Surprise Utah Visit

We had this fun trip to Utah planed for weeks but we had to keep it all quite because it was a surprise! Both my parents were turning 50 just two days apart and we decided to celebrate with a big party. We headed out early Thursday morning and headed to my sisters house. It was a long day after I swung up to Paradise to drop my mother-in-law to spend some time with her mom. Friday we spent preparing for the fun weekend ahead. My parents had no idea that I was in Utah my sister and I had planned a fun birthday weekend for my parents. Friday night we surprised them by having Brayden answer the door when they came over for a bar-b-q before going to see "Hunger Games". They were so surprised! It was great.

Saturday my sisters boys EJ and Jacob had a birthday party! We all went out to a fun center with big bouncy houses, roller skating, laser tag and games! They had a fun star-wars theme party even Darth Vader made an appearance. Brayden thought it was the best place ever! He ran and ran and ran... exhausting all of us, and just when we though he would run out of energy someone (GRANDPA!!) would give him some more sugar and he would be off again. Landen enjoyed all the space provided for him to use his walker. It was really fun to watch him go he was so amazing at it. We meet a little boy who was 18 months and had just received a walker of his own. He was just learning to use it but his mom was so excited to see the independence my Little Landen had with his. It gave her hope that someday soon her son would be using his as well. In all it was an exhausting but fun day!

Sunday we had my parents surprise party. They had no idea! We invited all the family it was a fun way to celebrate these two important people. Us children surprised them with a new computer from all of us we had it set up inside a box and my Brother John and his wife Heather were on Skype all the way from Germany. It was so fun Heather even decorated their apartment to make it more festive.

Monday we said goodbye to my sweet cousin Gayleen who passed away earlier that week after a long battle with cancer. It was sad to have to say goodbye but I was grateful to be able to attend her services. Being so far away from home I'm not always able to be there for family when hard times come.

After that I was able to spend a week with at my parents house and do some visiting. After picking my mother-in-law up to head home we had a fun adventure. Paradise is a small town and I decided to follow my GPS's directions to Salt Lake. It told me to turn off on a small dirt road that obviously hasn't been travailed much. Growing up in small towns in Utah I thought it would be fun to keep going. The road looked good at the beginning but the farther we went the more we realized that this road was no longer used. The ruts and mud puddles got bigger and bigger until we came to a patch of road with ruts at least two feet deep. I wish I had gotten out my camera and taken a picture. My little brother Tim tried to get me to continue the GPS said I was less then a mile from the highway. He even offered to lay down in the rut and let me drive over it. (it was deep enough that he would have been fine) But I didn't want to risk getting stuck with my kids in the car. So I turned around and went back. It was fun even though it added time to our long drive home.

We eventually made it home around 1AM that night. But it was fun :D