To Post or Not To Post... and other things

How is it that I feel like I never do anything, but I'm always busy and never feel like I get anything done? Does that sentance make sense? We've been back from Utah for almost a week, and every day I think, oh I'll do my blog in a little bit...or after dinner... or before bed... Then it's tomorrow sometime, or after church... So here I am trying desperately to remember all those cute and funny things that I was going to write last week but never did. I guess I'll start at the beginning and hope it turns out okay.

We left for Utah early on Thursday (15th). It was about 5am EDT, or 3am in Utah. Despite the craziness of getting to the airport, checking all our bags, getting through security, and finding our gate with 5 pieces of luggage (including 2 car seats which, btw, don't count as a 'second suitcase' for the new rules), 3 carry-on bags, a stroller, 2 kids and 2 adults it was a good flight. We sat at the very front of the plane, Rachel slept a lot, Karen played most of the time and only had one meltdown. We got to Utah around 10 am local time and by 11 were out of the airport in our rental car. We went with Avis this time because we had a coupon; it ended up costing us more money and we were stuck with a stupid Ford Explorer that got terrible gas mileage and didn't have much room for anything; I don't recommend them to anyone. We stopped at Grandma Zillner's to say hi, but no one was home. Luckily we found a door open (I love UT for that... people always leave their doors open) and went in. Joe got us som McDonald's while I fed Rachel. Grandma got home soon and we visited with her and Grandpa while Karen took a nap, then headed for Happy Valley. I talked to Calista on the way and she invited us to go to the temple with them that evening. We went to my aunt Lisa's and visited with the family, had dinner, then went to my aunt Linda's where we were going to be staying. We got the kids down, changed, and went to the temple with Calista and Brandon. It was SOOO nice to go to the temple! We've only gone a few times since we moved out here, and most of those times are when we go to UT to visit. It's just a ways to the temple and the grounds are tiny, and with little kids it gets interesting. Anyway, after the temple we were really tired since it was around 10pm or so (we just made the 8pm session at Timp) and we went back to Linda's for the night. That's when we noticed the cat AND the dog. Joe's allergies are terrible, mine are not good either, and both girls have some (we're not sure how much yet). It's crazy, but no one (me, Joe, Mom, Linda, Grandma, or anyone else) had even thought about the pet issue, and we weren't there long enough in the evening to realize it much. I didn't even remember her having a dog, even though it's like 12 years old. But it was getting really late for us on east coast time, and we couldn't do anything about it that night.

The next morning all of us felt terrible and even though I didn't want to offend anyone I couldn't make my family stay there any more. We packed up our suitcases after breakfast (which was really wonderful, with chocolate chip pancakes and everything) and went back to Lisa's (where my parents were staying). We didn't know where we would be staying now or what was going on, but it was the day before the wedding and there was a lot to do. We took our kids and Mike and Stacia to the park (discovery park is really close to where they live in PG) and my cousins came too. We had fun, Joe got hurt on the spinners, Karen fell off a few different things, and Rachel was mad about being out in the wind, but it was fun anyway. That evening we had dinner at my aunt Cheryl's in Lehi with the Howes family. There were so many people there! It seems like every time we get together now there are at least a few more people; kids, significant others, friends, pets, and so on. It was fun to see everyone since I hadn't seen many of them since my wedding or before, but there were almost too many people for the house. After that we went to where we were staying the night: Brandon's (Calista's husband) grandma's house in Mapleton. It was a whole string of crazy and somewhat upsetting events that led to us staying there but it worked out okay in the end. It was a nice opportunity to get to know the Perazzos, and they're really great people. We even got a bedroom to ourselves (though all four of us in one room isn't fun we did it the whole trip).

The next morning we were all trying to get ready for the wedding. I was in the shower downstairs when this happened, but during breakfast Karen fell through the back of her chair (a folding chair). She tried to grab something to keep her from falling, but ended up grabbing the cereal bowl instead. She and her cereal fell on the floor, and the cereal got everywhere. Joe gave her an emergency bath, and I didn't even know what happened until after it was all over. After we were all clean and ready I once again packed up all our suitcases and we followed Brandon to their new apartment in Provo where we sayed the rest of the trip. Let me just say that it may be a fairly crappy basement apartment as apartments go, but it is definitely worth it since it's less than 2 blocks south of the Botany pond. Also note how many times I packed up those stupid suitcases and all our junk in the first few days of our trip. Although it's not entirely fair to blame it all on that, the next bit that I write doesn't sound quite as bad if you keep in mind that I had packed everything so many times that I couldn't quite remember where anything was anymore. But... I'll have to write that another time.