The long road home

So after Christmas we hung out in Yakima for about a week.  We had a good visit with Dallin's friend Erin and her two boys and just enjoyed relaxing a bit.  Dallin's siblings filtered out as the week went on and by New Years we were the only ones left.  We spent New Year's Eve night eating lots of food, watching movies, and playing Dr. Mario with Dallin's parents.

Then on Sunday we went to church and headed down to Portland where we got to visit with one of my old roommates, Alisa, and her husband Nathan.  I really enjoyed visiting with them since we haven't gotten to see them too much since they got married.  Monday we made the long drive down to Provo where we stayed with Jaron and Amy (thanks guys).  We had so much fun visiting with siblings, cousins and friends.  Landon and Kendra live just across the street from Jaron and Amy and they invited us over for dinner one night and some other people came too.  We got to see Duncy (Dallin's cousin) and Liz and meet their new little on, Mya, who is so precious!   We also got to visit with Nick (who Dallin grew up with) and Emily and their kids. Issiah who has gotten so big and their new little girl Elly, who is also very cute!   While in Provo we also enjoyed just dropping by and seeing people who had no idea we were going to be there.  We did this to a few of our old professors and it was good to see them again and talk.  Dallin decided to go sit in on one of his professors classes so I had an hour to roam the campus, it was fun.  We also were able to drop in and see the Carsons, who are family friends of mine, they had no idea we were coming and were very surprised when we walked in their door.  We also surprised Rob and Karina and their kids and Lisa and Blaire and their kids.  After being so far away for a year and a half it was so much fun for us to be able to visit friends and family, we just couldn't stop smiling.

After a few days, our time in Utah ran out and we headed out.  We stopped in Denver the next afternoon and visited with Liesel, one of my other bestest friends, and her two daughters.  As with most of my other friends from high school or college, I haven't seen her in forever so it was really good to spend some time catching up and to meet her newest addition to her family.  Then we got to go out to dinner with Jon and Alicia, other bestests friends of mine, and they let us crash at their house for the night.  While there Jon made us brownies, and we ate them with ice cream, it's kind of a thing me and Alicia have... and they were sooooo good.

From there on out the plan was to drive to about St. Louis the next day, stopping at the visitors center in Independence along the way, and then finish up the trip on Saturday.  However, we got bored of traveling by about 10 AM Friday morning and decided to try and drive straight through.  (There was also supposed to be a storm moving in and we wanted to beat that)  We traded off driving and sleeping and 27 hours later made it home!  Our car has about 7,000 more miles on it than it did, we lost a lug nut (not really sure how that one happened), one of our tail lights burned out as well as our trunk light, we had to add more power steering fluid, and we had to get our oil changed, but we made it in one piece and had a really good time.  Although next time we decide to drive across the country... it'll be in the summer!

Our trip (notice the long stretch from K to L!!)

Christmas Day

I was a little worried about Christmas morning this year.  I am sort of a morning person and I really like Christmas so I usually get up pretty early on Christmas morning.  Add this to the fact that we live in a time zone that is three hours ahead of Washington and I was afraid I would wake up at about 3 AM Christmas morning.... it would have been torture waiting like 4 hours for everyone else to wake up and it's pretty safe to say I would have been murdered had I woken anyone up before 6. Dallin's siblings like sleep apparently.  Luckily I slept until like 6 or 6:30 (I would have slept longer but we were in the same room with Andrew and Hilarie, and Andrew made a weird noise).  Dallin and I went out and opened our stockings and talked for a bit.  Then we got bored so we decided to wake up Hilarie and Andrew and went and jumped on them (pay back!).  Hilarie was very reluctant to get up though and tried to kick Dallin off the bed... I'm not really sure what happened after that but Hilarie ended up screaming and woke up the whole house for us!  I thought it worked out well, others were not so enthusiastic.

Christmas morning was a lot of fun, once everyone was up we distributed and opened presents.  It took a few hours I think because there were 11 of us there.  Then we went upstairs to have probably the biggest Christmas breakfast ever! (I know I took some pictures, but I can't find them)

Christmas night we went to Sue and Lonnie's house for Dinner.  This is the second Glenn family Christmas dinner I have been to and it was a lot of fun again.  We had a really good dinner and enjoyed visiting with Grandma, Grandpa, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  After dinner we had a pass around game.  We ended up getting a dehydrater (thank you Grandma and Grandpa) and then we all went upstairs and listened to some of the boys play guitar/sing Christmas songs for us.  We even convinced Grandpa to break out his harmonica and play for us!  It was a really good Christmas. 

Grandpa's Train song!!

Christmas (continued)

Well, good thing I didn't say when I would update.... I'm going to try and not make this a super long boring post about what we did for Christmas, the problem is we did so much... anyways, I will try and shorten it... a bunch.

so the last post had us leaving Illinois... from there we went to Iowa where we got to spend a whole day with one of my bestest friends, Taryne (T), and her parents.  We had such a good time there, mostly just hanging out and chatting.  Our schedule worked out just right so that we were able to be there for T's birthday! And I even got to give her boyfriend a hard time, over the phone because he was still up in Chicago where she goes to school (T, please tell Chad that I was mostly kidding, I just had to tease him, it's my job, and your dad was encouraging me). The next day we left Iowa and drove through Nebraska, which was unseasonably warm, and Wyoming which was kind of snowy, and stayed the night in Ogden.  This was farther than  we had planned on going that day but we were trying to beat a storm. It was okay though because the Ogden hotel had an amazing and free breakfast.  Then the next day we drove up through Idaho and Oregon and made it home a day early where we surprised Dallin's parents and Aubrie!  We also got to stop in Parma and visit family there.  We've missed our regular stops  there and really enjoyed seeing some of our cousins and Aunt Shari.

We were really relieved to finally make it to Washington, our car was super dirty, inside and out and our bums were incredibly sore! Dallin was so excited to see his puppy Joe and they spent some time running around and playing.  Jaron and Amy showed up a little bit after us with their own puppy Bianca and Hilarie and Andrew (or rather mostly Hilarie and a little bit Andrew) drove all night and woke us up the next morning by jumping on our bed at like 7 AM.  Apparently this was payback for the last family reunion, a year and half ago, when we did this to them... and I think there was another time as well... in any case it was well deserved. Landon and Kendra came a few days later with Sophie (sp?) to complete the group, and it was a very full house!

On Christmas Eve we went up to Leavenworth and had fun looking at the shops and eating.  Aubrie especially liked all the walking as she was still on crutches from her ACL surgery about a week before that.

Christmas (part 1)

Well it took a few days longer than I had said, but here is a bit about our Christmas trip.  But first a bit of a disclaimer... if we were near/passing through your home town, and we didn't stop and see you, particularly if you live in Utah we are very sorry but there were SO many people that we wanted to see and unfortunately we had a bit of a schedule to keep, there were lots of people we wish we had the time to visit but it just didn't work out.
So now, on with the story!

I guess I should start with the reasons we drove instead of flying in the first place.  There were a few reasons, the first and biggest being the fact that Dallin didn't want to fly because of all of the new security regulations, and I wasn't too thrilled about them either, so in true law school student fashion, we decided to protest!! sounds dramatic doesn't it, well it kinda was, I mean driving all the way across the country and back in December! We had several people question our sanity but we survived, more or less, so no harm done!  Now I wasn't totally sold on the whole stick-it-to-the-man reasons for not flying I mean going through security = not fun, but driving the 46 hours it takes to get to Yakima=not so fun either. The up side, and deciding factor for me, was the flexibility driving gave us.  If we flew we wouldn't be able to leave until the 23rd because that was the last day of my make up finals and I didn't want to risk missing a final, we didn't get any bad weather this semester so I was really done with finals on the 17th.  Also, we got to stop and visit so many people along the way.  We have missed our friends and family so much this past year and a half.  Last but definitely not least, I got to bring lots of clothes, at no extra charge, two pea coats (I thought about bringing three but thought it might be a bit excessive), and a whole duffel bag of shoes (no that was not excessive at all, it was necessary! plus Dallin's shoes were in there too).   So anyways on the 17th I went to my office Christmas party where we ate pizza, cookies, and played wii, and Dallin went to get snow tires and then we took off at about 3:00 in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, we live in DC which is the land of never ending and so unpredictable traffic, and true to form, we hit traffic as we left the city.  I swear someone watches every time we try and go more than a few miles outside of DC and diverts all traffic in our direction.  Anyways after about an hour we were probably 20 miles outside the city, and we got rid of most of the other disgruntled drivers and really started our trip.  We got through Maryland with no further incident, took a quick stop in Pennsylvania for a much needed bathroom break, snuck across the tip of West Virginia and then headed into Ohio.  It was dark through most of this trip so there really is nothing exciting to report.  We stayed just outside Dayton for the night and then got up early to get on our way again.

Dallin and I in front of the window where
Joseph Smith was killed

The next day (Saturday) was a little more exciting.  After leaving Ohio we went through Indiana, and on into Illinois.  We stopped at Carthage to see the jail where the Prophet Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were martyred. It was freezing cold, but it was a neat experience.  It was really cool to see the old jail, the hole from the bullet that probably killed Hyrum is still in the door.  It was interesting to learn that a family actually lived in the jail as the keepers and that they trusted the prophet and other men so much that they let them have their bedroom instead of staying in the actual cell.

The bullet hole in the door

Carthage Jail

After leaving Carthage we drove up to Nauvoo.  We got there at about 3 in the afternoon and everything closes at 5, but we decided to try and get as much in as we could anyways.  We got to see the temple.  It really isn't very big, but it is so beautiful.  And the view from the hill that it sits on is amazing.  We were hoping to be able to go in to do some work, but we didn't really have as much time there as we had hoped, so we'll have to go back and do it another time.  We also toured Brigham Young's house, where we got to see the room where the apostles met after Joseph Smith was killed to decide what to do.  We toured Heber C Kimball's house, the bakery, the drug store, and another house, but we can't remember which one it was.  We tried to stop at the brickyard, but no one was there.   It was so cold and windy! It made us so grateful for our warm heated cars and for those pioneers who braved all of this before heaters and cars so that we could have the truth of the gospel!

Ok well I'm pooped, more later.  I would say tomorrow but we all know that would probably be a lie.