Spontaneous trip to Utah: March

[Going back to March]  We moved into our house on a Thursday.  On Friday we found out our stuff could be delivered on Saturday, and early Sunday morning we hit the road headed to Utah.  Hyrum didn't have to start work for another week so we thought it was a good chance to see family.  (The drive was about 9 hours without stopping.)

The night before we left (after the movers were gone) we hurried and unpacked the necessities (ie: bedding, clothes we hadn't been wearing for 2+ weeks, towels) and cleared a space for us to 'live' in when we got back.  It was nice to come back home and have beds cleared off to sleep on.  Aside from a few areas though, the house was a pretty big disaster of boxes and half-unpacked stuff.

Back to the trip, though.  The drive there was surprisingly pretty.  We drove across I-70 most of the way to get to Vernal, our first stop.  First we passed a bunch of snow-covered pine trees.  That felt like a world away from the 75 degrees we'd just left in South Carolina.  Then we crossed over the mountains and hit desert in western Colorado.  It was just a long stretch out in the middle of nowhere.  Hyrum said it was the prettiest drive he's ever done.  I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it was nice.  On the way home, we went across I-80 (slightly shorter) and Wyoming definitely isn't as pretty.

At one point the GPS took us on a dirt road to connect to another highway.  It was pretty strange, and we were afraid the road would just stop.  But eventually we got to pavement again and our tires were still intact.

Hyrum's sister lives in Vernal, so we spent Sunday night with them.  It was a great way to break up the drive.  (We didn't stop for the 6 hours. Thank goodness for diapers.  For the kids.)  Their three girls are quite entertaining for my kids.  They like to hold babies and sing songs.  What's not to love.

 It was beautiful weather so we laid around in the backyard and let the kids play.

Back on the road the next morning to go all the way to Farmington (about 3 more hours.)  We realized on the drive that we'd be passing through Heber, where Matt works, so we stopped in to see him.  (And buy some chocolate-covered pretzels, caramels and apples.)

For this drive we did some seat-rearranging in our van, different than we'd had it on the drive from South Carolina.  We put two carseats in the back row so it was easier for me to climb into the back if needed.  (Extra seat in the middle.)  The kids did okay on the drive, but the 3 hours to Farmington felt like FOREVER.  We just wanted to get out of the van!!!  But those chocolate-covered-everythings sure helped.

The rest of the week we were there is a bit of a blur. I have a few pictures that tell the real story: we mostly hung around the house and ate!  There were several people I could have gone to visit, but the thought of loading my kids in the car and driving more than 5 minutes was overwhelming after driving across the country.  So they didn't really go anywhere except to see their grandparents.

I love showing up in Utah and having my siblings all come over.  Matt and Kayla came over that night, along with Amie and Jenna.  We saw Amie several times that week; she's on maternity leave and just came over to hang out with her baby.

One of the fun parts of this trip was surprising Hyrum's parents.  We didn't tell them we were coming, and on Tuesday we drove to their house in Ogden.  Hyrum called them, and asked if they wanted to Skype.  Once they could see us on the video, he said, "Let me show you our new house."  Instead, he showed them their house.  And his mom said, "Oh!  Nice.  What pretty flowers!"  Then it was like, "Wait, where are you?  Is that our house?  Are you in front of our house?  What??"  She came running out the door, completely shocked and thrilled to see the grandkids.  It played out just like we'd planned.

 It's a rare occasion when these girls are fully clothed, with shoes and coats.  So let it be documented. It was around this time that Siena started walking, too. (She's in the blue coat.)

This picture below is blurry, but one day Hyrum and I went on a date.  I love having my parents watch my kids. [We were actually planning to go to the temple together, but after we were dressed we realized Hyrum hadn't brought his recommend.  whoops.]  We we went shopping instead (nothing exciting... a white shirt for Hyrum) and then ate lunch at a fairly nice place at Farmington Station.  It's certainly not a place we'd take our kids, so we felt pretty fancy. (Except yes, Hyrum is wearing a soccer jersey, so it probably wasn't that fancy.)

This is Talia, Amie's baby.  My girls enjoyed stealing her pacifier. They look huge compared to her.

 On Thursday Lilly had a birthday party at the park.  Hyrum ditched us to watch a soccer game, but Tiago had a blast with his abuela.  She spent over an hour playing with him, so I had fun conversations with the adults.

Thursday or Friday (?) night we went to see The Messiah performed by the Tabernacle Choir.  My mom got 4 tickets, so my parents, Jenna, and I went.  Hyrum brought the kids to his parents house while he watched another soccer game.  It's fun to go out to events child-less, and although the concert was about twice as long as I needed it to be it was beautiful music.  During the intermission I found Leslie there and got to chat with her for a few minutes.  I wish I'd had more time to catch up.

I did a decent amount of shopping while we were there (again, because I could go kid-free) but didn't have a ton of luck.  It seemed like I'd find a cute shirt, but then it wasn't in the size I wanted.  I've resolved to stop buying stuff unless I really liked it and it fit well, so I felt stuck.  But then one day my mom and I randomly went to JCPenney and I found a ton of stuff, and it was on big-time sale, so I got a lot.  :)

One day for lunch we met up with Grandma Hatch and Ira.  The people who are there always seem to shift around, but lunch with Grandma seems to be a fairly regular weekly event, and every time we visit we get to eat with her at least once.  She gives the great-grandkids a dollar when she sees them.  (Except her eye sight is actually not very good these days, so she technically doesn't 'see' them, but she sure heard them.)

And one more thing I didn't take a picture of... My mom had the Young Women come over one night to use the hot tub.  It was about 7:15, and Tiago was already dressed and ready for bed. The next thing we know, he's out there, in just a diaper, with my mom helping him into the hot tub.  He was the happiest kid in the world.  He really get spoiled by his grandparents.  (Limitless candy and drinks in the garage fridge?  It's like a kid's dream.  And mine too, actually.)

Saturday was "Easter" for us since we drove home on Sunday.  We spent the morning with the Hyrum's whole family and the afternoon with mine.  Tiago is like royalty around his cousins.  There's always someone to hold his hand(s) and show him fun toys.  And plenty of adults around to hold the girls.

 The kids had a fun Easter egg hung and then we ate lunch.

 Clearly none of the kids were interested in a family picture.

It turns out I took zero pictures of the Hatch gathering. I'm sure we were all there, and it was delicious, and really loud.  (Why don't I remember more?!) I remember the kids looked for Easter eggs and Tiago ate too much candy.  I also remember my girls were loud and really crazy, so once they finally went to bed (early) I LOVED hearing Amie's baby cry, knowing it wasn't mine.

On Sunday we drove home.  My mom offered to come back to Colorado with us and help unpack for a few days, then fly back to Utah.  It worked out great.  She was helpful with entertaining the kids while we drove.  Tiago kept asking for 'the monkey' which is an app on her phone where you interact with a monkey.  He absolutely loves it.

We stopped (for about 60 seconds) at the Devil's Slide, which is this vertical rock formation in Utah.  We were able to pick up our Accord at my aunt's house in Berthoud.  We've been storing it there since my parents drove it across the country for us in February.  It was nice to see it again! We like that car.  After a quick visit, and stretching out our legs, we made it the last 2.5 hours to Fort Carson. [I messed up my lower back that morning while packing, and was so stiff by that afternoon that I couldn't actually stand up straight.  I looked like a hunchback walking around their house.  It was better within a few days when I wasn't sitting so much.]

My mom was super helpful with unpacking. On the first day, we did the kitchen and parts of the bedrooms.  By the end of day 2 we were done with most of the boxes downstairs and had the kids rooms completely organized.  It would have taken me weeks on my own to do what we did in 2 days.

In addition to unpacking, we did a lot of shopping.  I think I spent about $500 while she was here (thanks, Costco) buying stuff for my house, particularly the fridge/pantry.  She also entertained my kids and probably sewed something for us.  And that was all with a partially functioning shoulder.  I don't know where she gets all her energy.  I remember mentioning that we needed to hang up our clocks, and the next time I came into the room she had already done it.

One other funny thing about coming home: before we left, I cleaned the freezer, and apparently didn't put the ice-catching container in the right spot.  When we came back a week later, our freezer was full of ice.  It wasn't too big of a mess to clean up, but kind of ridiculous at the same time.

Hyrum had Monday off work, so we drove to the Garden of the Gods, a park with red rock formations not too far from our house. It was a beautiful day and we got food for a picnic.  There are a lot of hikes we opted not to do, but maybe another day.

And on Wednesday afternoon she flew home.  It was back to reality.  Hyrum was back to work.  And since then life has been fairly settled.  We're at the point that I always look forward to before a big move: our stuff is in its place, we have a routine and know where the playgrounds are, and I know a few people I can call to do stuff with.  March was crazy, with a lot of fun mixed in, and I'm happy to be back to 'normal.'  Even if its sometimes boring.

Our 1596 mile drive

It's quite a nightmare to think back on the beginning of March.  Let's just say, I'm glad it's the middle of April!

Right after the girls' birthday party, our movers came.  Monday and Tuesday we had the movers come.  I feel grateful for movers (especially when they move our upright piano), but it's stressful to have someone else packing all your stuff.  And we were trying to keep the kids out of their way.  Fortunately, we had nice weather.  That's the upside of South Carolina.  Everything else about these days is a blur.

I spent all of Tuesday night and Wednesday cleaning.  You don't realize how dirty things are until you're scrubbing everything.  Walls, ceilings, paneling in doors, baseboards, inside the stove hood, each slat of the blinds.  As I cleaned, I was annoyed that most of these things clearly hadn't been cleaned when we moved in, but I didn't want to risk being charged so I cleaned anyway.  After cleaning all day Wednesday, we decided to push up our move-out date by a day, which I'm glad we did.  [The whole time I cleaned I listened to my first audiobook... that was fun.]

When we move, I start compartmentalizing things in my head.  First, the stuff packers are moving.  Then, stuff we need out in our house while we're still living there.  Then, stuff that we need to keep out of the car even after it's packed (ie: cleaning stuff!).  The stuff that needs to be thrown away before we drive off.  Stuff we only need in the hotels.  Stuff stuff stuff.  It's such a relief to get everything in it's place and close the van doors and drive off.  We moved out Thursday afternoon.

The problem is that Hyrum worked all day Thursday.  We pretty much had everything out of the house by 9 am, and there was no way I was letting the kids run around the clean floors getting finger prints on the squeaky clean glass, so I tried to distract that at the park for hours.  It wasn't fun to entertain babies with nowhere to nap, but that's life.

It felt like home being back at the Fort Jackson Inn.  Hyrum lived there for a 3-month training in 2012, and we stayed there when we arrived back in August.  Who knows if this will be our last stay there!

At some point that week we took a cleaning break and went to the basic training museum on post.  It was kind of fun to see what new soldiers go through, and I think it was even more fun for Hyrum to remember back on his own basic training.  Apparently a lot has changed (slightly less in-your-face) but a lot is the exact same.

So, a funny story about the picture below.  When we arrived at the museum, Hyrum was putting the stroller together behind the van.  Tiago was in quite the mood, so I told him I was going to take Tiago out and start towards the museum to distract him.  A minute or two later Hyrum came up behind us with the stroller.  When we were about to the museum, he said, "Where's the other baby?!"  He left poor Mila in the van.  We knew it was bound to happen eventually! Luckily we didn't get far. 

 On Friday, Hyrum graduated from Captain Career Course.  It was a short and sweet ceremony... under an hour I think.  The only mis-hap is when I packed a suitcase (before the movers arrived) I only packed one church outfit.  I forgot about graduation.  I only had boots to wear, which kind of necessitated wearing tights, which was a problem because it was 75 degrees outside!  In March!  The hotel is downhill from where graduation was held, so I arrived pushing the stroller and completely sweating.  Then I spent the next hour trying to keep the three kids quiet, and the room was hot, so I kept sweating.  The seats fold down like movie theater seats, and that scared Tiago, so he insisted on sitting on my lap the whole time.  Whew!  More fun.

Have you ever seen such a sad face?  I think we smacked her in the head or something right before we took this.  The kids were losing it at this point...

Friday afternoon was recovery time.  We had a few last minute errands that we needed to do on post, and I needed to do laundry after an entire week of not having a washer/dryer.  Then Saturday we started the long drive to Colorado Springs. 

We didn't stop all that often as we drove, but once a day, or so, we'd stop somewhere and let the kids out.... rest stop, visitors center, etc.  The girls aren't the best on road trips, because they. don't. sleep.  I'm grateful they're good sleepers under regular circumstances (in their cribs); but in the car they never had more than a 30 minute stretch of sleep.  And it was usually just one 30 minute nap.  So there was a lot of crying because they were so tired and didn't know what to do with themselves.  Fortunately, kids bounce back from that kind of trauma and they're back to normal sleeping. 

All but one night we stayed at Holiday Inn Express.  It wasn't intentional, but after it worked out well the first night, we figured, "Why change what isn't broken?"  Every hotel room was slightly different, but essentially the same.  So we knew exactly where each of our suitcases would go.

In fact, we had quite the system!  (We had so much crap we required a 'system'.  Gone are the days of "get out the car and grab your own suitcase.)  For memory's sake, here's what we did.  1) We filled the bottom of the stroller with a bag containing bottles and the diaper bag, then put the kids on top  2) Hyrum carried the suitcase with all of our 'hotel clothes', which were slightly different from our 'wear while we wait for a house' clothes. Plus he carried the pack and play. 3) One of us carried a backpack with electronics, toiletries, etc.  I pushed the stroller, carried a small cooler, and we both corralled Tiago through the parking lot.  By night five, we were really pro's.

Often, we had time to swim.  The first night all of us went to the pool. That was a dumb idea, because while Hyrum played with Tiago, I brought one of the girls in the water while the other one cried in the stroller.  At that point, I had one wet baby and one dry baby, and rather than switch them and get my stroller wet, we just went back to the room.  The 3 kids to 2 parents ratio isn't good, until someone learns to swim.

Our sleep arrangements were also pretty consistent each night.  The benefit of the kids not sleeping in the car is that they slept well at night.  We'd get the girls in bed (each in a pack and play), and put them as close to the door/bathroom as possible so they were out of the way.  Then Tiago slept in the big bed surrounded by pillows.  One night, he fell out the bottom and Hyrum was paranoid the rest of the trip and didn't sleep well.  I guess Tiago moves around a lot at night!

On Sunday (day 2), we went to church in Nashville, and I looked up playgrounds in the area.  There was one by the church, so we checked it out before driving all afternoon.  WOW!  This is the king of all playgrounds; I've never seen anything like it.  It's possibly the most exciting thing we saw while crossing the country.  Tiago loved playing on it, and so did Hyrum.

We planned to drive around downtown Nashville, eat at an awesome restaurant, and check out an old plantation, but as soon as we got downtown, Mila fell asleep and it really wasn't worth waking her up since it was her one nap for the day.  As a result, we drove through downtown and skipped the rest.  So here's our one exciting picture of Nashville-- a government building. (?)

We were passing by Fort Campbell, which is on the border between Tennessee and Kentucky, so we stopped to check it out.  I hope it was the last time I ever go there--it was a bit of a dump.  We also stopped at Fort Riley, in Kansas, which was in the middle of nowhere but we liked the base itself; there were a lot of stone buildings that gave it a historic feel.  (It is, after all, from the 1800's).

Sunday night we stayed just past St. Louis, and the next day we took a slight detour to see the St. Louis temple.  It was kind of weird, because from the "front" you can barely tell there's a spire.  Once we went around back, it made a lot more sense.  (It's almost like the temple is backwards.)

When I 'planned' this trip in my head, I envisioned lots of stops along the way, and taking any excuse to get out of the car and 'stretch.'  After all, we had 5 days to do the trip, which was not more than 6 hours a day.  But... we realized by the time we got up, got the kids ready and in the van, and drove, we were getting to the hotel in the late afternoon anyway, and if we stopped, right around bedtime.  Plus, it was a pain to get the kids in and out. So we didn't stop much.  However, we did detour when we saw a billboard for a cheese store down the road.  (My original vision was a lot more of this kind of stuff... but I'll settle for one stop, I guess.)  It was awesome!  The first reason is because Tiago looked at this sign and kept saying, "Mira! Dos Ratoncitos!"  ("Look, two mice") (That's about as much as he can say about anything, so we were pretty pleased.)  The second reason is because it was awesome.  I went inside with Tiago, and it was tons of cheese samples.  We ended up with blueberry cheese, because Hyrum is happy with anything fruit-related, and of course delicious home made rolls to go with it.  That served as lunch.  I was proud of my OCD packing skills when I was able to pull a cutting knife out of the food basket next to the driver's seat.  You just never know when you'll need to cut cheese.

Later on Monday we had the church history sites in Independence.  First, we went to the Visitor's Center.  The building is really old but the inside seems much newer than the Mesa VC did when I was there.  They have a kids play area downstairs which we had to pull Tiago away from after 30 minutes.

Then we drove to see Liberty Jail, which I've seen a couple of times, but Hyrum kept saying he'd never seen.  Once he was there, I think he remembered going on our roadtrip from UT to OH in 2010.  He went in first with Tiago, and Tiago was terrified when they turned the lights off to play the narration, so they left quickly.  I ran inside quickly to see it, but didn't stick around to see much.  It wasn't worth unloading all the kids again.

More swimming.. this time just Tiago and Hyrum.

The planes were flat. We weren't stopping anywhere specific on Tuesday, so we found a rest stop in Kansas that had a playground.  We knew we were in trouble when, the second we opened the doors, our stuff blew out of the car and across the parking lot.  Hyrum ran after it while I closed the doors.  Not only was it insanely windy (as in, worried the kids would fly away if we didn't hold them) but it was cold!  We were still in a South Carolina mindset of not needing to put socks on our kids, so we dug out the hats and coats in the back of the car and let them freeze to death for a few minutes outside.  So much for leisurely play to stretch their legs!

We arrived that night to Fort Carson!!!!  It was a long 24+ hours of driving.  For me, the worst part of the trip was all of the turning around to see what the kids were screaming about.  Doing it for a few hours is one thing, but waking up on day 2, my shoulders/back were so sore!  It got worse each day.  Tiago, in particular, was fond of yelling from his carseat.  "Chips! Book!  Movie."  We had Tiago and Siena in the middle row, with a space down the middle for me to climb into the back, if needed.  Poor Mila was condemned to the back-seat.  But in reality, at the time she was our most well-behaved child and tolerated the backseat better than the rest.  It was frustrating when the girls were tired, but kept throwing their pacifiers and then crying for them.  On repeat for 4 days. We had a hotel reservation on-post, and it turns out, that hotel was quite ghetto.  I don't think it's been updated in half a century.  There were curtains instead of closet doors, and a mini-kitchen with an oven that looked like it belonged in a Norman Rockwell painting.  (Of course, none of the kitchen was functioning.  The doors all had actual keys, that resembled skeleton keys.  And worst of all, we were on the third floor and there were no elevators.  

We didn't expect to stay long, so we sucked it up and hauled everything and everyone up and down multiple times.  The advantage of being there was we had two rooms that connected... and the rooms were not even $90 combined.  We were able to keep the girls in one room to sleep and Tiago in the other.  

On Wednesday we did laundry, checked out some stuff on post, and looked into houses off-post.  On Thursday, we saw a house on-post that was ready for us to move in, and were happy to move out of the hotel the same day..... after 7 nights in 5 hotels.

I'll write more about our house (and that decision) another day.