Last Day Home

The Hawaii trip was well planned, but me getting down to California and me coming back was not. I don't think I actually decided for sure what day I would leave for California until the week before I did it. My planning for coming back to Utah went like this... okay, we get back the 31st, I'll recoup the 1st, drive back the 2nd and 3rd. Well, that was before Kim pointed out that the 2nd was a Sunday, so no, I couldn't do that. Then, Dad said we actually get back on the 30th, so I would have the 31st to recoup, and drive home the 1st and 2nd. Yeah, that did end up happening, but I didn't leave Saturday morning, I left Saturday night, which is not how I usually travel.

Saturday I woke up, had pancakes for breakfast with Roman, Isaac, Aaron, Mom, Dad, Kim, and some little boy named Corbin that Kim was watching. Then Kim left with Corbin and Aaron. Everyone else got ready and headed down to the Wild Animal Park. The boys were so excited to go to Dino Mountain, so that's what we went to first (and third). After seeing Dino Mountain, the boys were ready to go :o( Wait a second, I don't get to come to the WAP every week like these kids do, I wasn't quite ready to go. We walked around for a little while and saw some other animals, but Roman was "so tired" that we left pretty quickly. Man, when we were kids, we would stay ALL day, not any more I guess.

After the Wild Animal Park we came home to have lunch and put the boys down for a nap. I mean, they were so tired at the park that it should have been easy for them to go to bed right? Not a chance. They wanted to stay up and play and all of a sudden had plenty of energy. Little boogers :o) While the boys napped I was up packing, getting ready to head out. After packing I loaded up the car and headed to Poway. We had a family dinner at Grandma Kerby's and I was going to take off from there. Apparently the word hadn't gotten out that I was staying for the dinner because Grandma and Granddad were super surprised when I walked in, and at first Uncle Keith just over looked that I was there and then suddenly did a double take when it sank in that I wasn't supposed to be there.

Dinner was supposed to start at 4, and so I planned on leaving at 5. Well, dinner never starts on time, so by time I was done eating and looked at the clock, it was 5:15. I said my good-byes and was out the door and on my way around 5:40pm. Even though I left later and drove a lot of my trip in the dark, it still wasn't all that cool, temperaturely. It really wasn't until the last hour of the trip that I didn't have to keep rolling my windows down. I mean, I didn't have to drive with them down the whole time, but once I started getting hot, I would have to roll them down for a while from time to time. All in all, though, the drive wasn't really that bad. I was a little nervous to be driving in the dark, but I did just fine. The only little mishap I had was when I stopped off in Baker to get gas. For one thing, the price was OOBER expensive, so I just put in enough to make sure I would get to Vegas, no problem. But the big thing was that when I got back on the road, it automatically took me to I-15 SOUTH bound. There was one sign that warned me that's where I was headed, but it was right before I got on and there was no where to turn around. That was not happy, but luckily I didn't have to drive back as far south as I thought I was going to. I hadn't seen an exit in a really long time (that's why I stopped for gas, just to be safe). But, you know that exit that's always great when you're at the end of the alphabet game? Zzyzzx Road? Yeah, that one saved me. It was only a few miles back and I was able to turn around and start heading the right direction.

I made it to Cedar City around 1:20am or so. I was wide awake until I entered the door. As soon as I didn't have to be awake, I was sleepy! Grandma was still awake, but I felt bad because I wasn't in a visiting mood and I just headed straight down stairs.

I woke up in the morning, showered, went to a random sacrament meeting (I picked a building and hoped they had a 9am session), came home, visited with Grandma a little bit and then headed out. The drive wasn't too bad. It was warm, and there were slow cars in the left lane, but I survived and made it back in 2 1/2 hours, so that's really not a bad drive. So I'm back in Provo and although today was a pretty mellow day, it's not going to stay that way long. I got an e-mail from my principal and there are lots of meetings and important dates all coming up one right after the other. Dang shoot, I'm nervous. And after being in vacation mode, I've got to kick it into gear and get back into working mode.