Birthday Pilgrimage - Part 1

Despite possible evidence to the contrary, let it be known that every year since Aubree turned 4, I've offered to throw her a big friend birthday bash.  And every year she asks, "what are some other options?" 

This year, after offering once again to host a party, she resolutely countered, "I want a family birthday party."

"Great!" I thought, "that's easy!"

But she wasn't finished..."I want an aunts and uncles and cousins family party."

Uh oh, not so easy.  

I began to explain how her aunts and uncles and cousins lived far away and probably couldn't all come up to visit, and then I had a flash of inspiration - maybe we could go visit them!  She's spoiled like that. 

Truth be told, I've been looking for an excuse to trek to Utah, and all the pieces fell into place making this a perfect excuse opportunity.  

Aubree was thrilled to be returning to the land of her birth.  In the weeks leading up to the trip, we spent a lot of time talking about the different things we'd do during our time in Utah.  On one occasion, I told Aubree that we could spend a day touring the BYU campus.  "Great!" she responded enthusiastically, "I really want to look around one more time to make certain that's where I want to go to college."

Bryce was also excited about the impending trip, though I don't think he could quite grasp what was involved.  After trying in vain to convince Aubree that we should hike to Utah for her birthday, he decided that for his birthday we could hike to Utah.  On the second day of our long drive, Bryce suddenly piped up, "I changed my mind!  I don't want to hike any more!"

We began the first leg of our travels late Thursday afternoon and only drove a relatively short distance to Richland, WA to stay that night with Karen and her family.  We'd just found out that they'll be moving back to North Carolina (boo for us!), so it was extra nice to be able to spend a little bit of time with them. It was short-lived though, because we left the next morning for our super-long drive day.  

This trip was about as long as our drive to Yellowstone, but promised to be much easier and more enjoyable because Mark came too.  Unfortunately, not long into our Friday morning drive, Mark was hit with a massive migraine.  He spent a long, unenviable day alternately burying his head in a pillow, then battling the ensuing nausea.  Bryce recalls fondly how we "had to stop on the side of the road so Daddy could puke-up."  Truthfully, he handled it much better than I would have and with all our recent travels, the kids are becoming road warriors.

We stopped for the evening in Boise, ID to visit some of our good friends from Florida, the Hawkins.  We got to meet their beautiful new baby, Madilyn and have a yummy dinner and playtime for the kids.  It was a much-needed break, but all too soon we were back on the road for the final leg of the drive.  

I had grand visions of the kids falling quickly to sleep and Mark and I able to spend a quiet and peaceful few hours listening to audiobooks and talking.  Ha ha!  Mark's headache continued and the kids had an extremely difficult time falling asleep.  After a couple hours of crying, Mark decided we should stop and get a hotel.  

Ultimately, we pushed on and everyone finally fell asleep.  Mark woke up around 9:30 pm feeling much better, which was a tender mercy because that's just when we hit slushy roads and I was feeling fatigued and tense.   

We finally made it to my sister Kira's home in Springville around 1:00 am and fell, exhausted, into bed.

It was such a whirlwind of travel, I apparently didn't do a very good job of taking pictures.  We made up for it the rest of the trip...

** We've had a busy extended summer of traveling.  It didn't seem like so much until I sat down and calculated that in a four month period, we were gone for 5 weeks!  Mark teases me that as soon as one trip is done, I have to immediately start planning our next trip...  California anyone?