Whirlwind Trip With Brynn and Mom. And the Fillmore Territory State House.

I had a situation where I had to go help a family member in court.

In St. George.

On a Friday morning.

Being that I work where I do, my boss was pretty understanding that this was something I needed to go and do.

It would be a whirlwind trip, drive down Thursday after work, crash with my parentals, hit court in the morning, take my mom out to lunch for mother's day, and be home by dinner on Friday.  A mere 24 hours.

I figured Brynn could use some punishment and invited her to go with me.

I was thinking about how Tay had done the Color Run (here) and General Conference (here) with me, I had spent the day in Jr. High (here) with Cas and a trip to the temple (here and here), and I had just been on Cali's field trip (here).  In my reckoning  it was Brynn's turn for some one on one.

So we loaded up on junk food, grabbed a bag of clothes, made sure we had books to read in case the court process was a long one, and we hit the road.

The sunset driving down was gorgeous.

We hit Grandpa Dick's and Grandma KC's at about 11:00 that night.  Grandpa and Grandma came out of their room, sleepy eyed, and hugged us, gave us blankets, informed us we'd be going out to breakfast the next morning, and shut off the lights.

By the way, they have the best couching for sleeping on.  The Man and I usually take it when we visit, leaving The Circus with the blow up mattresses.

Brynn was excited to be able to sleep on that perfect couch that night.

The next morning we hit The Wagonwheel for breakfast, because frankly, it wouldn't be a trip to St. George without breakfast at the Wagonwheel. We checked out an antique shop and we did our thing at the courthouse.

We combined a celebratory lunch with a Mother's Day lunch at La Frontera with Aunt McKell and Uncle Scott who were also there for the court thing and with happy Mother's Day wishes to my mom, we hit the road to head home.

We stayed with Aunt McKell and Uncle Scott through Beaver

where we found Brynn the most giant sucker ever,

and then Brynn and I split off and stopped in Fillmore to see the Territory State House.

I had no idea that Fillmore used to be Utah's capitol.  Apparently it was chosen due to being geographically the center of Utah.  They held one legislative session there and then after that it was voted to be moved to Salt Lake where most everyone was living anyway.

Because of moving the capitol to Salt Lake the building in Fillmore was never finished.  Below shows what it was planned to be, the colored wing being all that there actually is of it.

Apparently traveling across the state and back in a 24 hour time span, with your mom, is exhausting.

 Thanks B for being my travel companion in this.

I hope to be able to spend more one on one time with my kids, and I hope they all know how much the mean to me.

Also, we need more family trips out and about, because that's what we do, we travel.  I foresee a family camping trip in our near future.  Anyone want to go with us? :)

Easter 2013. The One Where We Hang Bryce Off a Cliff.

Aside from the fact that the fish had a high adventure and barely escaped with his life (here), and aside from the fact that we had to rescue my nephew Ayden from the wet, muddy "quick" sand (here), I would say this was one of the best Easters.

Also aside from the fact that we didn't actually do anything on Easter Sunday.  Except I went to church but I do that every Sunday.  We didn't hide eggs or even have a fancy ham dinner.  We grilled steaks for the two of us and watched movies.  You wouldn't have even known it was Easter at our house.

But just because we didn't do much on the actual Easter Sunday didn't mean we weren't celebrating it up from Tuesday to Saturday before hand.

And we did hide chocolate eggs for The Circus the weekend before (here) so aside from the actual Easter Sunday, we had a great Easter. :)

It started out when we busted out of work early on Tuesday and hit the road.

The One Where I Save My Nephew From Quicksand.

Have you ever seen the Mythbusters where they test Pirate tricks?  The one in particular where they talked about how Pirates would bury people up to their necks on the waterline so they would drown come high tide?

Did you see it?

I saw it.  And I happened to remember it because I just knew at some point that was going to be pertinent information in my life.

Okay, not really.  I have no idea why I remembered that episode.  Probably because it had to do with pirates, and since my high school mascot was a pirate I find myself loyal to all things pirate.

"Cyprus pride.  You are deep in Pirate territory."

The Mythbusters built a large box contraption filled with sand and buried Grant into the sand up to his chin.  They found that he was able to dig himself out again.  But they found when they added water to the sand, to simulate being on the water's edge, the situation changed.  When Grant made movements to wiggle out of the sand, the space he made in the sand around him would immediately fill with wet sand, unlike the dry sand which stayed where it was.  The Mythbusters realized that the Pirates were pretty clever to bury their victims at the water's edge.  Wet sand meant it wasn't possible to dig yourself out. (Check it out on the Mythbusters site here.)

Seeing this Mythbusters episode solidified my place as favorite Aunt for a lifetime.

At least for one nephew anyway.