In general, I'm not a wanderlust soul or a nomad or a world traveler.
Spring 2018 weekends were a bit of an anomaly: Elko, Utah, Utah, Utah, two week break, Utah. Every trip was absolutely worth it though.
This particular Utah weekend trip came about a few weeks prior. I had just gotten Eden addicted to cheesy (clean!) romances when I saw an announcement about a book party/luncheon with a couple of our favorite authors in Utah on a Saturday. I immediately texted Eden ("Look at this! We have to go!") and Chuck ("Look at this! I have to go! You work that weekend! I'll take the kids! Thanks! Love you!") and Eden and I bought tickets and off we went:
We drove down Friday afternoon (I pulled the kids out of school a pinch early) so that we could make it to the Jordan River Temple Open House - conveniently Nicole lives riiiight next to the temple so we sneaked in a visit with our favorite Daniels fam and they walked us over to the temple.
Prettiest tulips EVER! I was sure my kids would look darling next to them for a picture:
Didn't quite pan out, so we opted for a couple before heading into the tour. Still a little sketchy.
The tour of the temple was really neat - I love being inside temples and I want to make sure my kids get as many chances as possible to understand the beauty and spirit of temples. Here is a link to the official news release with pictures of the inside of the Jordan River temple: https://www.lds.org/church/news/see-inside-newly-renovated-jordan-river-utah-temple?lang=eng
Photo op attempt #3 as we left the temple open house - failed to factor in the bright sunshine haha:
I hadn't been to the Jordan River temple before, but I know several couples who were married here. So beautiful - I'm excited to go back sometime with Chuck.
One last attempt at a cute sibling picture as we walked back to our car at Nicole's house - I literally have no idea why Carma and Jack were leaning backwards but it makes me laugh.
Once I got this picture via email from the open house area after the tour, it all made sense - no picture could outdo this one. I'm looking up, Carma and Will are looking down, Jack's looking off to the side and Clyde ALONE is looking at the camera. So grateful that families are forever... it might take us that long to take a good family picture!!
We rolled into Lehi just in time to crash the end of Isaac's birthday party and get in on the water balloon action:
Jack was thrilled to celebrate his cousin/buddy. And that picture of Will is because he didn't believe me that he had dirt on his face... which leads us to one of my favorite movie quotes: "You've got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?" Anyone?
The rest of the evening was spent cajoling Uncle Quinn into pushing the on the tire swing:
While I had mini heart attacks as my children sailed through the air haha.
The next morning it was GO time! Eden and I got all dressed up and fancy and ditched alll the children with Quinn (who possibly had to coach a soccer game for Isaac's team? It's cool, Quinn's a rockstar and handled it all) and headed to our luncheon... where we immediately spotted this couple and knew we were amongst our own people hahahaha:
I can't look at this picture with laughing. We are such dorks! SO fun though.
I've been to book signings before, but this was our first time at this kind of luncheon/book signing rodeo. We figured out pretty quick that the beginning portion was just for mingling and we were totally allowed - and encouraged - to wander up to authors and chat. Eden and I had a quick freak out session and then marched over and introduced ourselves to the one and only Sarah Eden:
Instagram caption: Absolutely worth driving to Utah to be a total dork fangirl with Eden at a luncheon/book signing yesterday 🤩📚. Best moment: Eden and Sarah Eden bonding over their shared name. Look at how close they are in this picture👯♀️. #bestfriendgoals#ProperRomanceSoiree
So, the luncheon was so fun. Good food, an author panel with questions and answers and sooo much laughing. Another of our favorite authors, Julianne Donaldson, couldn't be there in person so she made a video instead which was way fun to watch.
We made friends with our tablemates (we randomly sat with Nancy Campbell Allen, which was way cool) and with some of the Shadow Mountain staff and with the fun people around us in line as we waited for Sarah Eden to sign our books. As always, I opted to smile serenely and nod and not say ANYTHING when I got up close to an author because I legit get starstruck and act like a yahoo otherwise. Like, if you and I sat down right now I could walk you through the plotlines and characters of all these books but if I'm talking to the author, I can't remember reading a book ever in my life. I have no idea titles of books they've written. If perchance I'm able to produce the name of a character in one of their books, I would absolutely reference it with a character from a completely unrelated book. My normal chill manner and decent communication skills abandon me altogether - so yeah, the rarely encountered Quiet Jana makes an appearance haha.
Total dorks and we are A-okay with it ;).
The rest of Saturday was spent sleeping to get ready for a night shift at the hospital (Nurse Eden) and vacating the house so she could sleep (the rest of us). We headed over to Sam's for more cousin fun - although Clyde miiiight dispute the 'fun' part...
If it makes him feel better, the young ones just seemed to enjoy running/scootering around like a swarm of bees with anyone or anything as their target... so I don't think it was personal ;).
Ahhhh I love cousin pictures:
Terri and Sam very generously offered to keep Carma overnight, so we left her happily ensconced in all things princess and pretty with those four girl cousins and I subjected my boys to a late-evening D.I. run haha. And enjoy this photo evidence that my curls stayed alllll day long! Eden is a wizard!
Sunday morning brought some more bonding, including Will creating a speaker out of recyclable materials with guidance from Mr. Braden:
And then we hit up Quinn and Eden's ward for church! Quick sibling selfie :). Only one person mistook me for Quinn's wife, so that was good hahaha.
And then we grabbed Carma Junie, who quite possibly had The Best time ever at her sleepover, and hit the road home to Nampa. Yay for snacks and Imagine Dragons for helping us survive the drive home; we were so happy to be reunited with Chuck but had an amazing time in Utah. Love y'all!
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