Family Vacation

We recently got back from our spur of the moment vacation. We attended my Grandma's funeral and will greatly miss her, but we are grateful for the opportunity it gave us to spend two weeks together as a family.

We spent four days driving from our house to Grandma's, camping along the way. The kids loved camping, especially Westley. They learned to endure the time in the car because they knew eventually we would get out and they could run wherever they pleased for hours.

On our way out we stopped by the Grand Canyon. It was grand, but I am not sure it was worth the Grand price of $25 just to look over a cliff for a few minutes.

While in Utah we enjoyed spending time with both sides of our family. Jenna loved playing with her cousins. We had lots of fun, but only one picture.

On our drive back Ben decided to take a different route. (I-40 on the way to UT and I-70 on the way home) I was skeptical of taking I-70 and going through Colorado because of our bad experience on our move to GA.

For those who do not know last time through Colorado was awful. Here are the highlights: big moving truck with car on trailer, huge snow storm, scary mountain passes, bridges, slick roads, big river a few feet away, first day driving big truck, middle of the night, (how in the world the road was not closed I do not know), 16 month old Jenna throwing up on top of the mountain, throw up all over Jenna, me, and the truck, Ben having to defrost car to get clothes, changing clothes on top of mountain in snow storm, getting to Denver at 2am, deciding to continue on, deciding bad idea and stopping at truck stop, kind of slept in car for 4 hours, drove scary slick road on lack of sleep, roads were closed and forced to spend another day in Colorado. One positive was that the hotel that day was the nicest and cheapest of the trip.

So anyway Ben thought it is August it cannot be bad this time through. Well, Colorado was just part of the problem. All along I-70 we had problems. Jenna threw up again (she has only thrown up in the car 2 times). It rained hard across the rocky mountains in CO and there was a ton of traffic, and the breaks of the car were a little shaky. Our campsite in CO was nice, but a large thunderstorm started seconds after getting the tent up. With all the hard rain and wind some rain got in the tent. Our next campsite in KS was completely flooded. The whole KOA had turned into a lake. We drove on for hours finally getting a hotel in Kansas City (which led to the one highlight of our trip). In Missouri (which was ugly, gross, and had XXX stores every mile) Westley literally pooped out of his diaper. It was all over his car seat, clothes, etc. Once we were on a different freeway things went smoothly.

Seeing Liberty Jail was the one highlights of our trip home along I-70. It was very small and the walls were VERY thick. I cannot imagine spending a whole winter in there.

When we were able to go down and see it close Jenna became scared. It was hard to get her to sit there for the picture. Westley, on the other hand, wanted to climb into the jail.

In Independence we were able to go to the LDS Visitors Center and learn more about the saints that lived in the area before being driven out. This picture is the kids playing in a playroom area.