Friday the 24th of April found me in Bountiful, UT, waking up early to go down to Provo to watch Joseph's Convocation. It was entertaining and enlightening to me to learn about what it takes to be a proffessor of physics at BYU, which I learned at a luncheon provided by the physics department and talking to Proffessor Turley. Straight afterwords, I went down to
Joseph's apartment, where we wrapped up packing and attached a super overloaded trailer to Mother's suburban. It was loaded twice the rating of the trailer. This would bring issues later on.
We headed off into the stormy sunset, but only got ten miles before we realized that we needed to do something about the trailer, which was
swaying dangerously anytime we got above 40 mph. We got a new, ten inch drop hitch, and set off again. It was much better, allowing for a consistent 45 mph. This was most encouraging, implying that we may very well actually get to Texas, the trailer's destination. However, just an hour outside of Moab, UT, our nice trailer decided to lose its left wheel. It actually rather exploded. Very interesting to look at. We were blessed to be right next to a rest area, so we pulled in, killed our
jack, called in the cavalry (Maren's brother Thomas and friends) who were not able to help, and stayed the night.
The next morning, a very kind man with just the right equipment got us back on the road,
and not needing to leave the trailer. We drove to Moab, got a UHaul truck, loaded everything into it, and drove to Monticello, where we left the trailer and got a quick taste of Uncle Jim's motorcycle. They are really fun, though I personally would be scared to death to actually control one. Then we were off! We headed out and in Albequerque, NM Joseph and Maren left our small caravan, leaving only Mother and me in the truck. The reason for this departure was that all involved felt that they should be in their new ward as soon as possible. They drove through the night, arriving in Irving, TX a mere two
hours before church. Mother and I drove till about one in the morning, pulled off and slept until about 7.
We drove to a rest area where we cleaned up and got ready for church. We found a branch in a town called Childress, TX. It was a very interesting, spiritual meeting, and Mother and I both felt the spirit there. Right after sacrament meeting, though, we headed off to beat the storm and be somewhat timely in our arrival in
Irving, TX. We got there about 2-3 ish, and unloaded stuff Joseph and Maren's stuff. We also had dinner at Joseph and Maren's new home. I must say that I like their house, and am looking forward to getting a house (and a family to put inside said house) when I am older and probably in graduate school somewhere. But that is later. After we ate, cleaned, de-odered and met the neighborhood, we took off for Jackson, MS. We arrived at 3:00 in the morning, but Uncle Daniel and Aunt Dorinda were most kind and got up to talk to us for an hour anyway. They also asked us to sleep for a while and eat something, but I had neice and nephew, and Mother had grandson and granddaughter waiting, and we decided to hurry along.
By this time, we only had the suburban, and we had four drivers. That's right,
we pulled an all nighter again, taking shifts driving and sleeping. We got to Columbus, OH just before dinner. We had Jeeshki, or however you spell it, and were most grateful to Crystal for making it for us. Mmm-mmm, is that stuff good! Then we talked for a while, and then went to bed. Ah, how wonderful beds are. Mine wasn't quite inflated enough, but it was still a lot better than sleeping on a seat belt buckle.
Tuesday found me with a quandary at 6:45 in the morning, which felt like 4:45 to me. Either I could sleep in or I could go with Jordan to buy a shed. I decided that memories and time spent with family that doesn't
live nearby are more important and valuable than sleep, so I got up and went and bought a shed. After we bought it, we came back and built it! It was great. I really enjoy building things. That comment might get me into a lot of work in the future, but oh well. After that, we all piled into several cars and drove to Graeter's Ice Cream, and took a tour. It was very interesting. We also found out that Clara is a flirt! We would have done other things
as well, but it was raining, so we decided to forgoe those options. We came back to David and Megan's house and had lunch. It was way
tastey, as well! Then I took a nap. Or would have, except Clara is
so fun to play with! I got a little sleep in, but I think I spent most of the time entertaining and being entertained by my adorable neice. That night, Mother took us all out to this German all-you-can-eat buffet, and it was overly delicious. I got rather full that night. Everything was good (except I wasn't a big fan of the sausage stew), but my favorite by far was the bean and
bacon soup. Simple, but soups hit chords with me. Then we went
back to Jordan's
house and watched Planet Earth on Jordan's new 50 inch plasma TV. Very nice. Very nice, indeed. We even watched it on a blueray
player. Then I went to sleep again.
Wednesday we got up, and got out. We took something to a neighbor's daughter, who lived in
Columbus, OH, took Jordan to school (not correct order) and left town. We drove straight from Columbus, OH to Bountiful, UT. That took us all of Wednesday and part of Thursday. But we got
there! But before Mother could get home to her meeting, she was kind enough to drive me to Provo, where my vacation formally ended, and I was ready to get to work!
It's interesting how vacation is so wonderful, because you look forward to it, and enjoy it, but by the time it is over, you are looking forward to work, and you enjoy work more because of it.
That was our vacation, according to me!
Happy Birthday, Jordan!
While I've been here at Provo, I realized that I have an awful lot of free time on my hands, and so to keep myself productive, I tried my hand at photography. This one of the tractor and Mt Timpanogos I liked, as well as the following two. If you want to tell me your favorite, offer advice on how to do better ones, or have requests, feel free to leave them as comments, or just talk to me about it!
This is actually one of my pictures that I took on my photography day, but I put it here because I went and hiked the Y and forgot to take pictures of it! Jordan, I did some calculations, using a good deal of estimation, but I got it: 2.24 miles from the shore to the stadium. This is off by about a mile, but, hey! I used the sun, some rough time measurements and the elevation change from the valley floor to the Y to figure that out! Not too shabby if you ask me.
I went on a campout with my home stake for their stake conference priesthood session. It was fun. This is a picture of some of the boys huddling around a fire early in the morning.
Most recently (ie yesterday) Rachel Checketts had a birthday water party! It was also a lot of fun. We had lots of water (too much at the end, while I was trying to dry off, but, hey), food, family and friends and fun.
