Weekend Getaway Travel Log

When we heard about Matt Porter getting married, we knew we wanted to go out to UT and visit him and the rest of his family. The problem was, Adam had to work on Friday (a full day of work) and he had to be on call on Monday (today). So we knew if we could swing this weekend trip it would be a MIRACLE. After much scheduling and planning, my mom was able to come out and watch the kids. There were issues with her flight being cancelled (we had to have one of our usual babysitters, Mikayla, come stay the night, whew!) because my mom didn't get in to Omaha until 13 hours after her flight was supposed to arrive (yes, the drive from Chicago is only 8 hours....ugh, poor Mom.). It took a little bit of sneakyness to park our car at the airport and THEN hide the ignition key so my mom could drive our car home when she got in later that night (and have her follow our terrible mapquested map in the dark!) but somehow it worked and we were very blessed the way things worked out. Very. And we know it.

We REALLY needed a weekend away. Really. All in the past week, Spencer learned how to climb out of his crib, and has become very proficient at boxing, pinching, pushing, screaming for hours on end, and other pleasant terrible 2ish behaviors. So when I heard about my mom's flight being cancelled and thought that I might be sending Adam out to UT by himself, I just bawled and bawled. But I was shown mercy and it all worked. We got into Denver just before midnight, in enough time to get our little Yaris rental car and drive the hour away from SLC to our hotel in Orem.

Saturday we woke up to RAIN RAIN RAIN. But we didn't care. We hopped in the car and drove up to Park City to Olympic Park where the 2002 winter games were held. We wanted to go on the zipline and do the bobsled and really didn't even process that those things might be closed in the rain. So, hoping that the rain would subside, we stayed and watched the "Flying Ace" aerial skiiers practice off the giant jumps and land in the huge swimming pool. Pretty cool stuff. We froze (luckily we brought our sweatshirts!), and the rain never stopped. So we didn't get to ride the rides like we had planned. We decided we could go hike Timpanogas Cave and we took the lovely drive through the mountains. When we got up to the cave and realized that we were supposed to allow 3 hours for the roundtrip hike into/out of the cave, we knew there wasn't time in order to get to Matt and Cassie's reception on time. So we just drove around the Timpanogas area and hung out. Very nice. And I think I already said NEEDED.

After some issues with our Garmin saying that the Springville Museum of Art was at this "house" in Provo, and realizing that the Garmin was wrong (how COULD that be??!) we got to the reception and saw the beautiful bride and handsome groom. And the rest of the Porter fam. Oh how we've missed them. It felt SO good to see them--we hadn't seen all of them since we left Fresno to move to Omaha for Adam's med schooling...wow, 7 years ago. It was fun to see Jessica and her kids all grown up, well not ALL grown up--it was fun to see baby Sabrina too. Wow, I still can't believe it had been THAT long since we'd seen them all. It was like a family reunion, for certainly they are our family and we refer to Linda as our adopted mom.

Sunday morning we had the opportunity to meet Jonathan's GF Alyson and see Jon for early breakfast. It'd been a long time since I'd seen my brotherand I realize it might be a while again til I see him. Later we were able to meet up with Mark and go out to an early lunch before we headed out back to NE. Mark is so fun, I'm glad we could visit. I think he was rather amused that I told him that I desire to be related to the Porter family so he needs to be hooked up with someone in my family. Don't I wish. Then maybe it wouldn't be 7 years until we ALL got together again.

What a great weekend. Oh yeah, minus the airplane nonsense--we got back at midnight, 4 hours late. Which meant my mom had to wake up the kids to pick us up. Which meant Spencer only got 3 hours of sleep last night...as did all of us because of his screaming. But I think it was worth it in the end. We're not counting Utah out like we always have. Adam is considering a fellowship at the U. Yep, we have about 2 months to really narrow things down for fellowship applications....sure do love that hubby of mine and glad we could go away so I could be reminded how much I love him. We all need that sometimes!