Utah... finally

The drive out to Utah yesterday is one that will go down in the record books for us. We planned on leaving around 10am, but didn't really leave until 11am. Then we had a couple of stops to make on our way out of town. We got on the road around noon to start our journey out. We planned to be in Delta right about 8 or 9pm. The traffic going through the mountains was horrible. It took us about 4 hours just to get pass Vail. Then just 12 miles outside of Palisade we got a major flat tire. The reason for the flat is still undetermined, but what ever happened caused our rear fender to fly off in the process. There is also a good size dent on the wheel well too. We pulled over and thought- this is just a flat, this won't be hard to change. WRONG we were. It took us forever to figure out how to get the spare tire from underneath the car out. We don't have an owner's manual, so we were just trying to do it ourselves. How hard could it be? Then once we got the tire lowered, Jamey couldn't for the life of him get it off. Once he finally did, the actual act of changing tire took all but 15 minutes. We cleaned everything up from off the highway and then proceeded to get on the road again. However to our great surprise the car was dead. I guess just leaving the portable DVD player hooked up drained all the juice from the battery. Then Jamey got to dance on the side of the road with jumper cables hoping someone would stop and give us a jump. Indeed some nice guy did stop and then we were finally on our way. During all this time that we were stopped Jamison had to go potty. Well there was obviously no bathroom anytime soon, so we told him to just go in the weeds. After about 15 to 20 minutes of assuring him that it was OK to go outside he did. When he got back in the car I asked him what was wrong and he told me that it was scary. Jamey kept telling him that was a perk of being a boy- we can go p** anywhere we need to. That really wasn't all that convincing to a 3 year old who is recently potty trained.

Once we finally arrived in Delta after 30 minutes of continual crying from both Jamison and Everett (could you blame them?) we checked in our hotel room for the night. Trying to explain the sight of the room is impossible. It was the grossest and most unclean hotel room I have ever seen. (Amy- it was just like you imagined it would be by the signs you passed on your to Texas) It smelled so bad, ants were on the floor, there was a hole in the front door which didn't even seal right; there was a huge gap at the bottom of the door. There were long black hairs everywhere on the bedding, the bed was held up by center blocks. The list could go on and on. Being that is was now 12:30am and we were paying for the night whether we stayed or not, we all just fell into bed. I was so grateful that we packed pillows for everyone. When I got up this morning though, I had Jamey call another hotel and get us a different room for the next 2 nights. The price is double of the room we stayed at last night, but the differences in the rooms are well worth the extra money. When Jamey was checking out of the 'roach motel' he told the lady that we were leaving to find a better room. The lady's response back was- 'I don't blame you'. Isn't that just crazy- they know that their hotel is gross but choose do to nothing to change it!

We spent the morning enjoying a small town parade down Main Street, which included LOTS of candy thrown to the kids. Then we headed to the park to let the kids do some jumpy castle things. After we left the park we headed over to another park to have a small family get together with Jamey's grandma, parents, brother, aunt and uncle and a cousin that came from CA that he has not seen in years. It was a fun BBQ, and the kids had so much fun running and playing. We sat and talked and ate some really good food. Now tonight Jamey has taken Spencer and Jamison to the Demolition Derby and then after the firework show. Everett and I are hanging back at the hotel to take it easy. It has been a long 2 days for him and he needs to get some good sleep. It has been so fun showing off our new little guy to all Jamey's family. Of course we all think he is pretty darn cute!