A vacation of sorts

In mid December, Ryan had a work training in Salt Lake City and the wives were invited to come along. Some great new friends of ours, the Yancey family, graciously agreed to host our two little munchkins for four days and three nights. They are an fun young couple eagerly anticipating their first baby, so they said this would be great practice for them. So, every day, Elizabeth took the kids to school and picked them up, packed their lunch

es, and made sure they had their miscellaneous items for that last week of
school before break. At night, Russ and Elizabeth played drums, guitars, playstation, and games with the boys. I'm pretty sure after that fun week, T and B decided we are no longer cool parents. Thank you Yanceys!

But enough about the boys. We had a great, great, great time in Salt Lake. Well, I had a great time. Ryan still had meetings all day. This was our agenda:

Monday: Ryan drives to SLC in the afternoon.

Steph gets the boys packed, finishes last minute errands, etc.

Tuesday: Ryan has meetings.

Steph gets the kids to school, then transports a massive pile of stuff to the Yancey house. (because of course you need guitar for lessons, scout uniform for Wednesday night, church clothes for Ben's piano recital (Yep, we missed it), uniforms for school, pajamas both for sleeping and for Friday's wear jammies to school day for Ben, Christmas books for our nightly Christmas book reading tradition, cookies for Todd's class party Friday, etc. etc. etc.

When all this is done, Steph flies on a plane all by herself. She buys a magazine in the airport newsstand because she can. She wears adorable boots and looks like a grown up.

Tuesday night dinner at the Lion House--Ryan and Steph are the youngest by at least 10 years, but it's fun.

Wednesday: Ryan has meetings

Steph sleeps in, gets ready, wears grown-ups clothes (not one surf T-shirt or pair of ratty jeans in the bunch), has brunch at The Blue Lemon overlooking the Salt Lake Temple and reads in her Kindle. She eats an artichoke and sun dried tomato sandwich with sweet potato fries. She sits there for an hour because she can.

No one tells her the food is disgusting or asks "what are we doing now?" She then treks over to the Family History Library. They have her watch a movie and give her a yellow "Newbie" name tag so everyone knows she is clueless. It is fun. Seriously. She stays there for hours.

Wednesday night Ryan and Steph catch a rushed dinner at Red Iguana (not nearly as good as they hype, in Steph's opinion) and then catch a temple session at the Salt Lake temple with Ryan's co-workers. Fantastic.

Thursday: Ryan has meetings (thought he originally wasn't supposed to)

Steph sleeps in, gets up, breaks a record for looking like a grown up three days in a row, has breakfast overlooking the temple at Hagermann's (She'll fess up that it was a croissant smothered with Nutella and then grilled--nothing healthy but everything delicious). She then heads back to the Family History Library for more fun. She even finds some clues to a mystery in Grandpa Bob's family. So exciting.

Ryan and Steph meet for lunch, then back to more meetings and Family History.

Friday night dinner at Bruges waffles (OK, so it wasn't really dinner--more like a heart attack waiting to happen) followed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. The organ solo was amazing!

Friday: Ryan and Steph oversleep a bit, run a few errands, then drive home. Because of some poor communication on Steph's part, they were only unsure about the whereabouts of their kids for 15 minutes on Friday afternoon. Other than that, everything went off without a hitch.

It sure was fun to enjoy my husband without the pressures of parenting and balancing schedules. The best part of all was that by the time we came back, I missed my kids and was ready to dive back into mothering. We are definitely doing this again soon. Next time, maybe we'll just have to get away without the meetings. . .