Another Loong Drive

After a lot of thinking and looking at our bank account we decided it would be in our best interest to drive to Utah for my sister Marianne's wedding. In a lot of ways I actually liked it a lot better. There is just something about dragging three children and all the stuff through the airport that just does not appeal to me! It did mean more driving and less visiting, I guess that was the only downside.
We left Thursday morning the 9th, and drove 13 hours to Grand Junction, Colorado. Of course we ended up leaving several hours later then intended so between all the stops needed for the children's sanity and ours we didn't get there until after midnight. Overall the kids did amazing! They really are good little travelers. The next morning we left at 7 am and arrived in Manti, Utah around 11.

These tires were HUGE!

One of our pit stops

Nothing like a view of the mountains!

This was in between GJ and Manti

Lilli was excited to see pink mountains

Jared and I got a prime location to watch the happy couple come out.

The bride and groom. It was a CRAZY day, I guess over the course of the day there were 24 weddings. There were tons of people everywhere, and we did a lot of waiting. We also had to park up by a maintenance shed because the parking lot was full.

Lilli shared a flower she had picked with Grandma

My youngest brother and his cute girlfriend. He does not like getting his picture taken so we had to be sneaky! (or "rude" as he put it!!)

And there's another one for good measure!!

Devin and Marianne with my parents.

Jared with "Auntie M"

Attempting to take a picture with all the nieces and nephews. It was a little challenging! But pretty entertaining at the same time.

A nice shot of the Manti temple

After the wedding lunch we headed over to Ogden to visit with Eric's Grandma Johns, Aunt Tasma, Zach and Josh. Unfortunately no pictures were taken. We stayed the night with Blaine and Suzanne.  we hadn't seen them in a long time. It was really nice to visit with them and cousin Tereasa and her darling little girls.

Saturday morning after a stop at the LDS Distribution center we drove over to Bridgeland for the reception (It's in between Duchesne and Roosevelt). It was insane! We all sat around for about 2 1/2 hours waiting for pictures, during this time it was raining on and off and they were trying to decide if we could pull off an outdoor reception. Luckily it stopped raining and turned out to be a really nice evening.

Jared with his little bow tie

My sister Jeanne

Eric and my brother in law Richard discovered that the nursery had its own air conditioner, so they ended up spending quite a bit of time in there with the kids.

Our nephew Glenn. He's five months older then Jared.

Our nephew Teancum, he's just four months older then Jared.

The wind caught one of the chocolate fountains. Oops.

#237 trip to the refreshment table. I think if we hadn't stopped her at some point she would have single handedly eaten all the strawberries!

Carmi found a toy vacuum.

Lilli and those puzzles, she LOVES them!

Lilli and our niece Jaylee decided they needed to dance with the bride and groom.

Toward the end of the evening Jared was not to happy. Kandis did a good job cheering him up!

Me and two of my Nelson cousins. We are all the same age and had a lot of fun adventures growing up. Between the three of us there are 9 children!

#907 trip to the refreshment table LOL

Ahhh, a little r&r after everything went down.

Sunday afternoon we started our drive back. We were originally going to hit up I-70  as soon as we entered Colorado but we ended up taking state highway 40 all the way to Denver. It was gorgeous (even though it ended up adding about 1 1/2 hours to the drive) I guess sometimes you just need to take a little time to enjoy scenery.

Brrr, it was sure chilly up in the mountains. It was definitely refreshing after the heat we've suffered all summer!

We saw a lot of this

Jared was remarkably happy the entire trip. If he got tired he would just pull his blanket over his head and fall asleep.

Lilli rolled up her pants several different ways and asked me what I thought. She sure has a great sense of fashion!
We finally got home Monday night right before 9 pm. Eric was able to get a day of rest in before going back to work today.