Utah Adventure

My brother, Alex was called to serve a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He will be serving the Lord in Atlanta, Georgia. We are so proud of him!

*Airport.*

Barbie, Aslynn and I drove to Utah mostly to pick Alex up from the SLC airport and drop him off at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, but also to have a girls-only adventure.

*We played out on the grass because grass doesn't grow where we live.*

We left California on Monday.
    - We learned that Z gets carsick.  As we reached the Nevada state line, Aslynn puked all over herself (and a little on Barbie - Barbie's fault!  I warned her that it sounded like Z was going to puke, but she didn't believe me; she reached back to Z to comfort her and got an arm covered in grossness.) Luckily, I was smart enough to put down a towel and a blanket under Aslynn's car seat and all across the back seat BEFORE we even left the house so the clean up was easy enough - well, as easy as it can be on the side of a major freeway in over 100 degree weather.

Picked up Alex on Wednesday morning.  Went to breakfast at IHOP (free breakfast to all new missionaries).  Took pictures.  Dropped him off at the "compound" in the afternoon. 

*My large nostrils seems to make an appearance in a lot of these pictures.  Sorry!*

*Waiting for Alex's plane.*

*Z was having a good hair day.  I've got mad hair-doing skills but not-so-mad picture-taking skills.  Of course, this style didn't last long.*

*Cheese!*

*Last kiss from a girl.*

*No more physical contact with members of the female sex.*

Alex calls the MTC the compound because it has a fence around it and most of the time, the missionaries aren't allowed to leave. 

I dropped Alex off at the curb; the whole exchange took less than two minutes.  Maybe the MTC wants it to be fast so no new Elders get embarrassed when their moms and dads cling to them forever and cry.  Alex was brave and pretty much said "Drop me off!  See you in a couple years!"

*These two videos are the drop-off sequence.*

I was a big girl and didn't cry until I was driving away from the MTC.  I think that I am going to miss Elder Burke more than I thought I would.

We left Utah for California on Thursday morning.

 *Three very fresh doughnuts lived in this wee box for about 30 seconds.*

We were only with Alex for a whopping four hours of our adventure (and in that short time Alex was told that "since he was going to the south, he was going to have to learn a new language - Southern," at least six times from random people.  They all thought they were very funny. We did too because we knew they weren't as original as they thought they were.  Sorry, that was mean of me to say. But had to tell you...)

The rest of the time we spent craft "shopping" (more like craft picture-taking so that we can go home and make the craft ourselves), eating food from the restaurants I miss the most and catching up with various friends we hadn't seen in a while. 

I love the fact that though distance may separate you and it might have been forever since you've seen each other, friendship remains the same!

It was a grand adventure dedicated to Elder Alex Dale Burke!

Big shout-out to the Loper's who let us stay at their apartment even though they were out of town! THANK YOU!