When Mom's Away, She Plays, Plays, Plays

If you ever get a chance to go back to the place where you moved from about a week after you leave for a weekend - do it! I had the time of my life.

Jay will agree with me that I needed to go. I had this build up of momstress that had to be diffused. He took me to the airport on Thursday and from the minute I stepped out of the car, I felt different...lighter. Even going through the security checkpoints at the airport was enjoyable. I saw a group of missionaries coming home and their families all decked out with signs and smiles as they reunited. I admit to wiping away a watery eye. The flight was uneventful; it left on time and arrived on time. Andrea picked me up and we drove to Rebecca's house where her older kids were. Rebecca had them all making necklaces, which I thought was so fun. We got to chatting and then KariAnn called and came over too.

We girls possess the gift for gab.

Just like old times! We gabbed until about 4:30 and then I drove down to check in at my hotel - The Davenport Tower. It's the new upscale addition to the classy Davenport Hotel. I really enjoyed it. The entire hotel is done in this safari theme so my room had the feel of an elegant African adventure with its leopard print chaise lounge and pictures of elephants, zebras and rhinos all over.

My view from my 18th floor. That is Jay's old hospital - The Great and Spacious Building

Serendipitously, July's book group had been moved to that Thursday evening to accommodate vacations etc. so I was able to attend. I suggested having it at my hotel room as something fun and different. We met at P.F. Changs for dinner and enjoyed it family style (my favorite!!) and then went back to the safari where we got pretty giggly.

Our spread. Delicious.

The chaise lounge beckoned as a prop for a photo shoot and when Kristin whipped out the hair dryer as a wind machine, I knew my weekend was going to be a good one. (I had my turn on the chaise, but none of the pictures taken were with my camera. I'm a bit nervous about where they might turn up!)

Kristin in a demi-recline pose.

Andrea - a little wind blown.

KariAnn shows off some of her former cheerleader moves.

Rebecca feels the jungle within her.

Our bookgroup evenings are notoriously late, but I think the big comfy bed had everyone nodding off a little earlier than usual. It was shortly after midnight when everyone was starting to drift off and decide it was time to go. Like I said...it goes late so when I told Jay everyone left at midnight he even said, "well...that's earlier than I was expecting."

We all had some diet pepsi in an attempt to revive ourselves.

Rebecca decided to just get comfortable and don one of the plush robes.

It's no good. Everyone is tired.

I slept in until 9:00 the next morning and then called my sister Jen to see where she was at. She had decided to drive up for a couple of hours to hang out with me and was about an hour away. I showered and got ready and met her outside at around 10:30.


We drove out and had lunch at Staggering Ox and then shopped the summer clearance sale at Old Navy. I feel like summer just started so was loving all of their five dollar shirts and flip flops. Then we headed back downtown to shop at Riverpark Square and then Jen took off around 2:30.




I made the unfortunate/fortunate decision to get a bra-fitting at Nordstroms. AWKWARD! Yes, I was way off on my size so I suppose I need to be eternally grateful for the attractive, young twenty year-olds prodding and checking me out in a dressing room, but I felt awfully exposed. I hope I don't have to do that again for awhile!

I drove to KariAnn's, where I was staying the night, and drove by our old house. So bizarre to see other people inside. They had my sheer white curtains pulled all the way to the side so I could see them inside. They had trimmed the tree that caused so much annoyance to me this spring but whose makeover I didn't want to tackle. Other than that, it looked exactly the same. My flowers out front, our big black door with the ship on it.

I had a ball at Chad and KariAnn's house. We drove out for dinner at Prospecters (a Claim Jumper cousin or imitator) and ended up getting free appetizers because we had to wait for so long. If you've eaten there, you know about their portion sizes so by the time the food we actually ordered arrived, we were all full. We drove home and spent the rest of the evening playing Texas Hold 'Em with pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters from their coin jar and Pinochle. I had never played poker before, and I know it gets a bad name from gambling, but it's pretty fun if you're just playing for bragging rights. KariAnn earned those with both games.

The next morning, I left around 9:30 to go and buy something for Sandy, my visiting teaching companion who was going through the temple for the first time, and the main reason I returned to Spokane. I went to a church book store and bought her a book with a bunch of quotes and pictures of the temple and then enjoyed going through a session with her.



We had lunch at her home teacher's home afterwards and then I got on the road for my long drive back.


When Sandy told me about her temple date, we realized we could kill two birds with one stone if instead of paying for a tow for one of our cars or flying one of our siblings up to drive it back, we could just leave our van there for a week and I could drive it back. It worked out great, although I left later than I originally planned. I didn't get on the freeway until 3:30 and it's a 10-11 hour drive and I was going to lose an hour when I crossed a time zone.

I enjoy driving, though, so I started undaunted. I realized fairly early on, however, that my ipod was out of batteries, I had one CD in the car and my cell phone was only half charged. I made do with silence until Missoula where I found a Barnes and Noble and went and bought a book on CD. That made the rest of the drive go quite fast. It was uneventful until I got to Utah where I ran over some kind of medium sized animal that ran right into me (a porcupine, dog or something that sizish) and then had to swerve out of the way and screech to a halt when some car was driving down the wrong side of the freeway where all of the construction around Ogden was going on. Scared me something fierce....but it did get the adrenaline pumping through me which kept me awake the rest of the way. I was getting pretty tired.

I got home at 2:30 and didn't hear anything until 11:00 the next morning when Jay and the boys came home from church.

I'm all caught up on sleep now and am excited for life to return to normal. We are going to have to live it up the next few weeks because I found out Seth's new school is on a year round track and he actually starts in three weeks! Crazy. I'm trying to get a little more excited about it. I still have a lot to do around here to get a sense of home, but I don't want to spend Seth's short summer break shopping and organizing. Suggestions? What should we do these next three weeks?