One Last Stop

Saturday, the 28th, we drove to Utah for one last stop before the big move. I got a call about 8 hours into our drive from my sister, Cami, saying that 2 of our siblings (Teri & Nathan) would be at her house around 6:30 for a little bit because they happened to be in town for their grandmothers funeral and that we should stop in on our way up to Taylorsville. It worked out well, because 6:30 was right when we were driving through Provo, anyway. Good timing! It was good to see them all. I hadn't seen Nathan since 2005 at our Grandmother Black's funeral and we hadn't seen Cami or Teri since our trip up for Christmas. We were pretty tired from driving all day but we had a few good laughs and shared some stories and things. Not the best circumstances to see them, but nice nonetheless.

Sunday we went to church with Brent's parents and then after church the rest of the Gray clan and the extended family came over for dinner and socializing. We had fun playing with Hannah & Jocelyn (the babies) and talking to all of the cousins and aunts and uncles. I didn't get very many pictures and what I do have is of the little ones, but they are the best part anyway, right?

Monday morning we were going to go to the Draper Temple open house but I was REALLY sick. I starting feeling sick late Sunday night and by Monday morning I couldn't even stand up without practically falling over. So, I took some drugs and went back to sleep while Brent, his parents, Camille (his sister) and Jared (Brent's cousin), Ceyln and Jocelyn Pond went to the temple. Brent said it was beautiful and that the celestial room has the tallest ceiling he has ever seen. The chandelier is 13'-14' and is hanging from a chain at least that long.

Monday afternoon, I scraped myself out of bed and we drove down to Utah County to visit people. Our first stop was Spanish Fork to see the Rowley's (Luke & Sarah and their 3 kids), friends from California that moved back to UT a couple years ago. (Funny side story: Luke lived in the same ward as me when I was in junior high/high school and was friends with my older siblings. It was funny to meet back up with he and his wife in Studio City, of all places.) We had lunch and visited for about and hour or so but didn't take any pictures. Darn!

Then we went to Provo, back to Cami's house. We hung out and giggled and played with Luis' sister, Ana's baby Kenley, and ate food and talked about fabric and making things and watched a dog show (yeah, yeah, I know) and the boys played video games. For a couple of hours, my dear friend, Jessica, came over to visit. I haven't seen her in a couple of years so it was nice to hug and what not. She is my oldest friend that I am still close to. We have known each other since elementary school. I love her.

After a few hours there, it was getting late and I was feeling pretty crummy. You can see in the photos how I'm all flushed and shiny. I had a pretty bad fever off and on the whole time we were there. Ugh! So we left. We had a few other people we would have loved to have seen but I was too sick.

On Tuesday, I was feeling a bit better so I did a little last minute shopping with my mother-in-law, LeAnn, while Brent stayed home and took care of some last minute financial things to make sure we were all settled with our accounts and things before we split the country.

That evening, we had a big family picture taken with the whole Gray clan. They are getting the pictures back tomorrow so maybe I'll be able to post some here in the next week or so. They turned out pretty cute. It's getting harder to have family pictures taken because we have so many people. Isn't that just a wonderful problem to have? I love it. Hopefully soon, we'll be too big of a group to fit in a studio.

That night, Grandma & Grandpa Duzett and Jared, Celyn & Jocelyn all came over and we had a bit of a party. Some of us watched a movie and some of us played Scotland Yard because, well, we just had to! It was a blast and we stayed up way too late and we said most of our goodbyes.

We gave Dan & Andrea the present for Hannah's birthday which is coming up next month. I made it for her back in LA before the packing and moving all happened. I got the idea from my friend's website and then made up my own pattern. I think it's hilarious. Possibly the funniest thing I've ever made. Those long, bendy legs sure do match Hannah's!

Wednesday morning Brent's dad gave us father's blessings so that we could feel settled spiritually before this big adventure and we had a nice breakfast with Brent's mom. Then we spent a couple hours packing and organizing and shuffling weight between suitcases so that we wouldn't be paying too many overweight bag fees. We got it all settled except for one bag was 11 pounds overweight. We figured since we didn't pay for the plane tickets, we could pay for one bag fee. Little did we know that ANY overage on international bags is $350! Good grief! When the lady at the airport told us that, we found a way to get rid of some excess weight, we carried our small duffel of dirty clothes on board with us. It was odd but it worked. The Salt Lake airport is notorious for being ridiculously meticulous with the security so we were worried we'd run late but everything was smooth and we still had 30 minutes before boarding. Then off we went!