Weekend Report

We're back from our most recent road trip and are all getting settled into our daily routine.

Here is how our weekend went--

Friday: M started the weekend off right by getting caught being a good citizen at school--yay! When he went into the boys bathroom, he discovered the floor was covered in paper towels, so...without being asked he cleaned them all up only to have his teacher catch him in the act! His teacher immediately reported M's good deed to the Principal who promptly made a really BIG deal starting with calling M into his office. The Principal wanted to meet with M personally to thank him and then reward M with a certificate (signed by the Principal, M's teacher, M himself, and ultimately Big J) a prize, and a phone call home to report M's good deed!

After picking M up from school, we finished loading up the trusty truck and headed downtown for a D'backs game. The VP at Big J's work took out all the employee's in Big J's group, plus their families, to the baseball game to reward them for all the hard work they put in over the summer in preparation for a big national certification exam they took last week (we're still waiting on Big J's results from the exam.) Thank you Mr. VP for the really nice seats! Not only did we have a good view from where we sat, but this time the home team won!! We had a good time, especially lil' J who LOVES to watch "b-ball!" Once the game was over we piled back into our trusty truck and headed back in the direction we had just come from...only we past our house as we continued on towards good ol' Southern Cal. As it was a late start into the night, we only drove as far as Palm Springs where we stopped to get some sleep.

Saturday: Leaving Palm Springs we decided to get to L.A. via the 60 instead of I-10 to "save time." Uh, that so-o did not work! As this was the first time we tried this route, we didn't know that the early portion of the 60 is a two lane WINDY road...not good for those in our family who tend to get car sick (Big J was driving so he was safe, Lil' J was not so lucky!) We ended up losing an hour in Ontario just cleaning up our poor little guy! Then as pretty much the rest of the 60 into L.A. is under construction, that was slow going and we didn't save anytime there either. We finally made it to L.A. where we hung out with Z's family until it was time to head out towards the Rose Bowl.

At first M was very bummed that he didn't get to go to the game with Big J, Z, Papa C, and Aunt A, but he did have a lot of fun going on a errand "date" with Mama C (lil' J went with them too)--in additon to the errands, Mama C took the boys out to dinner and to pick out a fun toy! Meanwhile, Big J and Z were very glad that M didn't come along to this particular game--we bought the cheaper tickets through UCLA, sat in their general admission section, found that we were surrounded by very rowdy, foul mouthed, intoxicated, all around obnoxious UCLA fans (with a few BYU fans scattered here and there throughout the section), and then to add insult to injury...BYU LOST (I have to admit, I hadn't expected a different ultimate outcome...however, they did come SO close that it was still disappointing!!) Lesson learned--we told M that the next time an opportunity to go to a BYU game arises, we will take him with us and buy seats in the BYU section! : )

Even though BYU lost, and cousin D BYU #86 didn't get to play, we still managed to have a good time being there together! We cheered long and loud, ate surprisingly YUMMY stadium fare, and had a good time searching the BYU side-line with Papa C's "field glasses" until we found cousin D! We also had fun scanning the crowd through the lenses as we looked for cousin D's parents, siblings, and G'ma M...we never did spot them in the crowd but did meet up with them after the game was over and had a nice chat!

Sunday: We had planned to spend the day at G'ma M's house visiting her and any of the T family that hadn't left yet, but when G'ma M called Sunday morning to warn us that #86's brother, (also a cousin D and his wife) had the stomach flu, we decided to just spend the day with Z's family. Although we had been looking forward to our visit with G'ma M, we enjoyed the extra time we had with Z's family! Z's dad is recovering very well and it was nice to spend time with him, Mama, and A without the stress under which we last visited them (back in the Spring when Papa was in the hospital...for far too long!) We spent Sunday relaxing, enjoying each other's company, and eating Mama C's good cooking! After a good long nap, Big J was ready to get going so we packed up a day early and headed back to AZ Sunday night. Through all of our road trips we've discovered that our boys travel better at night, so leaving a day early worked out well--this time we stayed on I-10 and lil' J didn't get car sick--yay!