Utah in 72 hours or less

This weekend my nephew Colton was baptized. We were invited to go so we went. Trying to save vacation days and since I've already taken some for Derek's birth this year, we decided to go up early Friday morning and come home on Sunday. This was a good plan for a quick trip. However it didn't exactly work. The Van needed some work and they didn't finish till Friday about mid-day. We took off and made good time and got into Highland, UT at about 11PM. We had a very full Saturday with the Baptism, Mt. Timp Temple (me, Mom and my Sister Candice), Stacy, Derek and Anny to the BYU library for some homework and Grandpa taking the other kids (Drew, Katy, Tawny and Colton) sledding. Afterwards we went to Eric (my brother) and Lindsay's house in Sandy to check it out. They recently bought this home. Then back to Highland for an adult dinner out. AFTER all that we still ran down to this grocery store called Macey's for some shopping before we left for home and for our traditional KONG CONE ice cream treat. If you don't know about KONG CONES trust me just go if you are ever in Utah. Drew ate one and had a stomach ache that he couldn't get over for a few hours. So yesterday (Sunday) we got up and ate and were on the road by 7 AM. It was snowing in southern UT and Flagstaff area so we went to Las Vegas. This was fine until it took an hour to get across the dam. It was funny because we all made a bunch of dam jokes. Like "this is a lot of dam traffic" and "look there's the dam cops" (Hoover Dam does have it's one police department called the "Hoover Dam PD"). So even though it was slow it was still only 1pm and we were in good spirits. The rest of the trip was fine with mixed in rain Stacy studying (how she can type and ride in the car at the same time? I don't know). About ten miles outside of Wikenburg it stopped raining. I turned off the windshield wipers, but they wouldn't turn off. Stacy said: "I think you can turn them off now" I just smiled and said real softly "They won't turn off" She giggled then laughed then eventually just really belly laughed because each kid had the same conversation with me. "Dad you can turn them off, it's not raining anymore". To each I smiled and said "It's broke they won't turn off" Stacy laughing the whole time. I think she had finally gone nuts. We made it to Phoenix only to be delayed another 90 minutes with a huge semi-truck crash on I-10. It was amazing there were parts of the truck everywhere! We finally got home about 10:30 pm and in all were gone just about 60 hours. Vance, Marly and Sky stayed home and all was well (and clean) when we got home.

We have wonderful vacations, and this overall wasn't wonderful in the Van, but in Utah it was amazing and any trip you make it home safe from is a good one. We're glad Colton made the choice to be baptized and we are glad everyone was OK. I for one am glad I got to go to the Mt. Timp Temple and look forward to going to the SLC temple in the summer when we return (for a longer stay then one day).