Our visit to Utah

Once again, I find myself behind in my blogging. April was a busy and fun month for us. We went off to Utah to visit family during spring break the first week of April. It was a wonderful trip, once we got there! Here is a quick recap:

Thursday before we leave: 

we are busily packing and getting everything ready for us to be gone for a week in Utah

we find out that Oreo has 2 parasites and requires prescription medication

we also realize that we have to return an over-sized chair to Overstock.com so we won't be charged for it

we go to print a shipping label and the printer won't work

we go to print it out at a friend's house, which finally works, thank goodness

we rush off to get Oreo and meet Justin after work to drop the dog off at the kennel before they close at 6:30 pm

Justin goes straight to the kennel

I go get the prescription for the dog

we meet up at the kennel and they tell us that Oreo is contagious and they will not take him

It is 6:45 pm and we don't have a kennel for the dog

Justin rushes off to get the over-sized chair to UPS before 7:00 pm when it closes

Oreo gets sick in the car on the way home

I get home and madly start making phone calls to any and all animal hospitals in the area

no one is willing to take Oreo

we finally find a 24 hour emergency animal hospital down in Tacoma that is willing to board Oreo

Justin takes Blue our beta to a neighbor to fish sit and then takes Oreo to the kennel at 10:30 pm

I try to finish the packing and getting the house in order

we go to bed too late, very tired

Friday:

we wake up bright and early to get loaded and get the kids up to go to the airport

(picture of kids ready and excited to get there)

we get there in good time and get ourselves through the long security line

no one was stopped for the pat down, which I was very grateful for

we get to our gate 15 minutes before it is time to board, and we are feeling really great about how well the morning had gone so far

the airline people at the desk inform us that they overbooked the flight and do not have room for our family on the airplane

we were shocked and very frustrated

since families always have priority in boarding airplanes we did not realize that the early online check in would jeopardize our tickets entirely

they offered a $300 voucher to anyone who would delay their own flight but no one came forward

the only option they gave us was to fly Saturday night, their next available flight

thankfully Justin thought to ask them to check the flights out of Portland

they found one that left Friday at 5:30

we picked up our suitcases and car seats and went back to the parking garage a week earlier than we thought we would

we loaded up again and drove 3 hours south to Portland

(picture of kids on the second road trip of the day, still in the state of Washington, and not quite as excited to be back in the van)

we then parked again, went through security again and finally got on an airplane

(Katelyn is excited again. This is the first airplane ride for Katelyn and Dylan.)

we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house at 8:30 pm

it was a long, exhausting day, but at least we made it on Friday!

The rest of our trip to Utah is highlighted in a video I made in the next post to summarize our activities but in one sentence, here are the highlights:

We watched General Conference, played frisbee on the golf course, enjoyed the snow, played games, played in the snow, played tag, cooked yummy food, went to tour the Conference Center and Visitor's Center at the Salt Lake Temple, did a scavenger hunt, soaked up some vitamin D in the sunshine, went to BYU, saw the Carl Bloch art exhibit, Justin met up with MBAs on campus, played with cousins, went to see "Tale of Two Cities" the musical (amazing!!), took family pictures, had a push up competition, shopped and just had a good time together.

We managed to squeeze in a little bit of time to meet up with our good friend Sheri and her boys. They're getting so big!!

Back to the Portland Airport, next leg of the trip: 3 more hours driving back up to Seattle. Why didn't we ask the airline to pay for a rental car for us? Oh well!

What a fun trip!