The Un-Road Trip

I can't even believe we are half way through July and starting the downhill slide to "back to school."  {And yes -- I'm using air quotes because who knows what that's even going to look like!}  Our summer thus far as continued on in much the same vein as the past 3 or 4 months, with one notable exception -- a trip out west to see family!  

Watching a beautiful sunrise was perhaps the only perk of leaving at 5 in the morning.

Since I wasn't able to go to my dad's graveside service this March (and neither was one other sibling), we decided months ago that we would all gather together this summer to have a little memorial in his honor.  With his birthday falling on July 1st, we figured that would be the perfect time for all of us to travel out there.  Even though we just did a road trip out to Utah last summer, no one was upset about making another one THIS summer.  And I think I have to call this year's adventure an UN-road trip, anyway, seeing as to how we weren't making any fun stops along our way.  The kids were seriously troopers because it was the worst.   We drove straight out to Utah in one fell swoop, only stopping a couple times for gas and food and we made record time.  Even if that record was just a little over 20 hours.  Hahahaha.  {Spoiler alert -- being in the car that long is not fun for anyone.}

Some people are lucky enough to be able to fall asleep anywhere.

Despite the fact that we had been planning for months now to make the drive, as we got closer and closer to July, I was starting to get a little concerned about the wisdom of traveling during a pandemic, when the number of Covid cases are spiking both where we live AND where we were going in Utah.  After counseling as a family and doing some praying and pondering, though, we all felt good about going and a week after we made that decision, we were on the road!

Playing outside at grandma and grandpa's house was so satisfying after being cooped up in a car.  ;)

Our stipulations for staying with grandma and grandpa were that we had to stay 6 feet away from them and wear masks entering and exiting the house until we were down in the basement.  I actually think this picture is pretty cute!  Perhaps this year's Christmas card option?  Hahahahahaha.

While we were in Utah, we split our time between Scott's parents' house (where we slept most of the nights) and Emily and Freddie's.  It was so much fun!  I think we ALL needed this break from real life.  The kids had a blast with their cousins, and honestly Utah is so beautiful.  I love seeing the mountains and the view of Utah lake from Saratoga Springs is gorgeous.  I could seriously just sit out on Emily's back deck and stare at the lake all day long! 

Poor Ethan -- his birthday is smack dab in the middle of summer and is therefore almost always shuffled in with vacation plans and/or moves.  Sophie and Pearce wanted to make him a cookie cake while we were at Emily's.  They came up with the caption all by themselves and it made me laugh out loud when I saw it.  Hahahaha.

"You are 16 Going on 17" (That's a Sound of Music reference for anyone not in the know. Hahaha.)

Not so gorgeous?  That would be the wildfires that were raging LITERALLY next door to where my brother and sister live.  We actually had to evacuate from my brother's house one Sunday because the fires were so close to their neighborhoods and we were thankfully able to grab ALL of our stuff and the kids and head back over to my in-law's house in Orem in record time. I can't even describe how apocalyptic the sky looked while we were trying to get out of there!  We were lucky in that we beat the rush to get out of dodge and the main road leaving town was completely clear when we left.  Ten or fifteen minutes later, when my mom and a couple of other siblings were leaving, it was bumper to bumper traffic.  

This was the view of Freddie's street as we were fleeing!

And Redwood Rd!

In a true miracle, the wind changed direction RIGHT before it got to any neighborhoods (although I think there was one house that was a casualty) and if you look at the aerial shots of the burn damage, the line stops RIGHT next to my brother's neighborhood.  Like seriously, RIGHT NEXT TO IT.  So crazy!  Thankfully that wind changed, and by the next day even, the air was so much better and the view so much clearer, that you wouldn't have known that anything happened.

For comparison's sake -- this is Freddie's street the next day.  Crazy difference!!!

Other than that big excitement/adventure, we stayed pretty low-key and as self-contained as possible.  The kids and I made one trip to BYU to eat at the Cougareat (and get some chocolate covered cinnamon bears from the bookstore) and Scott took the older kids to hike the Y one of the mornings while we were at his parent's house still.  I don't know that a picnic by ourselves in American Fork canyon counts as super exciting, but we all enjoyed it nonetheless.  It's amazing how much cooler the temperature is when you're up in the mountains!

Hahahahahahaha.  This picture just makes me LOL.

Alex and I were pretty impressed with this Lego master creation of the original Brigham Young Academy.

I love how it looks like the woman in the poster behind them is photobombing our picture.  Hahahaha.

When it came time for our family memorial on my dad's birthday, we made the 5 hour drive to Hiko for the day and were joined by Sarah and her family and Jacob, who had flown into Las Vegas and were driving from there.  It was a gorgeous, HOT, and windy day to be in the desert.  We ended up staying for a couple of hours -- leveling out the gravel on top of my dad's grave before placing the stone and letting the kids find a bunch of rocks to outline the space -- and once we were all gathered, we sang happy birthday and ate cupcakes.  My mom had the grandkids tell about their favorite memories with Papi (his candy packages, birthday money, and trips to Chuck E. Cheese were the big ones) and then she shared with them the story of her conversion.  

Hiko, NV

It was SO windy!

Schofield Family Cemetery

My cousin (or I guess technically he's my dad's cousin even though he's around my age) created this sculpture for his parent's grave.

This one huge tree provided the only shade and solace from the sun.  The only downfall was that it was located all way across the street from the cemetery.

All the grandkids!

The 2015 babies!  They're so cute together.  :)

The boys playing in the dirt

I asked Scott afterwards how his expectations of Hiko matched up to the reality.  His response?  "I was expecting it to be in the middle of nowhere, but this is even more middle of nowhere than I was thinking."

My little family

We took a lot of pictures.

The view driving into Hiko.

Mom plus kids

{Mom's Story:  My mom grew up in a large Catholic family in southern Louisiana and one day when she was a little girl she asked her mom if they'd all be together up in heaven when they died.  My grandma answered that no, they wouldn't, but they'd be so happy to be with God that it wouldn't matter.  My mom had to hide the tears that came to her eyes after her mother answered and from that night on, when she finished saying her Hail Marys at bedtime, she'd add her own little prayer that she'd be able to be with her family in heaven. Almost a decade later, she met with missionaries who shared the gospel with her and taught her that families CAN be together forever!  She was baptized on February 28, 1978 and a few months later, she met my dad who had come down for the summer to work in the oil fields off-shore.  Because of their temple marriage we are all sealed together and we WILL be together up in heaven as a family.  It's true that in the here and now life certainly took some twists and turns that my mom wouldn't ever have anticipated (or wanted), but the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that all that is wrong and unfair and tragic in the world can be healed and made whole through the Savior's Atonement.}

  

We made the 5 hour drive back to Utah after we finished our memorial and since we were all having so much fun together and didn't want to leave yet, we ended up staying an extra couple of days.  It was wonderful.  The drive back wasn't quite as wonderful, but at least we had the excitement of watching fireworks for a big chunk of our late night drive thanks to traveling on the 4th of July!  As fun as we all had, I think we were all happy to finally be home and sleep in our own beds.  :)  Now we've just got to figure out a way to make the rest of this summer bearable...

Just Dance is Isaac's new favorite activity.

Moments before our evacuation.

We were all excited to finally meet baby Lucy!

One of our tasks while we were all out there was to sort through my dad's library.  He had a LOT of books.  Each of these bins were filled to the brim.

We tried to organize them by category.  History and Government/Politics were the biggest sections.

(These 4 overflowing bins are the Government/Politics collection.)

Our last day with cousins.

How fun does this look??  843 miles on I-80 alone!

One other task while going through my dad's stuff was dividing up his fountain pen collection.  He loved fountain pens and even though he didn't collect quite as many pens as he did books, he still had a big enough for collection for each of my siblings and I to take home a couple.  Ethan actually got first dibs on choosing one for his birthday.  He was actually pretty stoked about it and really enjoyed his maiden run using real ink.  :)