Trippin to Utah State

Last week my wife and I went away overnight without our boys for only the second time ever. For a quick twenty-four hour trip it sure seemed to require a lot of planning. However, there was not enough planning on my part, since about an hour into our drive, my mother called to inform me I had not provided a means for entering our house. After some phone calls to my in-laws on vacation in Maui, we were finally able to procure a key for her. Fortunately that was the only hiccup for my mother and the boys, except for O and her mutually deciding his act class attendance wasn't necessary.

As for the getaway for my wife and I, it was nice, stressful, and over very quickly. The drive up was nice, quick and uneventful, just like any good drive should be. We checked into our hotel, which was nice, and then left for dinner with some other speaker and administrators from the conference my wife was speaking at. We were a little late, but not too bad. We had introductions and everyone was quite nice, but I was quite disappointed that no one was drinking (wine or beer). So I went with the flow (or lack there of), and just drank water. As we talked through dinner a couple of things became apparent, why they weren't drinking (all but one were LDS), they were all intelligent and well spoken, and the other guest speakers were much more experienced than my wife. One had written over forty books, one had written books plus invented a couple of things, and another was flown in from Virginia to speak. My wife was a little intimidated and nervous on our drive back to the hotel. So for her the trip was quite stressful, since she doesn't really speak in public and her nerves were rattles anyway. Neither of us slept well, her from nerves, me from discomfort. Despite her nerves, J did a great job with her speech. I'd post some video of it, but I don't think she would like that. I was able to spend some nice quiet time reading while she was in other seminars. As a reward for the good job she did, we got her ice cream on the way home. It wasn't until we were home with our boys a few hours later that we realized we didn't have her lap top. Needless to say she freaked out a little bit, since not only does it have all her stuff on it, but also our personal tax returns she already worked three hours on. She was able to find someone, who found it for her the next morning and sent it to Salt Lake with the speaker from Virginia who was going to the airport to catch her plane. All in all, a successful little trip, and I actually didn't mind being away from the boys. I just have to remember not to lock them out of the house next time.