Quick Little Getaway

During our week of vacation in Utah this past August, I managed to convince my sister and parents to watch our kids so Andrew and I could have just 24 hours to ourselves. I was beyond excited. It had been 3 years since the last time we left the kids overnight. We ran away on a little overnighter to downtown Salt Lake. We stayed in the Marriott, ate at yummy restaurants, visited the new Church History Museum exhibits and shopped til we dropped at The Gateway. It was heaven to us. We also realized we need to do quick trips like this more often.
I was happy when Andrew planned our next little getaway soon after - drive to Provo conference weekend to attend the BYU game and stay overnight. His sister Abby now lives in Hurricane and was happy to watch our kids for us. Besides, between her and her second husband Mike they have 10 children so we figured, what's four more?
We took off bright and early Friday morning. We dropped the kids off in Hurricane and were on our way north. I must say road trips are totally different without children: No threats from Mom and Dad vowing to pull over if they don't knock it off, no bickering over where to stop for lunch or countless potty stops. It was nice and quiet for 3 hours.
We checked into our hotel then decided to go to our new favorite Utah restaurant, Tucanos. The Brazilian lemonade is so good - I hope to recreate it at home sometime. We did some shopping and hit the BYU Bookstore ( never a good idea on gameday) before heading back to the hotel to get ready for the game. We stayed at the The Courtyard that's practically across the street, so it was an easy walk over to the stadium - no worries about parking and traffic.
The game was fun, although a little cold! I loved it though. Nothing a little hot chocolate couldn't fix. It was a nice reprieve from the hot September we had in Vegas. We enjoyed cheering on our Cougars.

Saturday was Conference. We really wanted to drive to Salt Lake and attend a session, but knew it would be too hard time wise to make it back to Hurricane that afternoon to pick up the kids. We watched the morning session in the hotel before checking out.
We headed over to University Mall for a little shopping before lunch. While in Deseret Book I ran into my old college roommate Candice from freshman year. She happened to walk by the entrance of the store with her mom who looked in the store and recognized us. We actually reconnected on Facebook a few months back. It was so nice to see her after all these years and meet her two darling little girls in person. (I regret not taking a picture of us though, why didn't we do that Candice?) Andrew and I had lunch and made one more quick stop (Sportsmans Warehouse of course) before hitting the road to get our kids.
Just north of Beaver, Andrew woke me up to show me some deer in a field just off the freeway. "Um, that's nice," I thought. But as we kept driving, in this same field we noticed another group of deer, and then another, and then another. I told Andrew to exit off the freeway. Deer were everywhere in this open field. It was crazy. Andrew was going nuts without his binoculars. We saw no bucks though, just does and fawns. Andrew estimated there had to have been about 200 deer. It was so unusual to see that many deer in one place and actually kinda cool. We sat and watched them for a bit before getting back on the freeway.
We finally made it to Abby's where we were met by four smiling kids. They loved every second of their time at Abby's house and didn't really want to leave. Together with their cousins they went on motorcycle rides with Uncle Mike, played the Wii, played with the dogs and went to the "fort." Zach even showed us the horny toad he caught out in the desert. It was nice to sit and visit with Abby's family for awhile before heading back to Vegas. We didn't make it back to our house until 11 that night. Thank goodness the next day was Conference Sunday - we were all tuckered out from our trip. It was nice to sit and watch conference and spend the day as a family.
It was a fast 36 hours, but we all enjoyed every second of it. Thanks to Abby for help making it possible. I could get used to these little trips.......where could we go next?