suprise! utah!

tyler and i were talking the other day about utah and california. we only have a short time left here in california and it's going fast! we miss utah and realize it might be awhile before we can go back there. we decided we needed at least one more visit to grandparents, parents and siblings (and niece) before we move and his schedule is more rigid. we looked at our calendar and presidents day looked like the best option. it would be a fast trip, but it would sure be fun. we decided not to tell anyone we were coming up - we wanted it to be a suprise, especially since we were only going to be there for 3 days. well... it was a suprise and it continued to be suprising for the weekend AND the next week. :)


i wish i'd taken more pictures of what we did. we mostly hung out with our families and let the kids play. cole and brookie we so thrilled to be with their grandpas and grandmas, uncles, aunt and cousin!


on the way in we stopped and saw scott's and leanne's new house. very neat! we're so happy for them! it was fun to see how leanne had organized everything! thanks for letting us invade and invite ourselves for lunch!!


ty's parents were at a swim meet when we got there, so we stopped by my mom and dad's first. my cute mom was really excited to see us (the feeling was mutual)!! we hung out and grandma neff came over to say hi. it was so nice to be with family!! coleman about jumped out of his skin with excitement when grandpa came home from work!! we were all excited to see him too! we hung out and played and just had a good time together.


ty called his dad and suprised him with the news, so we went to thier house when they got home from trent's meet. it was so fun to see them and coleman was thrilled to see the uncles!!! ty's mom and dad were so nice to let us stay with them on such short notice. before we knew it his dad had a room all set up for us - bed and everything.


we hung out and visited our grandparents and just enjoyed the trip. we realized saturday afternoon that we'd forgotten to go to the bank, so we decided to lengthen our trip a couple days and go home tuesday instead of sunday.


the extra two days were really fun. we had a good time being with everyone!!

on tuesday as we were getting ready to leave, we'd said our goodbyes and packed everything up and were ready to load the car when we realized it was leaking tons of antifreeze!! bummer!! ty worked on it for a couple hours trying to find where it was leaking from while the kids and i hung out in limbo at my parents'. thanks mom for bein super babysitter!! - and on such short notice. he looked and looked and couldn't find it. we finally took the car to a repair shop to see if they could figure it out. after 45 minutes of waiting, they figured out where it was leaking from and told us they could have it fixed by the next night or the following morning. since it would have taken ty and my dad longer than that, we decided to let them do it. we cleaned out the car and headed back to the grandparents to hang out for another day (or 2 or 3).

well, wednesday evening rolled around and the car wasn't finished. we waited 'till the next morning then started getting ourselves together to leave again. we waited and waited and waited, finally by the late afternoon we were pretty sure we weren't going to be leaving. they finally finished the car thursday morning and we left that afternoon. it was a bit of a long trip after it was prolonged, but we did do some fun things while we stayed. it was fun to see our families more and ty and i got to go on a date!! - we don't go often without our kids, so it was fantastic! we saw some of the olympics and played lots of games. overall - a very fun trip!!

here are a few pictures~

on the way home we noticed that coleman had conjunctivitis and the poor kid was miserable!! he was aksing me every minute or two to help him wipe his eyes and by the time we got to st. george, he was really upset. he finally fell asleep as we pulled into bloomington (my grandparents' house) and we took him out and into walmart to get something to cook for dinner. while we were there he woke up and his poor eyes were flowing with goop. we'd called our pediatrician from the road, but of course it was friday night and they were closed 'till monday. our only option with our insurance was to take him to an er... "er" sends chills down my spine - i've never had good experiences with ers... yuck! dirty, long wait, lots of sick people, expensive "advice" or sometimes expensive "hmmm... we dunno." we weren't too excited to take him to any er, but we finally decided it would be our best option.

here is where my tune changes. all our er experiences up to this point have been disasterous (not that we've had that many, but the couple we have had - not. good.) we walked in to dixie regional medical center and were greeted by a friendly older lady who wrote cole's name on a sticky note and then called to someone to take him right back. we waited for less than 2 minutes then went back to where a nurse checked him out then took our information and sent us to the waiting room. they brought him a coloring book with stickers and we waited for less than 5 minutes beofore they called him again. on the way back he got scared and started to cry. the girl was so cute with him and talked to him while we walked. when we got into a room we waited for less than 5 minutes again until a nurse came to see him. while the nurse was there the first girl came back and gave him some bubbles. we blew bubbles while we waited for the pa, then we quickly saw him. the nurse came back to put the first dose of medicine in his eyes and he started to cry. here the cute girl from before appeared again and asked if cole liked popsicles. of course he said yes, and she came back with about 12 popsicle options. he walked out of there feeling like a king and we'd taken care of the problem. the staff was friendly, efficient and kind and the hospital was clean. overall a clean and quick experience. very awesome!!

the antibiotics they gave him cleared his eyes overnight. he woke up puffy the next morning, but it went away during the ride in the car and by the time we got home you couldn't even tell. so great!!

that's our guy! happy through it all! :)

don't be too grossed out (even though we for sure were)!! when we got home (after being gone for 9 days instead of 3) our house was a wreck. i hadn't cleaned as well as i should have before we left and everything was a mess!

there was a strange organic smell coming from out kitchen sink too, and when i took the clean dishes out of the drianer and moved the lid to a pan, this is what we found.

this is a bean plant, sprouted from a black bean, growing in our sink. before we left, i'd made beans and since i was in a hurry, i chucked the funny looking ones into the sink, thinking i'd just run them down the disposal. well, i guess i missed, 'cause this bean plant grew while we were gone. there was a small rag in the sink under the clean dishes that must have been damp. between that and the lid to a pan that covered it partially we had our own little greenhouse.

loveley.

between that and the pink eye everything, every surface in our house has been wiped down with clorox wipes or clorox cleaner since we've been home. both ty and i have been on a cleaning binge. i think we're about there - except nobody wants to tackle the stack of mail to file... maybe we'll just put it all in a box and mark it with the year... :)