IDAHO TRIP
PART 1

Wednesday, July 10, 2008:

James and I arrived back in California from our trip to Massachusetts on Tuesday night. My Mother, sister-in-law, Tiffany, Amber and her kids, and me and my kids were leaving the next morning at 5am to go to Idaho. My cousin, Amy, was getting married in the Idaho Falls Temple. I was so excited but I knew that this was going to be an interesting trip. 5 kids and 4 adults on a 14 hour trip. Luckily we were not driving the whole way in one day. The first day we stopped in Richfield, Utah (10 hr drive) at my mom's cousins. We arrived their at about 4 in the afternoon. The kids loved Cousin Randy's house. He had a trampoline, a porch swing, tons of toys, and chickens. I think if they could have the kids would have stayed there for the whole trip. Tiffany, Cressa (my cousin), Joshua, Eliza, and I all slept outside in a tent. (Don't worry Amber we got just as much sleep as you did.) The kids thought it was great. It was their first time sleeping in a tent and they had a lot of fun.

Thursday, July 17, 2008:

We were not up as early as the day before but we only had about about a four hour drive. (Plus some with a ton of stops. Remember there were 5 kids with us) By the time we got to Idaho Falls everyone else was already there and waiting. We had a good amount of the family there. My grandparents were there and both of my mom's sisters along with most of their families. We had a family pool and pizza party. We had not had that much of the family together in a long time and I have not spent much time with a lot of my cousins so it was fun catching up.

Everyone else was staying in Idaho Falls but I decided to take the chance and visit some of my college friends up in Rexburg so I decided to stay with an old roommate, Micki, my Hawaiian twin. When we got to her place a bunch of her roommates and some of my old friends were having a water fight and bbq. We joined right in. Joshua loved the balloon fight and could not get enough of it. The kids also had another first and for weeks after they were asking me for more. They got to try smorz! They were hooked. Even Aubrey was covered in white melted marshmallow.

Friday, July 18, 2008:

Friday was the day my cousin decided to receive her endowments. Thanks to Tiffany and Cressa who watch all five kids I was able to attend the session. It's always great to see a family member go through the temple for the first time and I'm glad that I was able to be there for her. For some reason there is an unwritten tradition to go out to eat after a temple session and today was no different. The entire crowd headed over to Chuck a Rama and filled ourselves till we were full. I have never seen Aubrey eat so much food.

After lunch our little group decided to break off and take a walk around Idaho Falls, the temple, and into the visitors center. So far I think the kid's favorite place was the visitors center. Joshua found a little touch screen monitor for kids to watch movies on about the gospel. He watched all the movies at least 3 times. We had a hard time getting him out of there. Later that night after heading back up to Rexburg and putting the kids down for bed I got to spend some time talking with Micki. As roommates we were duplicates of each other. We were born on the same day of the same year at about the same hour, we had the same interest, were in the same clubs, and even had the same major. During most of our years together as roommates we were practically joined at the hip. It was lots of fun but sadly (due to distance) we don't get together much often anymore so it was nice to spend some time just talking and catching up. This has been a great trip!

Well this is longer than I thought so I'm going to break this trip up into parts.
Stay tuned for part 2. Oh and thanks Amber for the pictures I borrowed off your blog.