The Dying Hole

Remember that time I was on break from school and visited Chris and Laura? Well, I took my camera and charger there and only came back with my camera. A couple weeks went by before our camera battery starting losing life and we thought we might use it and it needed to be charged. So we began the search for the cord. I get really bad about "cleaning" my house by just making nice neat piles of things that need to be put away. Usually that's how we lose all our stuff. It just looks so much nicer, and takes very little effort, to have things in a pile than just spread all over the place. And that is why I think that my "cleaning" really results in dying holes of sorts. From papers, to cords, to food sometimes, things just get put there, go bad or get thrown away when I decide to unmake a pile. So I had to clean and clean to get all my piles gone and we still didn't find the cord. We searched our cars, our closets, Ivan's room and toy buckets and nothing. Here I am thinking I threw away our one and only camera charger. I had absolutely no idea where it could be and it had been so long since I went to SLC that it never occurred to me that might have been where it was. When I did finally think, maybe that's where it was, we had been missing the cord for over a month. Thank goodness nothing exciting happens in our lives that we might need to document with photo proof. So of course we had to take a trip to Salt Lake just to retrieve our cord, pretty cool that tons of Michael's family also happened to be in town at that time.


Michael was talking to Chris on Friday, who sent us a picture of the cord and confirmed our theory, and he convinced us that we should come visit. We took the scenic route, drive # 32 actually, from The Most Scenic Drives in America a book Michael and I got when we were just engaged. When Michael was on his mission, he met a few families that he really liked and he does a good job of staying in touch with them, even after being home for 4 years. One of those families was visiting one of her kids in Star Valley, Wyoming. We went and visited with them "on the way" and added about 2 hours extra to our usual 3.5 hour drive to Utah. The drive really was scenic though. This trip made me really really want to live in Logan, Utah because it was so gorgeous! Other than the beautiful scenery, our drive really wasn't that great. Ivan was wonderful. He played quietly and slept the whole way.

Max on the other hand, was not so nice. I didn't put him in his kennel for the first part of the drive because I thought he would be more comfortable and less nervous that way. He really wanted to sit in someone's lap though. He tried pretty hard to make his way back to the front seat for almost an hour with no success. Finally he figured Ivan was a person, so he would sit in his lap. So here's Max, sitting on Ivan's car seat. Have I mentioned that Max is a nervous pee-er? If he gets in trouble he pees. If he thinks he's in trouble, he pees. If he gets too excited about something, he pees. So we can't yell at the dog to get off our child, then we'd have a wet baby. Thank goodness Max was more on the car seat than the baby, and it actually gave Ivan something else to distract him. Yay for fluffy tails!

When we stopped in Wyoming, we let Max out to play and were pretty curious what he would do around horses, chickens and not on a leash. He ran around for a while without noticing the horses, but when he did, he thought he was a herd dog. Silly thing can't bark any louder than he breathes and he's about the size of a horse's head, so nothing to be afraid of. The horses were actually pretty interested in Max but he was scared out of his mind. Then he found the poop. I tried to get there fast enough to stop him from eating it, but I was too late and I'm pretty sure he tried to clean the whole field they were in of any poop in it. When we left, we put Max in the back seat (not in his kennel) and continued our drive. About and hour later, Max threw up. I love dogs. I've been around dogs my whole life. I've even worked at a vet clinic where we do surgeries and deal with sick dogs all the time. And I have got to say, this was the worst dog experience I've ever had! Poop by itself is bad, vomit by itself is nasty, but combine the two and have a dog puke up a butt load of puke... oh my goodness. Ivan started crying, Max kept puking, Michael almost threw up, and here I am trying to clean up piles and piles of poop-puke into our Burger King bag with 3 napkins and we couldn't pull over! We were still on this scenic drive, so not on an interstate and there weren't any shoulders. A couple miles later we were able to pull over but man, that felt like hours! Max road in his kennel the rest of the time there and the whole way back. For future reference, I happened to have a bottle of really smelly (in a good way) hand sanitizer. I squirted that stuff all over the seat and floor where the  dog threw up and cleaned it up with some wipes and it didn't smell bad anymore. I actually couldn't smell any poop or vomit after that. Oh boy, we were having some real adventures at this point.

The scenery of the drive. 

The Capitol

After 6 hours of driving, we finally got to Utah. It was Michael's grandpa's birthday that day so we wanted to stop by and say hi. Well, they weren't home. We were going to go by his uncle's and he wasn't home. The family visiting from Arizona took 2 cars and only half were in town then. So we tried to meet up with his grandpa and uncle, who happened to be in the same place, at Cabela's where there was some cool party. We got there right about the same time everyone was leaving and missed them. Oh, for those of you wondering how I can be such a horrible person and leave my dog in the car while we go shopping, I didn't. Cabela's offers free kennels for your dog while you shop, cool, huh?! Then we ended up driving around Salt Lake and found this place to take a short walk. It's called Ensign Peak. We didn't actually go to the peak, cuz we're lazy and it was chilly. And when Max did what he did, he got my coat. So we walked a little bit, got to see a pretty cool view of the valley and read some about them dang Mormons. Apparently Ensign Peak was where Brigham Young and a bunch of others made the plans for the streets and buildings for the city. It was pretty neat. We got to have In and Out, the best burgers ever! And we finally decided to go to Chris and Laura's. Oh, I forgot to mention that when we got into town Chris and Laura were on a date, they went to the movies, so we couldn't just go to see them right away either, hence all the time killing.

The view from Ensign Peak

We got there, got settled a little and found out Ivan had a fever. A real fever, his temp was 102! Poor kid. He didn't act like he was sick or anything so I'm thinking he's teething. Surprisingly enough, after being in the car all day, we was ready for bed. He got some tylenol to help his fever go down and he fell asleep. Then Michael's family from Arizona, the Shumways, called and invited us over. Michael's aunt Julie, the oldest of the kids on his mom's side, has 9 kids and 7 of them came to visit. Ivan was asleep, even if he had a fever, so I thought we were safe in going to visit these guys for an hour or so. We left Ivan with the Wamplers and we left to visit the Shumways. It's been 2 years since we've seen them and it was really fun to catch up. Peter, one of the older kids, had actually been in Washington serving a mission so I hadn't ever met him before. When we left there, I texted Laura to see how things were and she told me Ivan was still awake. Poor thing would go to sleep if you picked him up but the second you put him down he'd be awake and wouldn't go back to sleep. Laura has the coolest thermometer ever! Seriously, ever. You just rub it across the forehead and in 2, yea no exaggeration, 2 seconds or less you have a reading. And it's accurate. I'm getting one. But that meant that Ivan and I shared the couch and were up every 2-3 hours. Not a good night's sleep. And we had church the next day. It was really good to see some family though. Have I mentioned that Laura is one of my favorites to visit? I feel like her and I have the most in common, especially when it comes to food. :] We got to see Michael's parents and his sister Heather who is living in Albuquerque and one of his uncles. It was a fun trip especially seeing Ivan and Ben. They grow so fast and one day they will be best friends by choice, not just because we say so.