Whew...what a drive!

We're back from our vacation! Although, to be honest, now I feel like I need a vacation to relax from our vacation! Pretty much, our last week and a half can be summed up by one word: driving! We drove and drove and then drove some more. Luckily, my son was a dream and we had lots of movies for him to watch.

Before we started all the driving, my family came to Iowa on their way out to Utah. We were planning on caravanning (sp?), but had a few car troubles that we needed to fix first, so we ended meeting up with them later in Denver. We crammed everyone into our little apartment, which was no small feat!

My mom and Jake made a fort then read stories in it! Jake was in seventh heaven.

When we got our car taken care of, we drove all day and met the rest of my family in Denver. We stayed in Denver overnight, then drove to Utah and got there late Friday night. On Saturday, we hit up the Stadium of Fire at the BYU football stadium and saw Carrie Underwood live in concert! It was AMAZING! We went with one of my best friends from college and her husband, as well as my brother and some of his friends.On our way out, some lady stopped one of my brother's friends and asked him if he wanted to go to a party. He obviously was a little wary at first, but when she said it was an after party with all the producers and performers of the show, and then he gave her tickets for all of us to get in, we didn't hesitate!! Apparently this lady's husband was part of putting together the show, but she didn't want to go so she just handed them to us! I know what you're all wondering, so let me just tell you that Carrie Underwood wasn't there...much to our dismay. But everyone else was, and we got free food and dancing! Although, mostly we just hit up the free food and left. I know, we're getting lame in our old age... But we did feel very VIPish.

The next week was spent driving to different parts of Utah seeing Dougherty, Dunford, and Witt family relatives. Jake especially loved being with his cousin Isaac. They liked to play air hockey together, and they were both surprisingly good! We also spent some time in southern Utah seeing some of the amazing national parks down there.
I think Jake liked riding the buses around the parks more than anything. Every time a bus would come, his face lit up and he would start yelling, "BUS!! BUS!!" You can imagine his misery if that bus was not the one we wanted to take at the time and it left without us on it...Luckily, his tears stopped immediately as soon as we stepped on the right bus. Also, I should note that Jake has started picking his nose whenever we take pictures. Please say this is just a phase...After all this excitement, we drove back to Iowa and arrived a few days ago. Whew! We're back, and I need a break!! But we had a great time and loved being able to see lots of people that we rarely get to visit with.