Grand Junction Road Trip

Alex got a big promotion at work and a transfer to Grand Junction Colorado. He's the new terminal manager there. It's a brand new terminal, just opened in January. Very nice building. Grand Junction is a nice town, population 60,000. It's 4 1/2 hours from Centerville, 5 hours to St George and 5 hours to Denver.

Alex is living in a hotel for now so we decided to take a road trip and take him out for Thanksgiving.

We went and saw the movie "Trolls", surprisingly it wasn't awful.

Road Trippin
We went to dinner with Alex Wednesday night and Thursday we went to a Thanksgiving brunch at the Hilton. We stayed at the same extended stay hotel where Alex is staying.

Friday morning we got up early and drove 2 hours to Moab where we hiked up to the Delicate Arch. Fun trip, fun hike.

Checking out all the cairns. 

Sean found a poop emoji.
We had planned to drive part of the way home and stay in a hotel but once we got half way I really wanted to drive the last 2 hours and sleep in my own bed. We were home by 8 on Friday.

Watching Valley and Khloe

AJ was doing clinical at the Bountiful Intermountain clinic all week so I watched little Miss Valley. She is such a pleasant, happy baby. We had fun. She ate, played, slept, pooped, peed, repeat.....

She has a bald spot on the back of her head where she rubs it. The spot inspired creativity. Khloe thought it was pretty funny.

Khloe was sick, sick, sick. So she spent two days with me as well. The first day she was totally miserable, the second day was better.

More pictures of Khloe's miserable day.

All Valley's days were excellent.

Birthdays

Milla turned 23 on November 11th. Khloe helped her out with her candles.

My Christmas cactus bloomed prematurely. Some of the flowers hadn't opened so Khloe was working at prying them open. 

She was persistent if not helpful. The next day they were mostly bloomed so maybe her little fingers pulling on the blossoms was helpful.

Sean didn't want a big birthday party. He wanted Ethan, Andrew and Kaleb to come over and play video games so that is what we did.

He wanted to go to Tepenyaki for dinner so that is where we ate.

The main event

 We went for a surprise 80th birthday party for Don's dad. He knew something was up when they dragged him to the Fisher county building at 6 on a Saturday on his birthday but he was surprised that family had come from so far. We were there, Matt came from Colorado, his sister Donna came from Idaho. It was a nice surprise. Dava did a good job putting it together. She had talked about it for months but it really came together the last 2 weeks. She hadn't found a location so Don found the Fisher building. Aunt Sarah and Linda did the food. Dava ordered a cake. I bought paper goods and woot, woot it was a party. Gahn had a band playing.

Sarah and Linda made a couple different types of chili. We ended up with way too much food but better too much than too little.

Nova dancing.

Dava invited Dave's Fraternity brothers.

David played the guitar.

Don bought his dad these silly ear things that are supposed to improve hearing. I don't know if they work but he got a kick out of them.

The plethora of cousins ran around like crazy people all night.

Whenever I take a picture of Don, his dad and his siblings it always makes me sad. There's a big hole where Darcy belongs.

Dave and Donna dancing.

We got back to the hotel around 10. Went to bed, got up at 4:30 and were on a plane at 6:30. We were back home a little after noon. It was a really quick trip.

Quick trip to Illinois

We left Friday after school for Bloomington Illinois. We got in at about 10:30. Our plane was a little late leaving so our layover was cut short in Texas but we made our flight and arrived on time.

I try to get a picture of Sean and this statue when we are in Bloomington.

We were hungry so we did an 11:00 trip to Steak n Shake. I really like that place. They built a Steak n Shake in Centerville in a gas station but I think it's gross. Don eats there sometimes but I just can't do it. I've tried twice and both times were yucky.  Sean really liked it too. David and Alika came with us.

We got up Saturday morning had breakfast at the hotel and then headed out to Hardy Reindeer Ranch in Rantoul. We met up with Dava and her family and Danny and his family.

We did a corn maze. You were supposed to locate seven different spots in the corn maze. We found six and then gave up because Dava had arrived.

Then we kissed some reindeer.

Calvon feeding the reindeer.

We took a hay ride. I posted this picture on Facebook and tagged Tiffany. Someone asked Tiffany what her kids were doing in Tiffany's picture. Small town. Those kids at the back of the wagon are Tiffany's friends kids and they were there with their grandparents.

We went and ate lunch at a pizza place in Fisher. We were the only ones there. When 16 of us walked in the owner looked shocked and asked "do you want food?" Why yes sir we do want food. The food was good and he did a good job taking care of all of us.