Trippin'

 There are two reasons I like to travel.  One, I like to see things; and two, I like to get away from normal life.  I'm always planning a road trip in my mind or contemplating possible places I'd love to visit, checking flights, looking at maps - this is what I do for fun.  But in spite of my passion for a good vacation, I also LOVE to come home and after a bit of time away it's something I desire.   Always, I want to come back home.  Is that analogous to our mortal journey?  Maybe!  I'll leave that to you.

Recently our family was gone for 16 days.  That's a long time, especially considering we spent the bulk of the days in the car together driving somewhere (and the non-driving days were spent surrounded by lots of other people).

Here are some thoughts from this particular trip:

1.  Water views trump all.  We rented a little house on a lake so we could play better (Bryan's idea) and the Robison's went in on that with us.  Waking up in the morning with the sun peaking over the forested mountains and reflecting on the water was...to put it succinctly...heavenly.  I'd go back in a heartbeat.

2.  Pack food and lots of it.  I did such a good job of that on this trip.  I had plenty of food all the time whenever anyone was hungry and that saved us from lots of squabbles between children.  Food is entertainment when traveling.  ;-). We even came home with extras, I packed so much.  I had things like popcorn, guacamole, fruit snacks, multiple types of granola bars, apples, sandwich fixings, and cinnamon bears.  It was the bomb.

3.  Kids get bored when they look at nature.  So while we loved our Yellowstone visit - when we left on the third day the kids were ready to move on.  A week would have been too much for them.  If, however, you are avid hikers you'd need to stay longer.  We didn't get enough time and our legs were too tired to pack all the hikes in that we wanted to do.  

4.  Cousins - always cousins.  They make any trip ten times better from your kids' perspectives.

We are now home and getting into our learning rhythm.  I wrote a little bit about backing off and going with the flow that has always worked with us.  I'm still working on that.  I'm still trying to pack too much into our days.  The problem is that there are so many interesting things to learn and valuable programs and books and projects.  It's hard to be choosy but I've learned that we really can only handle a certain amount of brain-work every day.

PHOTOS

We LOVED having the Sants spend two weeks with us.  We also all went camping with Hez and co.

Keaton celebrated his 25th Birthday while at our house.

Next we drove and drove 10 hours to get to Hayden Lake and play with Shanon and co.

Frankly, that may have been the highlight of the whole trip.  Prefect weather, good company, and lots of fun.

Next the Richardsons took on Yellowstone.

When we rejoined civilization we spent a day with the Sants in Rexburg, family in Rigby, and of course, family in Pocatello.  Idaho is always a fun place for us to visit!

We visited a WWII bomber plane

Logan and Shay tried their hand at some complicated math problems.

Sarah did a fun unit on Moonjellies with all the littles

We spent our last days in Utah.  We saw Barry and fam (why do I not have a picture??!!) and really enjoyed seeing their new house and all the hard work they've done to make it shine.  Logan got to spend the weekend with his best bud, and we enjoyed a fun visit to the BYU Store to see what we could buy.  ;-)

Then we finally headed home across the desert.