On a Friday in July I got a phone call from Hyrum telling me to come home ASAP. (I was at Costco, naturally.) He was just back from his first morning at his new job. He had met with his new boss, and they discussed when he could take vacation. So when I got home, Hyrum basically said, "If we want to take any vacation before Christmas, we have to do it next week." [Their unit is gone all. the. time. for training... so there would be no other opportunities]
We debated back and forth (for 10 minutes, because they his lunch break was over), and ultimately decided to leave the next morning for Utah. Mostly, Hyrum needed the down time after a stressful deployment and before preparations for another deployment. And he wanted to see family. (I obviously saw plenty of family in my multiple trips over the last 6 months. haha)
[A sad glimpse into my life: the only hiccup this unplanned trip caused was needing to find a teacher for my class on Sunday... no other plans for the next 8 days!]
So here we are, ready for the drive--Mila looks completely relaxed watching a movie. The kids did okay. Having two adults in the car makes a world of difference. It's been long enough that I've blocked out the bad parts of the drive, which can't be said for some of my previous drives...the scars of those run deep.
Two days after getting to Utah the girls started feeling sick. Mila was grabbing at her ear and crying herself to sleep during a nap. We ended up taking Mila and Siena to an urgent care center, and they both had ear infections. Mila literally cried all the way from the waiting room until we drove out of the parking lot after. Meantime, I was also sick and had no voice for the whole week. So with two kids screaming, I was whispering to the doctor, "I think they have ear infections... Ignore my voice." None of us could hear each other over the noise.
Fortunately with a lot of pain killer they started feeling more normal... Hyrum and I left for a 2-day getaway to Park City while my mom watched the kids. We obviously didn't have much time to plan this escape (and it was a far cry from the beaches of Aruba that I'd hoped for post-deployment) but it all worked out great. We went to the Salt Lake temple, toured the Beehive House and ate at their restaurant, before driving out to Park City.
It had been SO hot in Salt Lake that I envisioned spending two days laying at the hotel pool. But Park City was about 30 degrees cooler, so I spent many hours in the indoor-outdoor hot tubs instead... even better than being pool side. And as a bonus, our hotel had a dry sauna and a steam room. And we never bumped into anyone else using them. It was perfect.
We spent Wednesday hiking at Deer Valley. You can pay to take the ski lift half-way up the mountain and then hike the rest of the way to the top. I wasn't counting on it being so cold, but once we were moving it wasn't a problem. It was nice to have such a great view without having to hike the first half of the mountain. The rest took a little over an hour and was beautiful. It was a breeze for Hyrum (he actually felt the urge to run up a super steep hill) and I just survived. I don't love hiking, but I like the environment and endorphins, so I'm learning to be okay with it.
I'm not sure why I even bothered with a jumping picture (even though the background was fantastic): I scroll through a dozen pictures of my attempted jumping where I look absolutely ridiculous.... and I still barely look like I left the ground. Of course this is Hyrum's first attempt. I credit my photography skills for that.
After, we got to enjoy a warm kid-free meal, and hot soup and grilled cheese was perfection. I'm pretty sure I spent the afternoon in the hot tub. Hyrum probably excised. I think we made goals and plans together, but didn't write them down, so I'm sure they'll happen. :)
On the way back to Farmington we met up with Amie and Jorge for a double date eating Thai food.
The rest of our trip was a lot of relaxing. The kids had a blast playing in my parents house and seeing cousins. They fought a little less-than-normal with Talia, and enjoyed all the attention from their older cousins. I didn't take many pictures of them all together, but they got to go swimming a few times (in a regular pool, and many times in the backyard blow-up pool).
The biggest treat of this trip for Hyrum was probably playing so much soccer. Usually on our trips he has a hard time pulling together enough people to play. (Especially on weekdays.) He was able to play several times, once with all of his Colombian friends that live here. And we could actually see the field they were playing on from my parents' house (using binoculars.) It was convenient that when Hyrum wasn't answering my phone calls I could just watch to see when they had left.
The night before we left we invited Matt and Kayla over to play games. Matt can't play in the basement without either building a huge train track or making something crazy out of legos. He also made the mistake of hauling the kids down the hallway in a plastic container. Then he was stuck doing it for the next 15 minutes. Rookie. After dinner we roped them into playing games which was a surprising amount of fun, best expressed by Matt when he was leaving: "I had every intention of leaving 2.5 hours ago."
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