The first leg...
Las Vegas to Cedar City. Visit Dawn, Emma and Braxton. Stop for lunch and mostly to plan and rest our feet. Then continue on to Farmington Utah. We stayed with Georgie. The girls love the playroom downstairs and the jungle gym outside. I enjoy that I don't have to entertain them and can sit and talk or help with the latest project. Then from Farmington to Mountain Home. We stopped for an hour to visit with Cara and Lynn and the girls got to run around before more traveling. We finally made it to Boise and there we stayed for a day longer than we planned because of more car troubles. WIth the oil pressure sensor fixed we eventually got on the road again, but the girls thoroughly enjoyed the extra day to play.
From Boise we headed to Portland. Portland drivers are crazy and traffic is insane! If you want to merge you don't wait, you just stick the front of the car into the stand still traffic and wait for it to move and then mrege in. It was crazy! 2 miles in 20 minutes.
Portland was a good stopping point and we got to visit with Carin Thueson (the Smith/Pyrah side of the family.) We had a wonderful time. She had 4 girls ages 18 months to 8, I think. The girls played and played and played and would have kept playing later into the night if we hadn't made them go to bed. The next morning I went an picked blackberries while Carin watched the girls. I had an hour to pick and I was going to make the best of it. The berries were $1.90 a pound and I was going crazy!
When we got in, Papa was ready to go crabbing. We unloaded the office stuff and headed to the marina.
The sound is open for crabbing Thursday through Monday. Dad goes out in the morning and evening on those days. He checked for crab and loads the raw chicken (bate) and moves the crab pots if he's not happy with the catch. Some nights we would take Hailey, some nights just Emi. Mornings were best because they weren't tired.
Saturday night, the night before we leave, we found a pair of water boots at Goodwill that were a perfect fit for Hailey. $5 for a pair of shoes that she'll only wear once. Yep! Totally worth it.
If they weren't crabbing, they were playing outside. My parents house has a front porch and we moved the patio chairs out there. The girls loved the weather and watching Sadie chase after the ball over and over. Searching searching searching till she found it. With all that crabbing, and chasing and playing, the girls were usually pretty worn out. Getting them to take naps was hard because they just wanted to play!
Ryan and Jillian were up there Thursday through Monday. We got in on Friday. We celebrated Ryan's birthday. We sung happy birthday and cut into the cake on Saturday after the girls were down. 10 pm at night. BUT you can't keep Hailey from birthday cake. She came out at 10:30 and said, I'm ready to eat birthday cake! We was totally zoned as she ate but she had the biggest smile on her face when she escaped from her room. :)
On Saturday, Jillian and I took a chance to break free and go pick blueberries. She loves blueberries and there's nothing like fresh stuff. She didn't like blackberries until she tried the ones that had been picked two days previously, not kept cold and picked green and then sold in the stores. We had a good time. We started out on a patch and the pickings were slim. We really had to search. I thought maybe it was too late and the berries were all gone. Nope, we just weren't in the right place. Soon we moved to a different area and realized we had been picking the dregs on the other lane. The lane we were on was loaded and plentiful. What took us 15 minutes to gather at the last place took us only a couple at the new area. I think it was as fun picking and eating berries and bringing them home. We had 3 flats of berries and when we got to the check out decided to go get 2 more. 5 flats of berries. $150 and 50 pounds of berries! She asked if I would make them into jam for her. For some reason, I'm just too nice to say no. It was fun though.
AS the time was getting closer to when I needed to leave, my dad realized he still needed to take the engine out of the airplane so we could load it into the back of the car. Yep, that's right, an engine was being loaded into my car and hauled back to Vegas. Dental equipment up and engine back.
Sunday we packed up the car and hit the road. It was a beautiful drive but for some reason I would get tired 45 minutes into the drive and have to stop and take a cat nap. Then we were off again, back to Portland. While driving I realized that there was a temple in Portland. I messaged Carin and asked if it was close to her and she said about 20 minutes away. I said we should go. Then the question came, do we take the kids or not. We decided not! It was great to leave the kids with her husband and roommate and get out on a Sunday for a quiet drive and a quiet walk around the temple.
We walked around the temple twice and I couldn't help but realize how similar in areas it was to the Las Vegas Temple. We found the sun, moon and stars on the temple. We thought that was interesting and she said she had never noticed that before. Then we went into the visitor center. They have a Christus there but it is not the same one in SLC. It is different and it immediately stood out to me that it looked more like the one in the Copenhagen Visitors Center. You could walk right up to it and it wasn't massive. The facial expression was more more kind and gentle, not as stern as the SLC or original Christus. It was great to share a quiet moment of reflection about life and the gospel with Carin. We both know how difficult it is to feel peace when you have multiple kids doing everything but making things peaceful.
After Portland it was again back through Boise. The peaches at the Caldwell orchard were all gone so I looked for another orchard. I have been on the email list of Kelly Orchards for years now. They are about an hour and twenty minutes north of Boise. I was hoping to make it there before they closed. They were going to close before I could make it, but I called and they stayed open. I was able to fit 120 pounds of peaches in the back of my car. :)
Just outside of Weiser in Baker Oregon I stopped to get something to eat. It was subway or taco time. I remember taco time being pretty good and not super expensive. I went in and they wanted $2 for a kid burrito. Yikes, there was a place right next to it that I'd never heard of but when I looked at the menu they had humus but it was again more than I wanted to pay. But with taco time being the same price I went back to the other restaurant. There was patio seating which was nice being out of the car and the girls could be loud without bothering anyone.
The place was called Crave-A-Bowl. I ordered the humus and a rice bowl. The humus was ok. The tkaziki was ok as well, but he rice bowl was amazing! It was the first thing that tasted like home and something that I would have tried to create. It was a chicken pesto vegetable over brown rice. It wasn't the pesto, there was cabbage that was in a sauce that was to cry for. Then the chicken itself was tender and marinated in something. I almost ordered a second one to go, but I didn't.
I made it back into Boise. The girls played till late into the evening getting out all the store up energy from the trip. Then we finally crashed. The next morning "Big Hailey" as my Hailey calls Hailey Pyrah, and the girls and I headed to caldwell to pick up apples and pears. I was debating on corn... We got to the orchard and we all had a good time picking up fruit and loading it into the car.
As I was loading the car I came around the back and found Hailey spread eagle with her underwear and pants off. Apparently she needed to go potty before I got back. Luckily it's not a super busy place and the ground is rocks and dirt... Shake my head. But it was funny enough to mention.
I picked up 123 pounds of Gala apples. 100 pounds of barlett pears. All for $65. That meant I had plenty left for corn! We stopped at two placed that we had noticed on the way out. One had bodacious/yellow corn. The other had Ambrosia corn. I asked what the difference was and she let me taste one of the ears. I had never eaten corn raw off the cob. I thought you had to cook it! I gave some to Big Hailey and she wasn't bummed at all when my kids didn't want to eat their share. So she gladly did. It was a good time picking up fruit.
Then we headed back home. We made it to Farmington Tuesday night. Wednesday morning attempted to leave and meet up with Dana but I had left the doors open while loading the car and it had drained the battery... really again?! This had happened in Washington Sunday as I was trying to leave. I found someone who gave me a jumpstart then I was off. What else can happen on this silly trip. I shouldn't have asked. I met up with Dana to visit briefly and see their new place. Then since it was almost 11 and we were hungry I stopped and got food. I couldn't find much other than Cafe Rio. I had intended to run in and pick up something to go but once we got in the girls decided they wanted to sit and eat. Ok fine. I'm not in a super rush. We ate and loaded up the car. I autostarted the car so it wouldn't be hot and put Emi in her carseat but not buckled yet. Then I went over to put Hailey in. I needed free hands so I put my keys, wallet and phone on the front seat. I buckled Hailey then closed the door. That is when I realized that my keys were in the car... It was on and cooling but I had no way to get it and no way to call for help.
I remembered seeing two police officers walk in and order, so I headed back inside and talked with them. One came out to try and help. He didn't have the equipment to open the door so he called it in to dispatch. As we were standing there looking at my car, trying to get Emi to open the door--since she wasn't buckled, a gentleman working on the front door asked if we needed help. He was a locksmith and had his truck on site. I was relieved when he was able to open my door. I was panicked and then grateful. It was quite the adventure. I called Dawn and told her that I wasn't going to stop because each time when I'd stopped something went bizerk.
We made it home finally. It was nice to be home and not driving. What an adventure.
