A Glorious Day

This little quail lives on our neighbors garden structure. He's there all the time. He's become a permanent fixture in the view out our back window, and I love it.

Yesterday was wonderful. I had a pretty busy morning, but then I came home and slept, and lay down for a while, then slept, lay down some more, and then went to bed and, you guessed it...slept. You know how sometimes when you're sick or pregnant, and you get to lay in bed all day, and you just can't truly enjoy it because of how awful you feel? Yesterday was not that case at all! I just felt very tired, and it was wonderful to lay around all day, taking naps as I needed them.

I woke up at 5:23 to meet my neighbor for our morning walk. I figure that if I lose track of Shaylene, I won't have to call the police to report her missing, and we have a great time talking together. We walked through a drizzling rain until 6:00, then I ran upstairs to take a nice, hot shower. Brian didn't have work, which meant that I didn't have to hurry for him to take a shower, so I stayed in for a while, enjoying the water, then I got out - didn't put my make up on, didn't do my hair. All I did was brush my teeth, because that was allowed, and pull on some clothes.

I kissed Brian good-bye, wrote a note to leave on the table that said, "Daddy, Alyssa, Ethan, & Marcus, I love you. Love, Mom," just in case, and I headed outside to wait for my mom to pick me up. She arrived just a few moments later when I was walking to check the mail from the previous day, and when I met her in the middle of the street, we joked about how I've always been one of her kids that was ready for everything either on time or early, and we reminisced about my high school days and all the yelling I had to do, which never did any good, to get my younger brother up and ready to go on time. Ahh, good times. I miss David, I really do.

We pulled up at the hospital, signed in, and waited. We sat in front of a wall with a waterfall cascading over it, and a cross suspended in the air in front of the water. We talked quite a bit about the water feature, and I decided that they put it in because they tell you not to eat or drink anything for 12 hours before your surgery, but in the same breath tell you that they'll need a urine sample when you first come in. The waterfall helps a little with that, I think.

We waited for a little while, then were taken upstairs to a room, where I put on my super cool hospital gown and fuzzy-grippy socks. It took two tries to get an I.V. in, one on each hand, and the first try really hurt. Second try, went right in. My mom compared the happy, joyful floor of nurses to a three ring circus. One of the nurses compared themselves to the girls from "The Facts of Life." Either way, they were fun to watch.

It didn't take long until a nice man, who was worried about the rain ruining a barbecue that night, came to wheel my bed downstairs. My mom was able to come down with us, and then we sat for a few more minutes, met the anesthesiologist, then I was taken away for surgery. When they asked if I had any concerns or questions, I asked about my crazy stuffy nose that I've had for the last few days, and about how I can't breathe through it. They said it wasn't going to be a problem. I was pleasantly surprised at how happy everyone was. It made it fun. They must have pushed medicine through my I.V. before they gave me the oxygen mask, because it wasn't two seconds after putting it against my face that I was asleep.

These were my first thoughts when I woke up: 1.) Gee, I wonder when they're going to put me to sleep and get started, 2.)I can breathe through my nose! and, 3.)Wow! My throat really hurts! I woke up with this incredible urge to sleep, so I closed my eyes again, and just listened to everything that was going on around me. The doctor said he couldn't find my mom, and it turned out she had been moving the car to a closer parking spot for me, then he said he had found my mom and told her that everything went well. They then wheeled me back to our upstairs room, where I rested for a few more minutes, got dressed, and was told I could go home. A nice lady wheeled me out, and waited with me while my mom pulled the car around, and then we were done.

I was home by 11:00, and met at the door by some happy kids and a loving husband, and after giving my mom a huge piece of cake as a thank you, I was helped up the stairs by Alyssa, where I plopped on the bed and went to sleep. I spent two hours sleeping in my bed, then I went downstairs and slept on the couch through the afternoon and evening. I watched bits and pieces of "Flipper," which Alyssa watches on Hulu every chance she gets. Alyssa took fabulous care of me while Brian took care of Marcus. Alyssa kept coming over to give me a hug, or offer me water, or just to let me know she was happy that I'm okay. My sister, Christina, made a wonderful dinner with chicken noodle soup, a fabulous salad, and warm homemade rolls, and she sent her husband Nathan over to give them to us. Thanks, Chris! It was delicious! When she asked me when I wanted dinner brought over, I kept telling her we didn't need it, but I'm glad she insisted, because I didn't know how completely wiped out I was going to be.

Overall I'm feeling great. My throat has been sore, but that's to be expected, and even despite the soreness, I can tell a difference in my voice quality. I'm not supposed to talk very much for two weeks, so that's a lot of fun. My doctor said that ideally they would ask me not to talk at all for two weeks, but he knows that's impossible, so to just be careful. So Brian called someone yesterday for me, and I have Gospel Doctrine taken care of, which is nice not to have to worry about. Alyssa and I finished her History and Science classes last week, which is great, because I do a lot of reading aloud to her in those classes. She's sad that they're over, because she loved them, but the kids have still gotten on the computer a couple of times to play some of the Science games, so it's not so sad. Also, I've been reading a chapter of "Little Women" to Alyssa each night after the boys go to bed, and Brian has taken that over for a little while. It was fun to just sit and listen to the story last night, instead of reading it. Anyway, summing it all up. (See? I'm not trying to make this long, it just is, I guess.) Good experience. I'm happy to have my throat fixed, and I can't wait until I can try singing!

Trying to Be Cool Like My Friend Brooke

This morning I wandered into the craft room, which right now is actually the if-it-doesn't-have-a-place-throw-it-in-here room, and I saw a pretty maroon flower on the floor. I picked it up and thought, "Hey, it matches my shirt," then I thought, "I have a few minutes," and I proceeded to take the flower apart to stick a pearl on the front and a clip on the back, just like I learned from Disney's blog, which is not at all related to Disneyland.

I tried putting the flower in my hair, but it looked ridiculous. Then I remembered way back sometime when Brooke was pregnant, she made a pretty flower and put it on a pretty belt to sit above her pretty pregnant tummy, and I thought, "I may not be pregnant, but maybe I can do that, too." So I did. And actually, it's a great thing, because with the ribbon around my torso, I don't want to look like I'm pregnant, so I'm going to have to suck in my gut all day long, which will be wonderful for my ab muscles and posture.

picture by Alyssa Jacks Photography

Alyssa saw my flower, so I whipped up a yellow one for her really quick before she left for MCP.

And speaking of Brooke, when I posted a few days ago about Brian's super-awesome purple shirt (which, by the way, he wore to work on Tuesday, and one of the women in the office said, "Way to go, Dr. Jacks!") Brooke said that she wasn't convinced about the color and that she would need to see pictures, so I decided to take a picture of Brian when he came home from work. But, well, he wouldn't let me. Everyone's just going to have to take my word for it. He looks good.

So the funny thing is that a couple of times that day, while I was waiting for Brian to come home, I caught myself worrying, "What if I post the picture and Brooke doesn't like the shirt?" and I thought it was funny that even though I haven't seen her in many, many years, I still value Brooke's opinion. And actually, when Brian came home from work, I was finishing up dinner, and I said something to the effect of "I've heard that it's a better way to do it," about something, and one of the kids yelled at the same time, and Brian thought that I said, "Brooke says it's a better way to do it," and Brian asked, "What is it with Brooke all of a sudden?"

What is it with Brooke all of a sudden? I don't know, but she is pretty cool.

I Know That Fear Now

This morning I woke up a little before six o'clock to go for a morning walk. As I was rolling out of bed, I heard Alyssa in the bathroom down the hall. I was surprised, because Alyssa is our child who likes to sleep in, and she is rarely out of bed before seven-thirty. I stood quietly for a moment, thinking she would go back to bed and go to sleep, but instead, she came wandering into our room, and when she saw me getting dressed, I whispered for her to go get dressed, too. You should have seen the excitement that glowed in her eyes before she turned to run back down the hallway to her room. She was dressed and ready within forty seconds, and we headed to the garage to get her bike.

I thought that it would give me a better workout trying to keep up with Alyssa on her bike, but it was a little stop and go. She stopped to walk her bike back up a driveway so she could ride down its incline, she stopped a couple of times to go from the sidewalk to the road and then from the road to the sidewalk, and she even stopped to examine a puff ball on the ground, which I think turned out to be the tip a cat's tail that had been lopped off. Through all of this, I kept walking, and she would catch up to me in less than a minute.

We walked up Sandifur Parkway, going through Viking Homes, and when we were headed up a street to the new church, I told her she could ride on ahead to circle the parking lot while I met up with her and walked around the church building. But when I made it to the church just a minute later, I didn't see her. I thought she must have been on the other side of the building, so I kept walking around, but as I followed the sidewalk around the entire building, I never saw her.

Once having made it completely around the building, I doubled back to check for her, and when I still didn't see her, I figured that she might have not seen me and headed home. This didn't worry me too much, because even though I didn't like having her be alone, and I was uneasy that I didn't know exactly where she was, I knew that she knew her way home and would hopefully make it there safely.

I went ahead and followed our tracks back home, thinking that maybe she would be waiting for me somewhere, or that maybe she had fallen and needed my help, but still, I didn't see her. "She's just gone home," I kept telling myself. "I'll just hurry home, and she'll be there."

But when I walked in the garage door, there was no purple bike in its parking spot, and when I called for her, Alyssa didn't answer. I made a quick sweep of the house on my way to our bedroom and woke up Brian saying, "Alyssa's gone." He shot out of bed and threw his clothes on while I quickly told him the story, crying uncontrollably. When he headed to the garage, probably to get in the car to look for her, I called 911. I briefly considered not calling the police, because it would be silly to bother them if she was happily riding her bike just a couple of blocks away, but I knew that if someone had seen her on the side of the road and had taken her, that I needed help as soon as I could get it. And I worried that if someone had taken her, how would we ever get her back?

I'm surprised the man on the phone understood me at all, with my raspy voice being made worse by my tears, but he was able to get our information and told me that someone would be coming to help right away. The second I hung up I quickly dialed my parent's number, and that's when I saw Alyssa ride up the driveway. I hung up the phone mid-ring and called 911 again to let them know she was safe.

Then I ran down the stairs into the garage, and pulled Alyssa into my arms. We sat down on a chair in the garage and just cried together for a few minutes. That's when my parents called back, and Brian answered the phone to let them know I would call them soon to explain everything. At that point he didn't even fully understand what had happened, but he was just glad that everything was all right.

Oh, I'm so glad we didn't lose Alyssa today. I'm so glad she came home to us safely. Apparently she had parked her bike by one of the chapel doors and was drawing pictures in the sand with a stick. I'm assuming that's why we didn't see each other, and I am so relieved that we just missed seeing each other for a moment, instead of losing her for good.

New News

New News #1

Last week Brian and I met with the bishopric to, well, meet with the bishopric. It was just a get-to-know you meeting...or so we thought. I was completely caught off guard when they extended a calling to me, especially when I heard what the calling was. They asked me to be the new Gospel Doctrine teacher now that Nicki's moved away. (Oh, how I miss Nicki!) No, it's not that bad - it's just going to be one of those callings that pull me out of my comfort zone and help me grow, and believe me, I've got a lot of growing to do. After preparing and giving today's lesson, I not only learned about things from the Old testament that I haven't studied since Seminary in high school, but I learned better ways to prepare the lesson for next time, and maybe better ways to conduct the lesson next time, and definitely that I need to slow down when I talk in front of people. See? I'm already growing.

New News #2

One of the things that made giving today's lesson more difficult is the fact that I've been having trouble speaking since, oh, about Christmas-time. Yeah, I know that "since Christmas-time" is not new news, but the reason behind the rough speaking is the new news. See, since December I've had a rough, scratchy voice, and when people have talked with me they've asked, "Do you have a cold? You sound terrible!" when I didn't have a cold. I haven't even had a sore throat! Just a raspy voice, and the worst part about all of it, is that I can't sing anymore. I can sing the lower range pretty well, getting up to about a low E, but if I go any higher I sound like something between a fourteen-year-old boy and a dying cat. It's so sad to sit in sacrament meeting and not be able to sing the hymns!

So it obviously took me a long time to do something about this. Some days I wouldn't notice it as much, because I wasn't talking as much, and I also tried to ignore it just because life is busy, but when we were in Utah and I was talking with Erin, she mentioned that I should see a doctor. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. I should have gone in a long time ago.

I called a couple of weeks ago, just after getting home from vacation, and I went in on Thursday to find out that I have a blood blister on my larynx, which is causing it to not close all the way when I talk and sing. Crazy, huh? Dr. Carl said that it wasn't going to go away on its own, so I'm headed to the hospital next Friday for an easy-peasy, extremely short surgery to get it removed, and he said that most likely I'll be talking normally right away. Yea!

New News #3

New News #3 is completely unrelated to the other news topics, and was brought about by me repeatedly ordering curtains from the JCPenney Outlet online (with a free shipping code!), then taking them back to the store if they didn't work out. The last time the kids and I were there, we stopped by the mens' section and found that the Stafford shirts were on sale for $15.20, and they actually had Brian's size. It's pretty hard to find shirts with sleeves long enough for him, and when I actually find them and find them for cheap, it's wonderful! They had some fun Spring colors, so I grabbed a green one, and an orange one (which was the color of cantaloupe, and made Brian's face look like a cantaloupe, too - that one's going back), and a purple one. I knew that he would be okay with the green and orange ones, but I was hesitant to buy the purple one, because, well, it was purple. I really didn't know if he would consent to wearing a purple shirt.

It turns out he was even more hesitant to try it on than I had been to buy it, but I finally got him to try all the shirts on so we could see how they looked. Green - looked good. Orange - cantaloupe, I already told you. And purple - wow! My husband looks good in purple! He put it on, joking that it looked great with his cargo shorts, and maybe he would wear them to work on Monday, and I told him how great he looked, then Alyssa came bounding down the stairs and rounded the corner at the bottom just as Brian was walking out of the bathroom. She stopped and yelled, "Wow, Dad! You look good!"

So that's the news. Brian has a purple shirt. And he will hopefully be wearing it to work sometime this week, minus the shorts, but plus a pair of slacks, and nobody better make fun of him, because I think he looks hot.

Etc., Etc.

We started out by going all the way around the park on the train, a Lewis family tradition.

Then we were lucky enough to catch a ride up Main Street on the horseless buggy.

Alyssa loved driving on Autopia.

Marcus loved Dumbo's Flying Circus.

A nice family we made friends with in line for the Matterhorn took our picture. I think this was the first time we went on it this trip, so the boys very first time. They weren't too thrilled at first, but it ended up being one their favorite rides.

Alyssa's A

Marcus loved the ladybug ride. We went on it four times while Brian, Alyssa, and Ethan were doing Tuck and Roll's Drive 'Em Buggies.

Big Thunder Mountain Ranch

Alyssa played Musical Chairs with the Mad Hatter and Alice. Each time someone got out the Mad Hatter asked them to tell a joke. Alyssa said, "Why did the house cross the road?...To crush cars!" She would fit in very nicely in Wonderland.

Ethan was so excited to see Lightning McQueen and Mater that he got mad when we wanted him to hold still for a picture. This is about the happiest picture I took of him with the cars.

Brian taught the boys to wrap towels around their waists after their shower. They were quite proud of themselves.

The boys and I went on the rocket ride in California Adventure.

And Ethan even rode by himself. He was a little worried, but very proud of himself.

Alyssa discovered Muhulland Madness, and loved it! We also loved that her shirt matched the fence.

Alyssa got in line to see Cinderella, and we were a little behind her, and the Cast Member watching the line told us the line was closed. Instead of having us join Alyssa in line, we went ahead and had Alyssa back out of the line. I was so glad that Cinderella stopped for a minute to talk to Alyssa on her way out. Cinderella told her that she liked her glasses, and that they made Alyssa look very pretty.

I don't know what ride we're on, but Marcus looks way cute!

Alyssa participated in the Jedi Training Academy. (Holding a sign will definitely get you in!) She loved doing it, but she didn't want to fight Darth Vader or Darth Maul.

We were able to ride in the front of the Monorail. Ethan was so excited to ride the Monorail - it was his absolute favorite ride!

This is from our Splash Mountain trip that killed my cell phone. I was holding my purse under the front of the log, thinking it would be safe, but on the first waterfall a huge wave splashed over the side and dumped water all over me. I couldn't have gotten more wet if I had jumped in the water myself!

This was the first time we staked out a spot for the fireworks - totally worth it! And the Dollar Tree glow wands I bought ahead of time were fabulous, too!

Ethan threw up on the drive home. He threw up all over himself, so we pulled off of the highway into the parking lot of a paint store to clean things up. I went ahead and bought a couple of paint buckets just in case we had any repeats. It took about a half hour to clean up, then after (seriously!) thirty seconds of being back on the highway, Ethan yelled, "I have to go poop!" and we stopped again.

The kids liked all the curves in the road as we drove home. We've got a few roller coaster fanatics in the making!

Day Three, Day Four

I've got to start telling you about Day Three by adding a little information from Day Two. While we were hanging out with Erin and Phil, I broke my toe. Well, I either broke my toe, or just severely injured it. We didn't get it confirmed by a doctor, but it sure swelled up and turned purple, and of course, it hurt like crazy! I hurt it by jumping over a storage tub. It was that simple. I wish I had a heroic story to add, but I was just hopping over an open storage tub that was sitting in the middle of the hallway, and I wacked my foot on the side of it. It hurt, and I hopped around for a bit, but then I ignored it until a few hours later it STILL hurt like it had just barely happened, so we grabbed a bag of frozen corn to put on it while Erin and I visited. (Marcus ate the corn when I was done with it. He loves frozen food.)

At some point during the evening, when I was realizing just how hurt my poor little toe was, Brian asked to take a look at it. He started poking and prodding, then he squeezed my toe, and we heard a soft "crack," which was quickly followed by my screams and the thumping of me hopping around the room again. Brian sadly, and a little bit guiltily, said, "Yeah, I think it's broken."

This picture was taken the next morning, after things had calmed down a little bit. You can see that the purple was already starting to go away and the swelling was going down. Still hurt, though, especially after Brian accidentally stepped on it while we were gathering our luggage to head out the door. I think it's pretty clear that Brian and that toe were not getting along that weekend.

After driving through a blizzard in Southern Utah, we stopped and filled a Ziplock bag with snow to put on my foot. Then we stopped at a store where Brian bought a small brace and a bottle of Excedrin, which I happily accepted. I think the snow was the best thing we did, because my toe was feeling so much better by the next morning. As bad as it hurt on Saturday and Sunday, I was surprised at how well it was doing by Monday.

So we drove from Orem, Utah to Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday. The drive was beautiful! I kept trying to take naps, and Brian kept waking me up to look at the scenery. I was glad he did.

Here's some of the pictures we took along the way:


Um, I guess that's about it. I thought I took more pictures than that, but I guess I was more involved in the "I Spy with My Little Eye..." games than I remember being. I know I took pictures of the red rock, and the flowers, but I can't find them. So just imagine that they're there. It really was a beautiful drive.

So we stopped in Las Vegas (actually, Henderson) to visit Jamie, and once again, we didn't take any pictures, because we were having so much fun catching up. For anyone who's wondering, Jamie's doing well. She has a beautiful little girl, and her new house is fabulous. Thanks for letting us stop by, James!

After spending more time than we should have, we headed West toward California. There was a car accident just outside of Las Vegas, so the going was very slow at first, but things moved faster after a while, and we played more "I Spy" and "20 Questions." Brian and I tried to get the kids to play the game where you come up with a category, like "colors," then you have to take turns thinking of songs that have colors in them, but the kids weren't too interested in that. We played boys and against girls, and Brian started a game with the theme being "snake," because he knew Ethan would be able to come up with the "Green Anaconda" song, and he had "She's a Cold Hearted Snake" in his head, and he thought I wouldn't be able to come up with anything, but I completely blew him away with the song, "If you take a turtle and a snake, put them together and see what they make. A neck that's long, a tail that's strong, add four paddles where they all belong. A, B, C, D, Elasasaurus! Elasasaurus! The giant of the sea!" (Does anyone know that song besides my family? I've never heard it anywhere else, but I know we didn't come up with it!)

After we made it into California, we played the "Try to Keep the Engine from Overheating" game and lost...twenty minutes from our destination. Luckily, we were headed to Brian's aunt's house, so Uncle Tracy came to rescue us.

We spent the night with Karen and Tracy (and Gregory!) and while we were settling in, Alyssa worked on her worksheet to figure out where we were headed the next day. Every time we stopped somewhere to that point, someone would ask if we were going to Disneyland, and Brian would hush them up quick so the kids wouldn't hear, and we were able to successfully keep our secret until we got to Karen and Tracy's house and Tracy unknowingly spilled the beans. So Alyssa knew what the worksheet was going to spell out, and she kept saying, "It's Disneyland, I just know it," and Tracy kept trying to convince her otherwise by coming up with silly names.

Alyssa: See? It says, Disneyla...It's going to spell Disneyland for sure.

Tracy: No, it's probably Disneylatawahoo. That's where you're going.

Or something like that. It was fun. Yeah, so she figured out where we were headed, and the next morning Brian and Karen took the van in to get the radiator replaced, and then we were on our way. (Thanks Karen and Tracy (and Gregory!) for everything!)

I slept almost the entire way to Disneyland. I didn't mean to, but I did. So that went by quickly. We stopped at our hotel, dropped the car off, and walked across the street to the most magical place on Earth.

Spoiled Rotten, Really I Am

Last summer, when I was dreaming about buying a house someday, and we were figuring out when we might be able to do so, we planned a trip to Disneyland this Spring, since our plans were to wait until later this summer to start house hunting. We decided that we would go, then we made our hotel reservations early so they would be cheap, and then we left it at that.

Fast forward to this January when we started looking for a house and found our wonderfully fabulous home on the first day - this is when I had a few tiny moments of sanity where I was actually the one saying, "We shouldn't go to Disneyland. It's going to stretch things too far," and Brian was the one saying, "Let's see what we can do. It's great to go when the kids are still young enough for it to be special to them."At this point we had only made our hotel reservations, and we could cancel them at any time without penalty, so we just went ahead and kept them, but we could still back out if we needed to.

So ever since Brian started working last summer, he's been in charge of taking care of the office computers and printers, and apparently he's been doing such a good job at it that they haven't once had to call the guy they used to have fixing the computers since Brian started working there. When Dan and Bruce heard that we wanted to go on a vacation, they very nicely let Brian cash out the reward points on the office credit card to help pay for the trip, as a special thank you. It completely blew me away! Dan said it's just proof that Family Eye Care loves Brian, and it actually gave me one more reason to love the fact that Brian works for them.

So long story short, we went to Disneyland last week! Yea! It was a miracle that the vacation even happened, and the whole thing lived up to it's miraculous expectations. It was fabulous!

DAY 1
We left bright and early Friday morning. I say "bright and early" in reference to Brian. I wanted to leave at 5:00, and he said absolutely not, and we ended up leaving around 7:30. We kept the trip a secret at first, since we didn't know if it would be happening or not, but then we went ahead and kept it a surprise for the kids, and they didn't even know we were going anywhere until we woke them up and said, "Let's get in the car and get going." It was so fun fun to watch them get dressed and ready and keep asking, "What's going on? Where are we going?" I made a workbook for Alyssa with maps and such, and it had worksheets in it for each leg of our trip for her to figure out where we were going. As she was figuring out the first one, she kept guessing our destination.

"We are d- D! We're going to Disneyland!"

Me and Brian, "No, keep going."

"We are driving to S- Silverwood! We're going to Silverwood!"

Again, "No, keep going."

"We are driving to Salt Lake City, Utah. Utah! That's where Callie and Cecily live!" We were glad that she was just as excited to see her cousins as she was to the possibly of going to Disneyland or Silverwood.

We were surprised to find that it was snowing on Cabbage Hill, and we stopped for a very cold and very quick picnic breakfast at one of the rest areas.

Brian and Ethan braved the cold.

Marcus and Alyssa were the pansies who stayed in the warm car.

It was crazy-windy on the drive down. For the whole trip we actually drove through almost every weather possibility imaginable: snow, wind, rain, blizzard snow, sleet, hail, and intense heat. It was great!

We stopped at Tucanos in Boise, Idaho for lunch. We were planning on hitting a Tucanos or Rodizios in Utah, since Brian loves churrascos, but we hit Boise around lunch time (perfect!) and lunch is cheaper than dinner (even perfecter!). We were way impressed at the quality of the salad bar, which they actually called a "salad festival" for obvious reasons, and we thoroughly enjoyed our stop. Although Brian spent the rest of the drive saying, "I ate way too much."

During lunch Marcus was doing this crazy thing where he would stick a raisin in his mouth and dance to the music and make silly faces.

We got into Salt Lake City around 7:45 and after some confusion with our hotel room we met up with Brian's cousin's family for ice cream. The hotel confusion was that they put us in a room with one king-sized bed, and when Brian called the front desk to say we needed two queens, they said they must have changed the beds in that room without changing the information in the computer, and after having the same problem when we moved our luggage into two other rooms, they just ended up putting us in a suite, since they were guaranteed to have two queen beds. It was nice to be able to send the kids into the sitting room the next morning to watch cartoons while Brian and I slept in.

Back to ice cream: Brian's cousin, Scott, is graduating from the University of Utah, and he and Alexia have two beautiful children (Ethan and Emmery) who are just between Ethan and Marcus in age. It was so fun to get together with them. Up until now we've only seen pictures of their kids, and we were only able to see Scott and Alexia briefly at Mark's wedding a couple of months ago. We went to a Nielson's Frozen Custard, because Brian used to love to go there when he was single, but it was freezing cold and they didn't have tables inside, so we didn't end up staying for long. Scott and Alexia said they should be coming up to the Northwest to visit soon, so we're looking forward to that!

Day 2
The next morning we slept in, then put on our jackets to brave the weather and visit Temple Square. We took a tour of the Conference Center, which was amazing. The lady giving the tour was so nice. She and Alyssa had a great time talking with each other. The kids were very well-behaved, although the boys got bored toward the end and just wanted to run around the roof.

The artwork in the Conference Center is amazing! There were so many beautiful pieces depicting the Savior, Joseph Smith, the prophets, stories from the Book of Mormon and the Bible - I would love to go back either without the kids someday or when they're older, so we can spend more time looking at everything. It was all so gorgeous!

We almost weren't able to go on the roof, because of the rain, but luckily they let us. Brian and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple, so it was fun to show it to the kids.

Alyssa loved all of the flowers at Temple Square.

After visiting the temple we headed to visit Brian's mission president and his wife. I loved them! They treated us just like we were their children or grandchildren coming for a visit. Brian told the kids that we would just stop to say hello, and we ended up staying the entire afternoon! It was so much fun. They showed us the movie "The Errand of Angels," which their daughter-in-law wrote about her mission experience. (It's very good - you should watch it. I watched the whole thing while Brian visited and the kids played in the toy room.) They fed us lunch and root beer floats, and the kids made themselves very much at home. Brian had a great time catching up with them and hearing about news from all of his mission buddies.

I don't have any pictures of the next part of our visit, because we were having so much fun to think about taking any. After visiting with the Johnson's, we ordered pizza from Brick Oven Pizza (do you see the theme of eating at all of our old favorite places?) and headed to my brother's house. He just graduated from BYU's MBA program, and they were getting ready to sell their townhouse, so we helped with that a bit after eating dinner. Philip was putting in new light fixtures in the bathroom upstairs, so Brian helped him with that, and Erin is pregnant and extremely sick, so I helped straighten up the girls' bedroom while she laid on the bed and gave me directions. Then the guys played a word-type game on the computer while Erin and I talked. Oh, and all the while the kids were in the basement playing, and we didn't have one single argument the whole time!

We didn't leave Erin and Phil's house until 11:00, and we were exhausted. We stayed in Orem that night, and woke up to snow on our car the next morning.

Day 3 - coming soon