The drive

In case you didn't already know, we drove to New Mexico. We did not fly. We drove with three little boys. It was awesome in every sense of the word (but mostly in the sarcastic sense). We did break the drive up with a pleasant overnight visit to my dad and Rhonda's house in Utah. It was nice to visit with them--so nice that we stayed up WAY too late and really felt it the next day when we were in the car for 10 hours. Oh well. Vacations aren't for sleeping, right? Not vacations with kids, anyway.

A family pic with Dad and Rhonda. My niece, Emery, is in the middle, so don't think all this time I've had a fourth child I never mentioned :)

We did have one incident I must mention on our Idaho to Utah leg of the journey. The morning we left our house, Marcus threw up. I kept him home from school (making our grand total of absences a nice round 5--and yes, I did receive a notice letter). Don't worry, I'm responsible and notified his teacher he'd be gone and got his homework packets to do on the drive and such, but they still have to send a letter. Okay, that's not the incident--just ramblings.

The incident was the second time he threw up. All. Over. The. DVD. PLAYER. And we were just 3 hours into our 16 hour drive. Awesome (again, in the sarcastic sense). Try as we might, it would not work. My dad suggested we give it a few days to "dry out," isn't that disgusting? The "drying out" worked, though, and it was in full use on the trip home. Also, Marcus was wearing bright red underwear on the side of the Utah/Idaho desert road when we cleaned him up. Red underwear and tennis shoes. That's all. It was classic.

Not a picture of throw up or red underwear. This is when we were fresh on the start of our journeys.

We did make it to New Mexico and it was a happy happy day when we did. Between our two long road trips we had lots of fun (which I will continue to document in later posts--like the Balloon Fiesta) but this is a post about the driving so let's get back to that.

My mom got a permanent job in SLC so we helped her move back to Utah. Tim drove the U-haul with Marcus as passenger, I followed in the van with babies as passengers, and my mom brought up the rear in her blissfully quiet car because it had no passengers :) Seriously, though, the drive to Utah may have taken longer because the U-haul couldn't go as fast (2 hours longer but who's counting?) but I actually enjoyed the trip because I listened to all 4 sessions of Conference on my iPod and really listened and learned. So I'm thankful for that. Attitude of gratitude, right President Monson?

I include this final picture because we are eating lunch in a New Mexico Walmart parking lot and we are no longer fresh, we are totally white trash. Really, click on this picture and look at Owen. Awesome.