Sister's Trip April 2015

 

Flowers at Temple Square

April 22nd, I flew into Salt Lake City. Natalie picked me up at the airport. We had lunch outside on the patio at The Oasis Café. Natalie then dropped me off near City Center where I walked around downtown, took pictures, visited Temple Square, bought a Subway sandwich for a disabled vet and enjoyed the sunshine.

 
From downtown I took the Trax train out to Sandy to visit with my friend Susan. Susan and I met in college. It was either 1975 or 1976. We also shared an apartment for a little while before I married my first husband.

It was a lot of fun visiting with her and Roy. We hadn't seen each other for a couple of years. We had some good laughs about growing up and caring for our older husbands, about doctor appointments and failing eye sight.
 
In the afternoon she took me over to Natalie's new house. They had just picked up the keys two days earlier. The moving van was in the drive way. We got a tour of the house and kept out of the way of the movers.

 
Then Natalie and I went to pick up my cousin Russell and the three of us went out to dinner at Mimi's. We had a nice visit. After taking Russell home Natalie and I headed to Nancy's house in Springville. Sue and Becky had driven down from Boise earlier in the day.
 


Emily marker-painted these great shoes for me. She's so talented.

At Nancy's, Emily gave Natalie a hair cut then Natalie headed back home to Salt Lake.

 

We spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night at Nancy's house. Becky and I shared the lovely new queen size air mattress on the living room floor and Sue had the couch. We stayed up every night until about 1 a.m.

 

I don't remember which movies we watched which nights, but here are the movies I can remember; Larry Crowne (which we referred all weekend to as Russell Crowe), St. Vincent (loved this one), Guardians of the Galaxy, some random Lifetime movie with Kevin Sorbo and maybe one or two others. I'd have to ask Emily.

We did our usual spring cleaning, laundry, visiting, reading, took fun pictures, ate well and just had a really good time together. We stayed really busy but found time to sit and relax and visit. I think we have finally learned to pace ourselves, well almost.

We do have one brother in the family. He is second to the oldest.

 

 
 



We had a visit from an old friend we grew up with in Boise, Judy Hulet Fluckiger. That was so much fun catching up with her and hearing all about her family. I don't think I'd seen her in like 35 years! Russell stopped by with Sherrie, Kent and their daughter that just graduated from BYU.

We were able to get a box of cookies sent to Nathan in the MTC just days before he flew to Poland.

Sunday morning we drove in Sue's car to Natalie's house. They got the tour of the house then they headed home to Boise. Then my friend Loretta came over for a visit. She used to live here in Kent but moved back to Salt Lake a couple of years ago after she retired.

I spent the rest of the day with Natalie and Scott. What fun we had shopping and playing and eating. We had lunch at a burger place called The Habit Burger Grill. It was so good and there are rumors we're getting one in Kent.

Then we went to a sporting goods store called Scheels. Boy was that ever a fun experience. We walked in and there was a Ferris wheel in the center of the store. Or as I kept mistakenly calling it, a roller coaster. Tickets cost 1.00 and soon Natalie and I were in a seat. And then it rocked and we screamed, loudly. Then we had to wait as it moved slowly loading and unloading everyone.

Once the ride got going I remembered that I don't like Ferris wheels. Only every time I talked about it, it came out as roller coaster. That made us laugh, and loudly. So much that the little boy in the seat in front of us kept turning around to look at us. Scott was lucky enough to capture this photo of us.

 And then we captured this selfie as we were laughing.

 And then as the Ferris wheel ride was coming to an end and they were slowly letting the people out, we thought we could sit back and relax. We were wrong. Two cars before our turn to get out our car rocked again and we screamed, again. By the time it was our turn to get out the high school boy had been very entertained. As we stepped out I said, "you did that on purpose, didn't you?" He just smiled and handed us two tokens for another ride saying since he scared us we should get another ride. We almost didn't take the tokens. But I told Natalie I'd keep mine and write on it, "I rode the Ferris Wheel, I can do Anything!"

Here are some other fun pictures from the sporting goods store.

Natalie told me to pick them up! Then we saw how funny that looked.

 

From the sporting goods store we went to Ikea and Bed, Bath and Beyond looking for things for the new house. We went back to the house before heading out to dinner on the way to the airport. We had dinner in downtown Salt Lake at Maxwell's. It was really, really good. I had pasta and they had a really big pizza. Then I was dropped off at the airport for my flight home.

 

It was yet another perfect trip to Utah spending time with my daughter and son-in-law, my sisters, niece and nephew and visiting with friends and cousins. I did miss out on not seeing my son's family with the grand baby this trip. Which only means there will be a trip to Southern Utah in my near future.

 

Making Progress

I've recently been able to open up my 10 lb. and 15 lb. incentive envelopes. Sometimes I forget it's my own money that is providing the goodies. It's a lot of fun. And I'm very glad I wrote notes to myself.

For the 10 lb. envelope Natalie included a DSW gift card and a Kohl's gift card.

I bought some really cute beige shoes with the gift card, a 10.00 coupon and some extra cash.





At Kohl's I bought my first Kitchen Aid mixer. It was on sale, I had a 30% coupon and a 25.00 gift card, plus a 30.00 mail in rebate. I was happy with what I paid for it. And to top that off they gave me Kohl's cash to spend this week! It's still in the box but will get used this week.

For the 15 lb. incentive envelope I received a Barnes and Noble gift card which I promptly loaded to my online account. I like to buy Nook books to read at the gym.

I still have 3 envelopes to go, 20 lb., 25 lb. and 30 lb. I'm taking it slow and steady hoping to make it permanent.

Do you have a fitness goal this year you are working on? Do you need to refocus on that goal? Now's the time to do it.