After our trip to Utah last fall without any kids, Chuck and I realized we were really onto something: ditching all four of our offspring with a loving and patient and capable and willing Grandma Pam for a few days at a time. We have since resolved to do this regularly, and we were thrilled when everything worked out for a trip just before our 13th (!!) wedding anniversary.
Let's be honestly: half of the allure for me is all of the D.I.s to shop at!! Pictured are Ogden and Layton. Chuck and I have our system pretty much down, I head straight to books, then dresses, then household decor, while he checks out the outside/yard area, the toys, and we meet somewhere in the middle by shoes/clothes and compare our finds.
We timed our trip to coincide with our lovely niece Mallory's high school graduation! There were one million kids in her graduation class. Or like 900. Can't remember which.
We had a bit of downtime outside afterwards before we found our graduate, who looked so beautiful and happy and grown-up and smart and amazing.
Why yes, Chuck and I did dress to coordinate with Davis High's colors, aka gold and brown. Thank you for noticing.
Melissa and Kevin hosted a fun barbecue/party for Mal in their backyard. I loved the book of Mallory's gorgeous senior pictures that we got to sign! Also Chuck apparently did something deserving of getting punched while taking our picture...
I opted to make him take a selfie with me instead ;). Much more torturous!
Chuck fit in some bball with Steve and George... and Court!:
and we finished off the night with a lovely session at the Bountiful Temple. It was the most random thing, I was sitting in the chapel beforehand and just looking around at the people in our session with us and I was just grateful that they were there. I had no idea what their stories were or why they were there on a Thursday evening but I was just lifted up by their faith and efforts to be there. Maybe they had questions, maybe they needed strength, maybe they just had a long-standing day they attend the temple, but the spirit testified to me that we are stronger when we worship together and it was really cheesily wonderful.
We stayed the night at my dear BFSC Courtney's house because she's fantastic and is always so so inviting and welcoming of our random stops in town. The next morning Chuck and I went our separate ways for a few hours. I got to snuggle with baby Davis and talk and talk and talk with Courtney:
(aka I got the better end of the deal)
while Chuck borrowed a bike and a helmet and went mountain biking with Steve, Amanda, Kevin, Melissa, and George! So fun that this is a shared hobby within the fam:
Action shots. Once again, this is the beauty of trips without our (wonderful! darling! we love them!) kiddos. Usually traveling with kids is stressful and everyone's tired and we're juggling kids and all that, and it's hard to carve out a few hours to go do fun stuff like this. So glad Chuck got to go hang out with his sisters!
Chuck and I hooked back up ;) and headed to our destination for the day: Lagoon!
We started off with an old classic: Log Flume. I legit don't know why, but I love this ride. Always have. And it always has a crazy long line, so I haven't been on it at all the last few times we've gone to Lagoon - it's kind of a long walk just for the ride, plus waiting forever... sounds terrible with little kids. But with just us, it was perfect!
Next up I made a terrible choice because of peer pressure and I went on Wicked. It was terrible. I want to puke just thinking about it. I don't even know how Chuck convinced me - I think he just kept saying it like a declarative sentence, instead of a question, and I just got tired of contradicting him? I was a real treat to be next to in line, I kept randomly assuring the people next to us that it was going to be fine and I wasn't going to puke. Once we climbed into the car thing, I took the initiative and apologized to the nice teenage girl and her dad next to us for any profanity that might come out during the ride. They laughed. OH, funny story, a fun distraction was seeing my awesome friend Ellen - she was the Lagoon employee who made sure we were buckled in correctly! So that was nice to see a familiar face haha.
But yeah, what followed was the longest minute and a half of my life. It was awful. The left picture is before, the picture on the right is afterwards. Don't I look nauseous? I closed my eyes basically right away and then just clenched my teeth and fisted my fingers on the bar and prayed and told God I was sorry that I'd done something so dumb but that if he would get me safely and quickly off of that thing I would never do it again. I pushed my head back against the seat to minimize how much I moved. At one point I felt Chuck touch my hand with his and I could kind of hear him laughing and if I hadn't been so focused on not crying, I would have pondered how maybe 13 years isn't that important of a milestone, and maybe I should just kill him now.
Once we were safely off the ride I sweetly gave Chuck a heads up that I was DONE with rides for the day and we went directly to Lagoon-a-beach. Fun fact: I love Lagoon-a-beach but again, with kids, it's sooo hard. I have a slight/very intense respect/fear of water and my kids in and around water, so I can never really relax. Also I don't do closed water slides so I'm always stuck in the lazy river keeping little kids above water while Chuck and the older kids go on all the slides.
Chuck and I had so much fun. We grabbed tubes and basically just did the OutRigger slide over and over and over again haha. Here's a youtube video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WISgQ5q4zfA Which, can I just say, I don't know how that guy managed to get like a GoPro or whatever on there because they legit wouldn't let me wear my sunglasses. Whatev. Also, I think his video is on slo-mo, because I swear it was more intense than is depicted! Also I flipped over pretty much every time I hit a pool haha. That's why we kept going on it - I decided I had to keep trying until I stayed on my tube the entire way down. The lifeguards were eventually cheering me on... possibly because they got tired of seeing me? Or they're just nice people. (Also: picture of me in a swimsuit AHHHH because I figure things will only get worse from here on out haha and those blinding white thighs needed to be documented hahahahaha)
I'm so glad that Chuck and I never went on Wicked before we got married, because Chuck informs me now that not liking roller coasters might have been a deal breaker hahahaha. Lucky!
We hit the road and headed further south and got to Lehi just in time to hop in the back row of the Pilot and head to dinner!
We were delighted to stay at Quinn and Eden's Friday night. We brought down some of Quinn's childhood memorabilia which was hilarious to watch them go through - sooo much 49ers stuff! Such hilarious grade school journal entries! And we finished off the night with some Parcheesi. Duh.
Saturday morning Chuck and I grabbed Isaac and Leila and headed off to Target and Walmart, because errands with kids is normally awful but in a different state with kids that aren't yours, it's surprisingly fun and chill! Also Chuck and Quinn made breakfast because they're rockstars.
Next up was having Sam and Terri's older girls join the party! They came over and promptly destroyed their uncles in a water balloon fight.
I stayed out of the line of fire and took dramatic selfies.
Then it was time to squeeze Jett one more time and hit the road! Fun fact: Jett loves Chuck. Super cute. It's cool. I'm not jealous of their special connection. It's fine. Was I the one who was there when Jett was born? Yes. Should we be bonded for life? Yes. Am I totally okay that he prefers Chuck? Absolutely, why do you ask? Hasn't ever really crossed my mind to be envious. Yep, we're good.
Chuck and I ultimately have a goal to go to all 48 temples in Utah (that might be an exaggeration, I don't know how many temples are in Utah...) but we couldn't resist going back to Salt Lake again this trip. It wasn't as crowded as I expected for a Saturday afternoon in June, and we were asked to be the witness couple, which was a really incredible experience in a live session.
And then it was time to head back home to real life. We are so grateful to be able to skip out as often as we do, knowing that my mama has everything under control and that our kids are well taken care of and loved in our absence - their adventures while we were gone will be chronicled in a different post (like the last day of school! That I missed because I'm a terrible mom haha!).
This trip was so so wonderful. I love hanging out with Chuck. I love driving around with him and deciding where to go and what we want to do. I love talking to him and going to the temple with him. I love that we've been married for 13 years because that means that we've stuck with each other through some really great times and some really crap times and we've made it through this far together - which means we should be able to handle whatever comes next. Unless it's Wicked again. I literally cannot handle that again ;).
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