Jet's First Trip Out of State

We had the opportunity toward the beginning of the month of March to go to our niece's baby blessing in Idaho. We got up really early in the morning to make it. Because of the roads, we were worried we might not make it on time. There were areas we lost a lot of time and some we made up time and in the end it balanced out. We walked into Sacrament Meeting during the opening song. Woohoo.

Jeremy's parents had driven there from Washington so we got to spend time with them and since it was Jet's first trip out of Utah (and my first trip since before he was born), several of us got to meet my sister-in-law-in-law and niece and nephew for the first time. Jeremy and our two oldest had visited them on their way back from a fair a couple years ago and they went to Washington when they got married a few years ago.

Lucky was good at entertaining his new cousin by making faces. She loved it.

 

It was a nice trip. I told the kids stories about Winter when I lived there so many years ago. Jet had fun stomping around in the snow calling out, "Idaho! Idaho!"

This was not the deep snow.

It was cold so I hopped in the trunk to make sandwiches for lunch to eat on our way home. Jeremy spotted a tree filled with waxwings. Most of them were Bohemian Waxwings. We're used to seeing Cedar Waxwings in Utah. We've only seen one Bohemian Waxwing before. And of course we hadn't brought our birding camera or our binoculars. Sigh. But we saw them. I saw them after I was let out of the closed trunk.

Then we headed home and had an adventure. This is what Jeremy texted to my mom and my sisters as I was driving:

 

This is Jeremy. Kristin wanted me to relate a story. So we took a family trip today to Rexburg, ID to see my brother bless his baby girl. I drove the whole way up and despite the roads we made it with minutes to spare. I was exhausted from the early hour and drive though and asked Kristin to drive home. We needed to get gas and Idaho Falls Costco was suggested by my family. We got gas and Kristin followed the directions on the GPS to get us going home. Only the GPS wasn't talking aloud (something to do with a Bluetooth connection to our CD player in the van). As we traveled Jr.'s book fell to the floor of the car. Trying to reach it his seat belt locked and became uncomfortable. We promised to stop at the next rest area so he could unbuckle and rebuckle. We approached the city of Dubois, stopped at a gas station, and went back to the freeway. But the GPS wanted us to go toward Idaho Falls. We had already traveled more than an hour from Idaho Falls. That didn't make sense! Somehow we must have gotten turned around after getting gas. I can only imagine how many times the GPS was trying to say "When possible make a u-turn." We are almost back to Idaho Falls now. At least we got to see Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles, and a few different types of hawks and falcons. :) Kristin wanted me to share so we could laugh together. We left Rexburg almost two hours ago, the roads are clear, no construction, and no traffic, and we have almost made it to Idaho Falls says Kristin.

 

I was not laughing about it at the time. Interestingly, the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before I had joined watching RootsTech online (family history conference). One of the speakers had talked about stories, mentioning specifically a family trip where horrible things happened on the way but they were able to laugh about it later and that became a family trait, recognizing that they might not be okay in the moment but they knew later they would be. I was thinking about that during our trip home.

By the time we got to Ogden, it was snowing in such a way in the dark that it was messing with my brain. You're all familiar with snow that is like the Millenium Falcon traveling through hyperspace. It was like that but I couldn't handle it. Luckily we were able to switch drivers and Jeremy got us the rest of the way home by 9pm. Thanks, Jeremy. So it was a longer trip than expected when we left at lunchtime but 9pm isn't too bad. And of course it was most important that we made it to the baby blessing on time.

I am laughing because this trip was to go to our niece's baby blessing but less than a month before that we went to my niece's baby's blessing. That can happen when between Jeremy and I, one of us is one of the oldest in the family and one of us is one of the youngest. Definitely some babies being born in our family and baby blessings. Jet was blessed in 2020 (in our backyard). My niece's son was blessed in 2021 (which we participated over Zoom). My nephew was blessed in 2022 (which we missed because of the weather). And my niece's daughter and my niece were both blessed in 2023.