Road Trip!

I have been putting off blogging about our trip because there is just so much! I took about 300 pictures, so I have been putting off downloading and editing all of them. I know I can't fit all of our trip into one post, so I will break it up for you. We went to Denver first, then Wyoming, so I will start with Denver.


This trip definitely started out rocky. We left an hour later on Wednesday than we wanted to because of my insane need to have a spotless house when we leave (it was soooo nice to come back to, though). Then we forgot Samantha's blanket, so we had to turn back, wasting another 30 minutes. Finally, that storm that flooded the Midwest? We drove through it. All in all, we arrived at our hotel in Omaha at 4:30 am. We had planned on getting there at about 1. Exhausted and so ready for sleep, we were so excited to finally get a few hours of sleep. The kids, however had a different idea. They both woke up on the way into the hotel room and decided not to go back to sleep. As soon as one would settle down, the other would start making noise and wake them back up. Finally after an hour or so of trying to get them to sleep I took them down to get breakfast and made them play in the car for a few hours to let Mike get a couple hours of sleep. I think we were both thinking about how easy it would be just to turn around and go back home at that point. But in the pioneer spirit we went on to Winter Quarters that morning :). It was nice, but I really expected more - old houses or something. It was just an "historic" (read really old and run down) town with a visitor's center and temple. They were both nice, but I guess I had just expected more. It was a nice start for our handcart trip though.
We got into Denver late Thursday night and luckily the kids were tired enough to sleep. Samantha came down with a fever that day and was miserable on the drive. I felt so bad for her. She had it the whole time we were in Denver, and of course we still dragged her around with us. We did keep her on Ibuprofen though and I did take her to the doctor (a very old doctor as it turned out). It was just a viral upper respiratory infection, so there really wasn't much we could do. Luckily she was doing much better by the time we got to Wyoming.

This is pretty much how she looked the whole time - no smiles. She was very, very, very clingy. She wouldn't let anyone else hold her, not even Mike. Yeah, that got old pretty quick. My left arm is now bionically stronger than my right from toting her around constantly.

We mostly just hung out with family out there. We found out the Mike's mom would be coming to live with us within the next month or so and so a lot of time was spent figuring out all the logistics with that. We did go back to Casa Bonita -it's a lot like the Mayan in Utah if you have been there. They have shows and cliff divers, an arcade, and they even break a pinata for all the kids every half hour (that's a lot of pinatas!). It was definitely the highlight of the trip for Carter. Samantha even played a little bit. This picture cracked me up. Samantha takes her skee-ball very seriously. We had a barbecue with a bunch of Mike's family on Saturday. His family is great. They have been so generous with letting us stay with them and they have been the ones taking care of Mike's mom - no easy task! I have really loved meeting them and getting to know them. They are some of the most down to earth people I have met. In spite of Samantha being sick, we had a great time! Mike and his mom and siblings Jon and Shar.

We left on Sunday for Wyoming. That was where the real adventure began. More on that later. I'm all blogged out.