumbolt Part on the way up the mountain.

And like little kids, we threw big rocks towards the creek trying to break the ice on top.

The view from the top of the mountain. Beautiful! Even when the valley is all smoggy.

After that we went to my mom's house so we could get cleaned up and ready to go up to Tooele to see Tracy's girls at their dance recital.

They performed the Nutcracker and it was wonderful. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures because I was tending to a little boy.

After that, it was back to Santaquin to get sleep and ready for Saturday.

The Weekend of the Sick.

Friday we went to Tracy's house in the afternoon. I chopped off all (well, over half) my hair so now it is right below my shoulders. I donated ten inches to Locks of Love and then had it cut from there. It's nice. Takes some getting used to, but it's nice. I like it.
That evening Tracy and I saw Twilight because apparently Stephenie Meyer, the author of Twilight, is Mormon and so it's all the rage in Utah and my sister was sucked into that as well. So she treated me to a movie, which I stood in the back with Aiden for over half of it while Aiden crawled around.
Meanwhile, Thomas, Danny (Tracy's husband) and my brother, John, saw the new James Bond movie.
Afterwards we met up and went to Applebee's for dinner.
On the way home the vomiting bug started. Aiden threw up and I didn't realize it at the time. I felt that the buckle was wet, but figured he had just spit up because that's a much more likely thing than him actually vomiting and didn't think much of it because he had a LOT to eat at dinner. Then we get home and about twenty minutes later, he throws up again. It was like that most of the night and everytime we laid him flat, he would throw up, so I fell asleep in a chair holding him upright and finally at about 2.00 a.m. I went up and asked Tracy and Danny what I should do for him. They took over from there for the next few hours while Thomas and I were able to get some sleep, and at 4.00 a.m. they woke me because he needed to eat again and he had a pretty high fever, but at least the vomiting was over and done with.
In the morning, he is still pretty lethargic, but without the vomiting, and he had a fever for most of the day. I, on the other hand, had the vomiting bug and was in and out of the bathroom all day long between taking as many naps as possible.
Sunday morning we were well enough to go to church with Danny and Tracy for the full three hours, all of which Aiden slept through and I fought falling asleep. We felt much better and had our appetite back.
Monday morning, Tracy was going to take me to go shopping for my birthday, which makes no sense to me because her birthday is December 20, and mine is February 3. Seems we should have been shopping for her, but she insisted. We were ready to go, and Thomas starts to throw up. He threw up nothing but mushrooms from his dinner the night before, and we thought it was just the mushrooms were bad, but he kept throwing up. So Tracy and I left with David and Aiden to leave Thomas by himself so he could relax and get some sleep.
By Monday night, it was all behind us as far as vomiting went with our family. Three of Tracy's kids caught it Monday night and Tracy herself had it minus the vomiting. We had some lingering fevers and we didn't really have our appetites back for a while, but at least the worst part was over and done with quickly.

Thanksgiving Travels and Unravels.

Our flight out here was the Best. Flight. Ever.
We woke up at the way too early hour of 1.45 a.m. so that we would be able to get to the airport by 4.00 a.m., two hours before our flight took off, so as to avoid narrowly missing our flight like we have done more times than I'd like to admit.
We get to the airport at 4.00 and sit around and wait because apparently the ticketing counters don't open until 4.30. As we are checking in, the little kiosk informs us that our flight is overbooked and would be consider taking another flight with compensation? We say no and proceed to go to our gate. When we get there, the attendant at the counter informs us that he will give a $200 voucher to someone who will take another flight. We pass because we didn't want to miss Thanksgiving with my family. Then he bumps it up to $250, and we see what we can do.
He tells us that we can get a flight that leaves in 40 minutes and will get us there in Utah at 10:44. I'm thinking he's talking about PM not AM and freak out a little when he informs me that it is actually AM because that would get us there an hour and 16 minutes earlier than if we stuck with our original flight.
So we take it and that's a cool $500 worth of vouchers in our pocket for a later trip. Hoorah!! Then we go to our next gate and they give us seats in the emergency row. Seeing as how we have a baby with us and people under 15 aren't allowed to sit there, we get bumped up to first class to our flight to Atlanta. I must admit, I am a gigantic fan of first class.
Then from Atlanta to Salt Lake City we were on a huge plane that had two seats on the left, an aisle, three seats in the middle, an aisle and then two seats on the right. We had two of the three seats in the middle, and there was not another person to sit with us so we had room for Aiden to crawl around and be crazy which was fantastic because from Atlanta to Salt Lake City is a four hour flight. It's also nice not being cramped next to a perfect stranger when you are trying to nurse a child that refuses to have a blanket over his head. There were also a lot of other babies on that flight so we weren't the only annoying ones that had a baby and also seated right behind us were four missionaries coming home from their missions and they kept Aiden entertained part of the time.
When we got in, Dennie picked us up and we went to his house to drop off our stuff, and then off to Tracy's to have Thanksgiving Dinner, which was fantastic. Everyone was there, including my brother, John, who came up from New Mexico for the weekend.
Then when it was all said and done, we went back to Dennie's for a much-deserved night's rest. At that point, we had been up for almost 24 hours and I was absolutely feeling it.

P.S. Happy Birthday (yesterday), Jacob!!

All Packed Up and Ready to Go!

Okay, so not really. I just got our luggage out and immediately Aiden was in it, crawling around. So not to miss an opportunity procrastinating the ever dreaded packing, I started taking pictures.

I have most everything out and ready to go as far as non-clothing items go, and as far as clothing items go, they are all in a giant, dirty laundry pile in front of the washer waiting to be washed and then packed so we have nice, clean clothes for when we go out.
I have, however, put up our Christmas tree with the help of Aiden! I normally am not one to put it up this early (only because my mom wouldn't let me put it up before Thanksgiving Dinner, and I held to that "tradition" after I moved out) but I figured since we would be gone Thanksgiving, I'd put it up before. Anyways, it gives me an excuse next year to put it up before, saying that's just what I did this year. I can conveniently forget that us being out of town was the reason for doing so.