food, crochet, merriment
…to see a couple of soccer games, with April, Hazel and Lily.
Always awesome fun!
We really do live in an incredibly beautiful place with all this lovely stuff right in our backyard.
We’re pretty lucky ducks, I’d say.
Our very last hotel breakfast for this trip. To be honest, I’ve loved it.
Any time you can have food magically appear first thing in the morning–I’m certainly a fan!
Back in the car for a whollllllle bunch more of this…
and this helped.
Awww the stamina building power of ice cream!
Of course this was a welcome site.
But this one…
was…
WAY better!! Wahoooooooo!
We’re home!!!
I’ll tell you what–THIS girl is an absolute CHAMP! She drove the whole time and acted like she knew just where she was going. I am SO proud of her and her incredible bravery…
and life saving sense of direction. Heh, heh.
No kidding. She is amazing.
The kitties were all glad to see me. Dali was thrilled.
Lyla was extatic.
And Hobbes…ok, Hobbes had to act cool but I choose to believe he missed me.
Home again. Home again.
Jiggety jog.
We woke up to a glorious, HUGE breakfast that Dane made while we were all still sleeping. This guy is awesome.
Next, sacrament meeting with the families.
And, no, I probably shouldn’t be taking pictures during the prayer. But tell me this little guy isn’t the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.
I couldn’t help myself.
Dane taught the Gospel Doctrine class…
and even had the missionaries help.
He is such a good teacher…and SO handsome!
Afterwards the kids came back from their classes and we got ready to go home.
The ladies made us another lovely feast.
Merrick chose to postpone his “birthday” cake until we came to visit, so we gave him our presents too and had a mini birthday party for him.
Then we headed back to church for the whole reason that we came to Arkansas…
Merrick turned eight…
and today was his baptism day!!
So proud of this sweet boy and his family.
Josh did the tech stuff so the folks back home could tune in.
April and Lily…
were in charge of the music.
The Bishop spoke.
I spoke too, but there is no physical evidence. Thank goodness.
What a wonderful day. Congratulations Merrick!
I sure do love these people.
After a quick little breakfast–thanks hotel…
of anything and everything you can think of…
we’re back in the car…
and off again.
We had more of this…
and these…
and even this to let us know that we were still in Colorado.
Or is it Colopado?
Have we been saying it wrong all these years?!
Whatever. We were here in Colorado, until we weren’t.
Welcome to Kansas!!
We noticed immediately that they had waaaay more land that looked like this.
Lots of hay and tons of corn…no picture though. I must have been too stunned at the shere volumn of the corn to focus. Sorry man.
Pretend you can see us driving allllll through Kansas and allllll that corn, until at last, at LAST we got to Arkansas and…
found my cute long, lost boy!!! Ooooh I’ve missed those big, strong arms.
April’s family beat us here by a day because they drove straight through without stopping. Yikes.
We got in so late that Dane’s family were already in bed.
The kids still loved meeting up with their cousins that they hadn’t seen…
in a whopping 3 days!
They live down the street from us in Utah. Haha.
It was good to get a little piece of our Daney-boy before he went off to bed.
We finally made it!!
Heading out to road trip it allllll the way to Dane & Kortney’s place. Yes, we are very, very brave to do this without the usual menfolk in the wagon train.
First stop–Lyndi’s place to pick up some things she needed us to take. We really wanted her to jump in the car with us, but she wasn’t able to do it…this time. We’ll miss you Lyndi!!
For some strange reason, we were feeling particularly sturdy-mountain-women-ish for this trip…which we may laugh about later.
We’ll see.
Arkansas here we come!!
Lots of roads.
Lots of clouds.
Lots of prairie.
Ooooh. Dairy Queen is ALWAYS a good idea. Heh, heh.
Not stir crazy yet!! All these cuties did so-so well, playing games, watching movies and napping.
Made it to Colorado…
and our hotel…
in great time.
Everyone was ready…
for a nacho feast!
with a little popcorn on the side…
and the floor.
Haha.
I was ready for bed but these little fishies wanted to swim before sleeping after being cooped up in the car all day. What a great idea!
Zzzzzzzzzz…
