St George Trip--Words

This Summer Papa directed down at Tuacahn, down in St. George, Utah. Last week we headed down to Broadway in the Dessert.

The plan was to leave Provo at noon on Monday. Since I am always nervous about dying while I am traveling, I had to leave my house clean. Since Chris couldn't get work off, the kids and I were off on our own. We were all ready to take off at noon from Provo, but there was no Papa. One day we will learn to factor in "Papa-time." That is the time difference between the actual time and the time that Papa lives by. We love the guy, but due to all his responsibilities, he is usually a little bit later than the rest of us!!

The trip down we uneventful for the first hour or so. Baring frequent stops, the trip takes about four hours. About half way into the trip, Papa announces that he is tried, needs a nap and will I drive. Well, that is commendable as he usually takes his naps AS he is driving. No kidding, don't laugh. Anyways, so I get up in the driver's seat. I get along down the road. I look in the rear view mirror and he is playing the DS. And then, in the middle of a torrential down-pore, he decides to start hosting his own variety show with the kids. This show includes loud talking, singing and interviews. All of this is done into a pretend mic that makes their voices 5X as loud. Don't forget the down-pore that leaves me unable to see to drive!!! But, the kids aren't fighting, so I the show continue.

The rest of the drive does smoothly, with Papa never napping. We went to our motel first. Happily Josh, Dana and fam were right by our suite that we were sharing with Nana and Papa. First off we sang Happy Birthday to Ali, Ashley, Brook, Josh and Papa. The rest of us felt a bit left out, but tried to deal with it. Ali got an iPod shuffle from Nana, Papa, Josh and Dana. Chris and I gave her a dock with speakers.

Next we were off to In n Out. It is, hands down, our favorite place to eat. Anytime you take five adults and six kids anywhere, logistics get a bit crazy. As we adults order, we put the kids on table patrol. We got nearly enough places to sit and scared people out of the other places we needed :)

Our first night we spent enjoying The Sound of Music. Just driving out the the theatre is a reverent experience for me. I love the land that is St. George. All the beautiful red dirt and mountains. I also love walking down into the theatre seating itself. Again, kids, adults, wheelchair, it all just adds to the crazy fun that is the whole experience. Each night, the usher asked the kids if they could read and tried to hold back giving them a program due to lack of reading ability. Maybe when the program only has words and no pictures that might work. But, all our kids needed playbills.

After getting the kids seated, I settled into listen to the orchestra. I soon realized it might be a difficult night due to the man sitting next to me. The theatre makes a lot of money selling consessions. Personally, it drives me crazy to watch plays with people eating around me. And my neighbor takes the cake (or popcorn, or pretzels or whatever he was eating at the time!). This man had no eating edicate. This is how he ate his popcorn: firt, you get a handful of popcorn, next, lean back in your chair, extend your fist-ful of popcorn far away from you, finally, throw the popcorn and hope that some of it makes it into your mouth. But, most likely, most of it will rest on your stomach, the floor or your poor neighbor. Now, onto drinking. First, you finish your soda in five gulps. Then, this is the most important part, you check, every two minutes, to see if anyone refilled your cup without your knowledge. Honestly, loud sucking noises not good!!!! Now, for the most annoying part. He figured since I was half of his size, I didn't really need all of my seat. So, he happily leaned over into the space of my seat. After intermission (or halftime as Luke called it), I put myself into a different seat!!!

The play itself was wonderful. My dad works magic on the stage. This show was no exception. Did I mention that the theatre is outside? Did I mention that it rained the whole time? But, mostly, it was a gentle rain. Not until the final half hour did it rain to the point of it running down our faces. The highlight of the show was when the twins announced that there were Natzis on stage. It was rather loud and really funny!

After the show, the kids got to meet most of the cast. The children were a highlight. They all got a little jealous that Papa was hugging other kids. They weren't sure that was acceptable.

Do you realize how long this post could be? I better speed and edit my thoughts better!!!

The next morning was spent at the pool. Most of the people swam, even Nana! I hate water, always have. And get my family is always suprised when I don't get in the water!! Silly people.

After cleaning up, we hit In n Out again. Then it was off to the outlet mall. We love the St. George outlet. Way fun.Then Papa said he needed a quick nap. Since he was about to fall over, I decided to believe him and let him go home!! After a quick nap, it was off to IHOP.

OK, IHOP needs its own post, but we will just include it here to save time. IHOP was hillarious and I doubt that I could even share the hillariousness of it with it. Again, adults, kids, wackiness. We thought plannning 90 minutes at the restaurant was giving it too much time, but we were putting food in our mouths as we left. I will lay most of the craziness at the feet of our waiter. He was not the smartest dude around, not even the fifth or sixth smartest. It took atleast twenty minutes to order. We did have three seperate tickets and that just about killed him. Then, it was kids eat free night, which made it a little difficult. On the kids eat free it was two free kids meal per paying adult. Ali and I are adults and so I tried to order three kids meals to share between Luke and Kat. Luke eats like a beast and is never full with one meals. Well, little, honest, Luke kept announcing that I shouldn't order three kids meals, just two. He shouted that about ten times. Finally I asked him if he wanted any food at all and he stopped shouting about the number of meals to order.

Then we waited. And waited. And waited. There was a lot of entertaining of children inbetween all the waiting. Then the food came. Well, some of it. Some of it came later, after he actually ordered it, finally. It took him three times to get all the food out to us. In between all of that, we shared what food we did have. Most of s were ok with the sharing. But, at one point, after I had taken food off of Kat's plate for the fourth or fifth time, she lost it and started crying and grabbing for her food. Poor Kat. Oh, yeah, and each time he realized he forgot something the waiter shared his favorite swear word with us...sh*t. Lovely, huh?

Finally, after all the entertaining, food sharing, pottying and bill paying (that was done on a cash register from the 80's) we were off, and not with a minute to spare. We were due at the theatre in short order.

Our second night at the theatre was to see Les Miserables. Two funny things happened right as we were getting seated. (I declared the same seating formation would be repeated this night as to not repeat the whole who sits where) The first funny thing was Josh got stung by a bee, the other funny thing was we were to be seated by the same people as last night. I wish I could tell you it was the same annoying man as the first night, cause that would be really funny, but it was a nice couple that was behind us previously. OK, so the stinging was not very funny. It started much histerical screaming from my kids. Why couldn't Josh and Dana's kids scream, too? Why just mine? The bees stayed quite awhile and even stung Dana for fun.

Les Mis was great. We all loved it. Even the twins stayed away the whole time. Our goal was to tired them out so they would sleep through it, but they watched the whole, dark story.

Motel. Sleep.

I decided to get up early the day of our departure, Wednesday, and go to the St. George temple. It is a beautiful temple. One I had not been to.

On our way home, we decided it would be fun to stop roughly every 60 miles, so we did!! Ha ha. Maybe not that often, but pretty often.

We stopped at Cove Fort. We had a great tour guide serving a mission there from Maine? Is that right? Anyways. She loved Josh and hated me. That is pretty much our whole life outsife of high school. Adults loved me in high school and hated him. Now, they love him and can do without me. It might have been because she pointed out an "inactive" volcano to us in the beginning of the tour. I told her we should try to "reactivate" it and invite it to church. It was all downhill from there. Cove Fort is awesome. We had a great time.

Our last stop on the way home was for lunch and a quick stop to the cheese factory for curds. As we were leaving Beaver, Kat saw some bikes on the sidewalk. She asked Papa to turn around so she could look at them. she is still trying to find a bike to buy. Anyways, just was we got back to where she saw them, a group of kids came out of the store and got on them. It was so funny. Maybe you had to be there.

Anyways. I would be suprised if you were still reading this! If so...get a life! Ha ha. We had a great time. Thank you Nana and Papa and the other Sorensen clan. It was awesome!