Super Fast Trip to Utah and the End of the Malibu

My cousin Alyssa got married in the Provo City Center temple this past weekend. I'd really wanted to go; she's a good cousin friend and also it would be a great excuse to show off Parker to the family!

Jordan doesn't have much time off left so we knew we couldn't stay very long. He took a half day on Wednesday and we drove the whole way that afternoon/night. It was kind of crazy, but the boys were amazing in that tiny squashed car for 11 hours! We didn't get to Mike and Laurie's until 1:30. When we hit Springville I was really wishing they lived there instead of Salt Lake!

After Parker slept the first three hours. I had to sit in the back, squished between the two carseats, and comfort him and feed him for the rest of the trip while Lexi got the luxury of the front seat. Not fair.

How do babies sleep like this?

She's so smug up there.

Logan thought that putting tape on me was great fun. I was willing to do anything to keep the kids happy!

When we finally got to Mike and Laurie's everyone was exhausted and so tired and I think I'd gone a little crazy being in the backseat. But I'm pretty glad we did it all in one day instead of two.

On Thursday morning I decided to go down to see my grandparents. Logan wanted to stay and play with Grammy and his cousins, and Jordan had to work, so it was just me and Parker who went down. It was so great to see them!

 Parker was very cute and put on his smiles and cuteness for them.

That evening we had dinner with Mike and Laurie and then went to a movie with Josh, Merijane, Krista, and Matt. Laurie took Parker at night and it was so nice to get some more sleep!

On Friday morning the boys were up bright and early so we hurried down to my Aunt Kerri's house to be with my mom and Michelle. My cousin Cassidy was there too. She was visiting from Texas. Her baby Elise was born 5 days before Parker (she and Logan actually share a birthday) but she weighs about 4 lbs less than he does! They had a lot of fun playing together.

Parker finally fell asleep so we put him in his carseat on the porch while we went swimming in Kerri's pool.

Logan had a great time swimming!

After swimming, we had a quick lunch and then Kerri let me get her horse Sugar ready for Logan to ride! They had a little saddle that was just perfect. Logan had the best time and kept saying "Yippee! Yahoo!" I had so much fun leading him around and I taught him to stop and go. After about 30 laps around the round pen it was time to get ready to go to the wedding.

We left the boys with Michelle and fortunately Parker slept the whole time so she really only had to take care of Logan. The sealing ceremony was beautiful and I just love the City Center Temple. It's so special to us because we were able to watch it being built during the MBA program. Logan really loves it too. 

Afterwards we wondered around and took a couple silly pictures.

And then Alyssa and her new husband Matt came out of the temple. She looked beautiful!

We met up with Matt for dinner at Cubby's. I love Cubby's, it's so yummy! I could eat there all the time. They don't have them in Arizona so I really wanted to go while we were there. I got a steak salad and Jordan got a yummy burger and I stole a few bites.

Matt and Parker were a bit unsure of each other at first.

But then they were friends. Matt has come a long way since Logan was born! He refused to hold Logan as a baby pretty much. 

Mom really liked the food at Cubby's too.

After Cubby's it was time for the reception. Logan was super excited because I'd told him there was dancing and cupcakes, and there were. Woot woot!

Seeing him dance was the cutest thing. They had a guy singing Michael Buble songs and he was awesome. Really, you walked in and you thought you were just listening to a recording. Logan was dancing right away and had a great time!

We all gave Matt a hard time because he and the singer were wearing the exact same outfit. It was pretty amusing!

Michelle held Parker pretty much the whole time and he was nice enough to sleep a lot while we enjoyed chatting and snacking on the kettle corn and cupcakes.

On Saturday morning, we got up early and had family pictures taken at FotoFly Home. We just LOVE FotoFly but have never been to their Home location in Draper. It was actually in a house! As Logan would say, "I wasn't expecting that!" I'll do a full blog post with those pictures later.

On the way back from pictures, we made a quick stop at Grandma Cline's house so she could meet Parker. She thought he was really cute, and Logan had a fun time petting Olivia. 

When we got back we quickly changed our clothes, had lunch near Mike and Laurie's, and headed over to Josh's house where we hung out and let the kids play.

Here's Libbie with Parker

 Grandpa Birks and Grandpa Cline came over and got to meet Parker, and that was so fun. 

Then we took the kids to a splash pad. Unfortunately my kids were totally worn out and cried almost the whole time and so did some of the others. We were pretty wiped out so we called it a day. I wanted to get the kids to bed "early ish" anyway so we could be on the road.

We left at about 8:15 the next morning. We packed up the Malibu. Little did we know it would be our last trip in this car... *foreboding music here*

The boys were perfect, even though I did end up sitting in the back again after a few hours to keep Parker happy. Fortunately they both conked out after a few hours and took a loooong nap. Pretty sure we wore them out.

Again, this looks so uncomfortable! How is sleeping like this possible?

When Logan woke up we amused ourselves by taking a few funny pictures.

We made it to Page (halfway) pretty quickly and I was thinking we were making good time and everything was going well. We had lunch at Burger King and Logan got to play at the playplace and stretch his legs. About an hour (maybe?) later we started hearing an awful noise coming from the engine. And it just kept getting louder and louder. Oh, and did I mention that we had forgotten to get gas in Page so we were in the middle of nowhere with almost no gas, almost no water, no hazard lights, no reception on our phones, and our car was making a terrible noise. It was pretty terrifying. We said a little prayer that we would be able to make it to this tiny gas station in the middle of nowhere that was a few miles away. Fortunatly, we made it to the gas station. I went in and bought a ton of water in case we didn't make it to Flagstaff (the next big city). Jordan checked the oil and...there was no oil. We had forgotten to get our oil changed for so long, there was no oil left, and it had totally killed our engine. Jordan put 3 quarts of oil in it because we didn't really have a choice but to try to make it to Flagstaff.

We said another prayer and we went slow as our car continued to rattle for the next hour to Flagstaff. I was so thrilled as we coasted into a McDonald's parking lot. I took the boys inside for a treat (but of course their ice cream machine wasn't working) while Jordan called his uncle Rick, who is a serious car guy, to have him listen to the engine. Rick confirmed that our engine was totally toast and the only thing to do was to junk the car.

Heavens. By this time it was about 6:30pm, so we found a cheap hotel (thankfully our car got us there). Jordan went out to a store to buy some food and Logan took a bath. The hotel did not have any cribs, so Parker slept in his car seat on the bathroom counter. I was so glad he slept as well as usual (waking twice) because I really wasn't sure how he would do being in the car seat all night when he'd already been in it for 9 hours that day.

Of course the boys were up before six the next morning, so we had a not-impressive continental breakfast and then pulled everything out of the car. Then Jordan drove to a rental place to get a rental car, left the Malibu there, drove back to load everything up, then we went back to get the Malibu and then I followed him out to a Pick and Pull junk yard in the middle of nowhere, where we said goodbye to our Malibu. It was the first car we'd bought, over six years ago, and as much as I didn't like it, it was really weird to just leave it there. You can see it in the picture next to the white car in the back.

I was pretty stressed about the whole thing. On the way to the junk yard I literally got sick over it and threw up. This was obviously a huge unexpected expense, and our house payment was coming up soon. I was pretty worried about it, but Jordan kept reminding me that if you can fix it with money, it can't be all that bad. It's a family motto. It's true, no one was hurt and it could have been much worse. But it was a pretty hefty blow.

We made it home in one piece. The boys were both sick the next couple of days. As an added kick in the pants, on Tuesday, the day after we finally got home, we got an unexpected hospital bill for Parker's birth that our insurance hadn't covered. I was kind of freaking out, saying that something else bad was going to happen, because bad things happen in threes, but then Jordan reminded me about my speeding tickets (and registration tickets) that I'd gotten a couple weeks before.

So that was the end of our trip. It was really super fun until the very very end!