Lots of Trips to Utah

The last few weeks have been emotional and eventful. It started off by me driving up to Utah with the girls for my brother, Mark's wedding. Luckily Jon's family was going up to Utah at the same time for my brother in law, Aaron's graduation. So they were able to help me with the kids on the way up. I was so grateful. Jon flew up alone the morning of the wedding. We were super stressed that his flight would be delayed or something and he wouldn't make it...he landed at 11 am and had to be in the temple at 12:30pm. Plenty of time if there are no complications. And for him, there weren't. I was planning to pick him up, but we found out there is a free shuttle from the airport to temple square, so I took a little extra time at the house making matching bows for my sister's girls. My girls and I left my house around 11am following Beth, Rich and my Grandma. We had to drive up to the Salt Lake temple, so usually it is a 45 minute drive. As we were getting in the car, Addie fell and scrapped her knee. Getting blood and dirt on her white dress. We quickly bandaged and cleaned and then took off. Things were going smoothly until we hit around 3900 S and then we were suddenly at a standstill...like not moving at all. We found out from the radio that it was a huge pile up car accident. We tried to switch lanes to get to the right and exit, but we couldn't get over in time. So we were stuck for like a half an hour not moving. Finally it was like 12:30 we got to the left lane and Richard, who was driving my sister's car in front of me, decided to follow some cars that were driving off on the shoulder of the road and then off-roading through a small opening in the cement barrier to some parallel road. I was on the phone with my sister saying, "don't go that way, please it will kill my car" because my car is super low to the ground. My Grandma was encouraging us to do it and finally Beth screamed "just do it!" and so I followed them off the edge and heard my car break basically (really I found out later I broke the struts and the cv axles...opps!). But we were finally moving. We got on West Temple only to realize that it was super backed up as well, because South Temple was closed for a marathon or some such business. So it took us another 30 minutes to go 9 blocks on West Temple. Finally Richard got to the new City Creek mall and just decided to park and run for it. But the new mall there was super busy, as you can imagine on a Saturday. So since my Grandma had her handicap parking pass with her, they were quickly able to find a spot...I on the other hand could see no spaces anywhere for me. At this point it was 1 pm...start time of the wedding and I was bawling because I was sure I was going to miss it. The girls were crying because they had no idea what was going on and I was stressing them out. I tried to get out of the parking garage and hand the lady my ticket through my tears. She told me I just had one more block to go to get to the conference center parking and so the girls and I started praying hard that people would let us merge and we would get there soon. All this time, Jon is waiting in the conference center parking to help me with the kids...calling and calling me asking where I could possibly be. I drove around the conference center not finding a spot, and finally I just pulled into the "Tabernacle Choir Staff parking" because I couldn't waste another minute. Grabbed my kids and all my stuff and started sprinting in my 4 inch heels. It was craziness. Jon met me and I threw Grace into his arms and kept running. We caught up to my sister Sarah, who also had been caught in the traffic. Actually all my sisters had. It was a small miracle that we all got there at the same time, around 1:15...all out of breath from running there and frazzled from the stress of it all. They quickly took us to the sealing room. Where they had been waiting (but my Mom told me after that they had told her that in 2 minutes they were going to start the ceremony with or without our family). I am sure it was a result of lots of prayers that got us there in time. Because most of Mark's friends missed the whole thing because of the traffic. I cried through the whole thing...because I was happy for them, but also all the built up stress of the fiasco. The rest of the day was beautiful. And Mark and Heidi are so happy. Sorry that was so long...is anyone still with me?

After I got back home from my first trip to Utah, we found out my Grandpa's cancer had spread and he had only a few days left to live. He passed away the Thursday after we returned from the wedding, I booked a last minute ticket to fly back to Utah and attend his funeral on Tuesday. It was sad because we will miss him so much and he was such an amazing man, but we are happy he is no longer in pain. It was a beautiful funeral. He is working hard now on the other side I am sure.
 
 
I loved being with my family for my birthday and the funeral, but I missed my little family here and I am glad we got to spend this last weekend playing together, here are some pictures of our adventures.

The Verde Valley fair, which was super expensive and reminded me that we live around a lot of hicks and cowboys.

See that look on Grace's face? She sat still and stared like that for a full minute after the ride stopped. She wasn't quite 36" tall, but they let her on anyway...I hope that was really a good thing...she is looking at the picture right now as I am posting saying, "that's me riding, it was scary."
We watched a cool tiger show where they had the tiger jumping through hoops and we also got to see a little of the rodeo.

On Saturday we drove down Sycamore Canyon and found this cool hike that took us down to the Verde River, the river was deep and lots of people were hiking down there to camp and swim. I think we need to explore the area some more, but what we saw of it looked fun, we will definitely be going back...anyone want to come visit and go with us?

The cactus are in bloom and they are so pretty.

And last but not least, today is our 7th Wedding Anniversary. Hooray! I can't wait to celebrate it in Tahiti in 2 weeks! I am a lucky girl to be married to such a wonderful, handsome, hardworking guy.