We spent last weekend in Utah staying at Brad’s house. Chris got this wild hair idea to spend time with Chris Molloy and his family visiting temple square. Chris Molloy (a recent convert) was flying to Salt Lake to begin training for a new job. He’ll be able to work from home here in Colorado. Anyway, when my Chris found out that Chris M. was going to be in Salt Lake and hoped to visit Temple Square, they came up with the idea to come out together. I can’t say that I was so keen on the idea, but we all went anyway. I went mostly to see my family. The weather reports weren’t so great and Utah had been receiving a lot of snow, still we were off. Cindy and Skylar Molloy drove with us in the van, and we were pretty packed.
I picked up Misha and Amy from school on Thursday afternoon, March 1. Friday was a day off for the girls, so Amy only missed a short time. We quickly dropped off the carpool kids and headed to have lunch, pack up the van, and be on our way. I had hoped we could be ready by 12:15 but we made it to Molloy’s just around the corner by 12:45. Oh well.
It was windy when we left and that wind continued and even picked up as we drove through Wyoming. The roads began to get really bad the closer we got to Evanston and all of us sudden there were lights in the ditch from a truck that had slipped and rolled onto its side. I thought at first that it was just headlights to a train. We pulled over and Chris immediately called 911. He got out of the van, putting on his warmer weather gear which he had felt impressed to bring, and went to check things out. The lone occupant of the truck was climbing out the passenger window and appeared to be unhurt. We then proceeded to wait 45 minutes for the police to arrive. We made the mistake of saying no one was hurt I guess. Perhaps they were just busy. Meanwhile, Chris and the other fellow stood out in the cold waiting. We would have put the guy in the van, but we were packed full. Finally we were on our way again, but the roads only got worse with lots of snow as we continued on at 45 mph.
We drove into the Salt Lake valley around 10:30 pm where the roads were clear and fairly dry. After some wrong turns, Chris finally found the hotel where Chris Molloy was staying, and we were able to drop Cindy and Skylar off. We reached Brad’s house after 11 pm with some very tired and sleepy girls to put to bed. Amy and Misha got to sleep in “the tunnel” under Brad’s stairs, and Kristen slept in Dallin and Donna’s pack and play in the laundry room.
Much to my dismay, we woke up to snow, snow, and more snow. We had eye exams scheduled with Brad for 9:15 am, but he called us shortly after he left and said the freeway was pretty slow and that we needed to take the frontage road. Wouldn’t you know the snow had stopped and the roads were clear by the time we left his office a couple of hours later. Misha’s eyes have improved somewhat but she is still farsighted. In order to be able to get an accurate check of her eyes, Brad had to dilate her. It lasted 24 hours, and she wasn’t very happy about it.
I also had my eyes dilated but it only lasted 4 hours. Brad found that I had two small hematomas in my left eye that he wants to watch. He says it is rare to see these in a person my age. Other than that, my eyes aren’t too bad. I’ll probably need reading glasses at some point, but not yet.
Chris also had his eyes checked and will be getting a new pair of glasses. His glasses are always quite expensive, but to pay for these, he will help Brad and Dallin rework their computer system in a couple of months.
Cindy and Skylar met us at The Practice on Friday afternoon and from there we want to the South Towne Mall to get lunch and go to Mervyn’s. Since they closed all of the Colorado Mervyn’s stores, I have missed being able to shop there. After lunch the girls all got the treat of riding on the merry-go-round with Chris. This was Kristen’s first experience and she loved. Chris said she started giggling when it started moving. I stood and waved each time they went around. Cindy left with Skylar at 2:00 pm to go see her husband Chris at his office, and we took the girls Dallin and Donna’s to visit with their cousins. They played a little bit, but Dallin is in the process of finishing their basement and their living room is filled with a grand piano. So really there wasn’t a lot of places to play. We didn’t stay very long. We also had a family dinner planned at Brad’s house that night, so we went back there to get things ready.
By the end of the evening, Brad wasn’t so happy with all the noise and kids. He too is finishing his basement so there wasn’t a lot of extra places for the kids to play. Video games were set up in his bedroom where he keeps his tv, but the whole thing with kids jumping on the bed bugged him. It would have bothered me too, I’m sure.
Saturday morning we got ready to spend the day with Molloy’s at Temple Square. We toured the Conference Center and the visitor center with the Christus. Once kids start complaining that they’re hungry though, we find you pretty much just have to feed them. We headed over to one of the malls across the street and ate lunch at the food court. By this time, Amy wasn’t feeling so great and complained of a stomach ache. We figured it was mostly from lack of sleep, missing regular mealtimes, and a different schedule.
After lunch, our family went to see the Joseph Smith movie in the Joseph Smith building and Chris and Cindy went back to Temple Square to see the Testaments movie. Our movie was super and Kristen was surprisingly well-behaved for an hour. Misha was scared in a few places and Amy reached over to hold my hand for the second half. She kept looking at me to see if I was crying or not. There was a time or two when I did. Such a powerful movie. One of the impressions that I had while watching is that it was important for us to expose our children to testimony-building experiences such as these. These are things that they will remember for the rest of their lives and the foundation upon which their testimonies will be built and subsequently strengthened.
We met up with the Molloys after the movie and went down to the Distribution Center in the Joseph Smith Building. The girls received scripture holders plus we bought a few dvds. We plan to give the girls nicer scriptures once they are baptized, so for Amy that will be at the end of the year.
By this time, I think all of the kids were tired and cranky. I know ours sure were. And I was even getting a little cranky and tired myself. Impossible, I know, but it happened. We decided to take them back to their respective resting places and let them sleep for awhile to ensure a more pleasant evening. All three of the girls fell asleep in the van around 4:00. We parked in Brad’s garage and just let them all sleep for the hour and fifteen minutes. We planned to meet for dinner and since Brad was coming along with us, we chose something a little closer to his house. He hoped to back in time for the Saturday evening session of Stake Conference.
Sadly he chose to ride with us in our van. I don’t know how he expected us to eat and return with him in 45 minutes unless we chose a McDonald’s restaurant or something similar to that. But he knew that wasn’t what we were planning. We stopped at Chili’s and then Applebees and both had waits over an hour. We ended up at Los Hermanos in Pleasant Grove with a wait of 40 minutes. By this time it was after 7 pm, and Brad had already missed his meeting. He apparently wasn’t very happy with that.
To top it off, Kristen was a little stinker during dinner. She didn’t want food or drink or her high chair and after the first rude comment from Brad, Chris and I began to take her out when she cried. Amy loved the salsa there and ate bunches of it. When we finally left, we stopped first at Macy’s for a few snacks and such for the trip home on Sunday.
Sunday morning dawned bright and early. We planned to attend Dallin’s Sacrament Meeting at 11 am, then come back to Brad’s afterward to eat our leftovers, and then be on our way. Brad had Stake Conference at 10 am which we could have also gone to, but two hours sitting still for my kids versus 70 minutes? No question we were going with 70 minutes.
Brad was kind enough to help get things heated up while I got the kids eating and Chris worked on packing the van. We were on our way shortly before 1 pm. Thankfully the weather was so much improved over our trip out, but with stops to eat and go to the bathroom, it was about 8 hours before getting home.
Work has begun in earnest on our basement. We are working with a guy by the name of Rich Flanagan. He finished the basement of some friends of ours and is also the son-in-law of Misha’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Stephen, so we felt comfortable in hiring him to do the work for us. We also got a few other quotes, but were most impressed by Rich. As I type, he is hammering right beneath my feet. He began by taking measurements and worked those into some plans. After 4 drafts, we finally agreed on what we wanted. We will have a family room, bedroom (play room for now), store room, exercise room, bathroom, mechanical room, and an office for Chris with a huge closet for me to put my sewing and craft stuff in it. Rich had quite a few plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and fireplace sub-contractors give bids and then we were off.
One of the first jobs to be done was to tear up the concrete where US Home put the rough-in plumbing for the bathroom. None of it was in the right place. That happened while were gone to Utah so we didn’t have all the noise to deal with. It was definitely nice to be home and fun to go down to the basement and see the progress that had been made on our basement. A few of the walls had been framed and the concrete dug out for the bathroom. They have to rework the pipes into the proper location. About a week and a half has passed: the plumber should finish up today, the HVAC guy, Rex, finished installing the heating system yesterday and the electrical sub is supposed to come today. The framing is almost complete and the fireplace installer should be coming on Friday. Sheet rock will be delivered next week. Things are moving along and it is fun to see the changes that are taking place.
Chris and I shopped on Saturday for the bathroom vanity, vanity top, and wet bar counters. We are still looking for a good price on a granite counter for the wet bar.
On a warmer day, I sent Misha to school with shorts instead of long pants. When she arrived home from school and was walking away from me to the bathroom, I noticed the zipper in the back of her pants. “Misha, did you go to school with your pants like that?” She looked down at the “front” of her pants, wondering what on earth Mom was talking about. “Misha, you have your zipper in the back of your pants!” “Oh,” she replied, “I wondered where the zipper was.” Not a problem for her. Misha thinks her pants are too tight when she can no longer pull them straight down without undoing the snap and zipper. Silly kid. Her teacher must wonder what goes on in our home sometimes.
Shortly after we arrived home from Utah, I decided that Kristen and bottles no longer belonged together. She wouldn’t drink much of anything out of a sippy cup, and I figured an almost two-year old ought not to be so dependent on a bottle. So Monday morning (March 5th), I said goodbye to the bottles cold turkey. Kristen wasn’t so happy with me, and rebelled for a day or two, but I figured she would get thirsty enough to drink soon enough. It worked as far as getting her off the bottles, though she drinks very little milk now. Her water and juice consumption has gone up.
