Summer's Last Hurrah

My brother and his wife had moved to Logan, UT about a year ago and I had not been up to see them yet. So one week when Ronnie was going out of town for work I suggested to my mom that we should all go up and see them. By all I mean Kyle, Lana, my mom, my grandmother, and myself. We can’t go anywhere together and not take my grandmother along, so this adds a little bit of extra planning, which since we decided to do this on a Sunday evening and were leaving on Tuesday morning we really didn’t have time to plan. I wanted to stop at IKEA just south of Salt Lake and stay the night somewhere around there. I wasn’t planning on buying anything really big since by the time we loaded up all the suitcases and the wheelchair there wasn’t much room, but I just love to look around and eat, yes I said eat at IKEA. My most favorite thing about IKEA is not how “green” they are or their low prices on home furnishings, but rather their .99 breakfasts. This trip I actually spent more in their food mart than I did on all the other treasures combined. We loaded up on cinnamon rolls and candies to share with friends and family we would be visiting. Our first night we got one hotel room to fit all of us, not a good idea. Between the snoring and teeth grinding and Lana being up for 3 hours in the wee hours of the morning I did not get much sleep. Lana finally went back to sleep at about 5:00am and slept until 9:00am which meant we were all trying to be as quite as possible so she could get all the sleep she needed, traveling with a tired Lana is not fun! It was hard keeping everyone quite since my grandmother is VERY hard of hearing and hadn’t put her hearing aids in yet. As soon as Lana woke up I was rushing to get ready to go back to IKEA for breakfast, alas I did not make it in time, but we did get to show my grandmother what IKEA was. After we left IKEA we headed to Ogden, where some of our really good friends live. Our motel was also in Ogden, for some reason all the motels closer to Logan were all booked. We were able to get two rooms which made everyone happy. The next day we visited with our friends. We all went to a place called the Treehouse, it’s like a hands on museum. The kids had a ball, Kyle convinced his sidekick James to hide and runaway from Lana with him. Lana in turn ran after Kyle screaming “Kyle come back here”, causing us to run after our kids screaming their names. Ahh…fun times! Once I managed to keep Lana away from Kyle they had a great time dressing up in all kinds of costumes. Afterwards we headed back to our friends house and ate lunch and then put the little ones down for a nap. That didn’t last long, Kyle gets a little loud when he is having fun and boy was he having fun with James. Unfortunately, both the little ones woke up early from their naps. Lana was actually very good the rest of the day; I thought she was going to be cranky. We all stayed up until midnight, Lana and Kyle included, playing the Wii. It was a really fun day, and to top it off my kids feel asleep like Ronnie does after Thanksgiving dinner. The next morning we headed up to Logan to see my brother Jason and his wife Melissa. We couldn’t visit at their apartment because they have steps up to the apartment and then more steps once you get inside of the apartment and there was no way to get my grandmother in there. So we picked Jason up and he took us to a creek where the kids got to feed the ducks. They took their shoes off and chased the ducks too, but as long as they threw crackers out there the ducks did not seem to mind. Afterward we went to lunch and then to the Pepperidge Farm and Godiva outlet and then to a dairy where the kids tasted their first ever squeaky cheese (curds). Then we picked up Melissa and went back to our motel in Ogden so Lana could take a nap. After Lana had her nap we all went out to dinner at this place that served this monstrosity called a jacketed potato. In case a loaded baked potato was not enough of a guilty pleasure they batter and then deep fry a baked potato and then load it up with toppings. Of course I took a picture of this so if I died shortly after eating it they could easily identify my killer. After dinner we all visited and then Jason and Melissa had to head back to Logan and then everyone hit the hay for the next day we headed back to Vegas. The trip home was safe and swift and I was glad to be done with summer vacations. It’s nice to get back into the swing of things.