Eastern Adventures

Well ya'll, I'm back. I truly had a wonderful time on the Christmas tour. Let me preface this post by showing the reason I have yet to post about my wanderings. I seriously haven't been home since I got home. haha. My room is an utter disaster, and my bathroom looks as if Sephora just exploded.

If you know me well, you know that I am completely OCD about keeping my room clean and organized. The fact that my living quarters look like that of a typical college student is very disappointing. So before I started to blog about my trip I just had to clean my room. Seriously I was unable to function with it being so messy.

Being the total spazz that I am, I completely forgot to take pictures until the third day into the trip. So I'm sorry that there aren't more.

I flew into Minneapolis on Thursday morning. I was lucky that the flight was fairly empty so that I could lay down and sleep on the plane for a few hours. The airport was really rather luxury. I met up with the driver, who totally had my name on a paper (how professional) and Marie's manager. Then we had a 2 1/2 hour drive to the "Grand Casino" in Onamia. It wasn't really all that grand. hehe. Let me just say that I have never been as cold as I was when I was in MN. I am always cold, and usually chatter my teeth. But, the bitter cold in MN left me with the fear of chipping a tooth and having my lungs freeze over. I met up with Marie and the kids and they did a rehersal. Then we just hung out for the rest of the night because the kids clothes were lost at the airport so they couldn't perform. We had to be up and in the car at 3:30 the next morning to drive back to Minneapolis to catch a 7 am flight to Philadelphia.

I loved flying into Phili cause the airport is right next to down town. I got to see everything as we landed. We met up with the tour bus, which is very luxury, and then had a 5 hour drive to Shippensberg, PA. After the show that night, we drove all night to Atlantic City, NJ. When I woke up in the morning we were at the Trump Marina hotel. Everyone was still asleep so I did some homework for a little bit, and when the 2 little girls woke up we went up to our room. The only word to describe the room is LUXURY. Come on did you really expect me to use anything else. haha.

We spent all day Saturday at the hotel, just hanging out, ordering room service and watching movies. Later in the afternoon we went down to Marie's room. The little girls took a nap and I helped her get ready for an Entertainment Tonight interview. It was great to get to catch up with her. I'm still in awe of all that she is able to do. She is an amazing mother and example. She has an amazing testimony of the Gospel and is really just an all around good, genuine person. I hope that one day when I'm a mother, I'll be able to have 1/2 the compassion, love and understanding for my children that she has for hers.

After the show in NJ we drove all night to Van Wert, Ohio. It was a very small town. Again, we just chilled at the venue all day, did the show that night and then drove to Chicago. We were supposed to fly home to the SLC at 12 but our flight got cancelled and moved to 4. So while everyone slept I did homework. We finally made it out of Chicago, but only after a couple of temper tantrums from the 5 year old who wanted her mommy. We were quite the sight to be seen going through security, but luckily is wasn't anything that a happy meal from McD's couldn't cure. Luckily she slept for most of the 3 hour plane ride.

We finally made it to the airport and got into the van for the ride home. While driving down I-15, we were all talking about how much we disliked living in Utah, and how we didn't want to be back. Rachael started singing the "Utah" song that most elementary students learn here in about 4th grade. The original words are: Utah! People working together Utah! What a great place to be. Blessed from Heaven above. It's the land that we love.This is the place!" But, during the course of the ride home we managed to change the words and come up with pretty funny song: Utah! People judging each other. Utah! BYU as can be. Knee shorts and Undertease. Don't talk 'bout birds or bees. This ain't no place!" Hahahaha. It was all in good fun and we all had a really good laugh.

It was great to get away for the weekend, especially right before finals. It was also good to get to hang out with the older kids. They were basically my best friends growing up, and it was fun to get to catch up with them. They are all great and a lot of fun to hang around.

I promise that I will post more regularly. (Peter, this is just for you, so you can spend more government funds wasting time.)

Apparently I don't know how to add pictures on here in the order I want to, and since a particular cousin of mine won't return my phonecalls with my blog questions, I guess I'll just post the pics on facebook, so check them out on there.