recovering

We're home now, but I'm in definite need of a vacation to recover from vacation. The passports were a big hit and the quilt book I made was very well received. We stayed at Ruby's Inn right outside Bryce Canyon and the family campsite was fairly close by. There were about 130 people in attendance for the reunion and that was actually a small turnout. The weather was good, although we did have some rain every day. There were a lot of activities available for us to do... hiking, biking, swimming, atv rides, etc. We went into to Bryce Canyon with my uncle, Les, who is a National Parks buff and he was a great tour guide. There were some frustrating things as well. I'm only going to mention one because I don't want to complain, and because things worked out really well in the end... We were cruising along on our way home when the tread blew off one of the tires. Scary! The tire didn't lose any air though and my mom was able to move the car to the side of the road. My sister and I hopped out to get all our bags out of the trunk so that we could get the spare. Blanche and Brad (my aunt and uncle) happened to pass at just that moment, so they pulled over and helped us get the tire changed. Dan and Warren (my mom's cousin and his friend) stopped just as we were finishing to make sure everything was okay. We have an awesome family. Anyway, we had about 5 more hours to drive and knew that driving that long on the spare wouldn't be a good idea. Have you ever been in the middle of nowhere (rural Utah) on a Sunday afternoon? There's nothing out there, let alone something that would be open. We saw a billboard for a tire place that was open 24 hours so we pulled off in Fillmore to find that they're open 24 hours Mon-Sat. Luckily, there was another tire place across the street that was actually open. Less than an hour later, we were cruising along with 4 complete tires again. We stopped in Orem at my grandparents' house (they fixed dinner for everyone in our branch of the family tree that was traveling north), but didn't stay long. It was getting late and we still had a few hours of driving to do. We got back to my parents' house just after 10:00 and then Steph and I got all our stuff loaded into our own car and drove back to Logan. Coming home from vacation is the BEST feeling in the whole world. I think that's why we go on vacation - to have a renewed love for our own familiar surroundings. Logan was sure a welcome sight for us!

Favorite Moments from our vacation:
Mom wished that we had cones to put out on the road while the tire was being changed. She and I were wearing orange. I reminded her that there were four orange cones on the road already...

My uncles, Les and Josh, posed like fairies in front of the Fairyland Canyon sign.




The bananas, that one particular tree, and the re-created lyrics to a song courtesy of Uncle Les.

Skipping Sunday School with Christy, Tim, Bryce, and Stephanie.

Europeans. Honestly, there were a ton of them. It was cool to hear all their different languages and see all the different styles of clothing and such.

"Firetruck candy" what Victoria calls salt water taffy.

Winning the grand prize for the family trivia contest ($25 GC to the gift shop) which I used to buy a snuggly sweatshirt.

Seeing my extended family. 75% of the people there anyway. LOL

Planning special items for next year's auction...

The sweet smelling trees. Literally. The bark smells like caramel or something.

2 water bottles and 6 milkjugs in the backseat, when Grandma rode with us into the canyon.

Fireworks! I'm not even a big fan of fireworks, but it was a lot of fun. The town of Tropic had their 24th of July (Utah's pioneer/state celebration day) festival and we were able to see the fireworks from the lot of our motel. Not just see, experience. They were right overhead. It was awesome!