Back Sooner Than We Thought

At the end of January we found out that John's Grandma Pearson was in failing health. She was over 90, and she had had memory problems for years. So this wasn't really unexpected, but it was still sad, especially for John. So we headed back up to Utah the first of February for the funeral.

Our trip up there was kind of an adventure. We flew over Christmas, but the timing and lack of budget didn't make it possible this time. So we drove through Vegas to avoid the snow. Ironic.

We decided to drive through the night so that our kids would sleep on the drive. It worked like a charm and also failed miserably. 

Miriam fell asleep at about 7 pm. Awesome! I hadn't let her take a nap that day so she zonked right now. Unfortunately it took us more than an hour to get out of Phoenix. It is a big city! So we weren't as far a long as we had hoped we would be. Also, we have two potty trained girls who could not for the life of them coordinate their bathroom stops. It was so aggravating! 

Finally Miriam fell asleep though. Phew. Life was peachy until we hit St. George. Then we hit snow. There was no snow in the forecast, but it was there all the same. We followed a plow for a while until it turned around. Then at 1 am when we were getting pretty tense, going 25 mph in the 80 mph zone, the kids woke up. Sad. They actually were okay, but we decided to stop for the night at about 2 am.

Then miracles of all miracles. They went to sleep perfectly at the hotel. They have never before shared a bed, let alone at a hotel. I couldn't believe it that in spite of having more than five hours of sleep behind her, Miriam went to bed it a normal bed, next to her sister perfectly. It was amazing and a huge blessing.

The plus side to going to Utah again was seeing friends and family sooner than we expected. Love these people.

We had a birthday dinner while we were there. Eliza (and really all of the kids) were in love with the root beer floats.

So cute!

Ellie was thrilled to get an early birthday present!

I loved seeing my Grandparents!

 My mom drove back to AZ with us.

The kids were pretty good for the drive back to Phoenix, but it is much easier to do that drive when they are asleep. But we made it!

From my journal:

At the end of January, John's Grandma Pearson died. It wasn't unexpected as she had had dementia for years and recently her body had been failing her. We drove up to Utah to attend the funeral. Honeywell gave John three days of bereavement leave which enabled us to go. We decided to drive up late after work on Friday, which worked really well until we hit the snowstorm just north of St. George. We followed a plow for a while and at about 2 am we decided that we couldn't go further and stopped at a hotel in Fillmore. It was an unexpected expense, but a definitely safer option than continuing.

The next day we made it to Kayla's house and hung out there, until we went over to my parents' house. The family was getting ready for my Grandpa to come home from the rehab center. He isn't progressing anymore, which makes me sad.

We went to church with Grandpa up at the rehab center and hung out there for a little while. Then we headed down to John's parents house and spent the evening there and went to the viewing. The kids and grandkids did a beautiful song for the funeral, and there was a practice that night. It was nice to see family again.

The next morning we stopped off at Matt and Julie's house for a minute to exchange birthday gifts. Then we headed to the funeral. It was a noon, and we should have had lunch before. It was a long funeral where I was touched by and also annoyed at speakers. Oh well. :) The gravesite service was brief which was good because it was freezing. After all of that we headed back to the church for the luncheon.

After that we headed to Glenn and Andrea's house for the evening. The next day we went to John's parents house for a little while and hung out at my parents house too. My mom threw a dinner for us, which was nice.

The next day we headed back to Arizona. My mom came with us for a long visit. The kids did so well on the drive. It was really smooth sailing the whole day.