Charlotte |
Chicago |
On New Year’s Day, we packed up Kira’s car and headed to where else…. Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. Then we headed to Cedar City. We met Jessi and Peter at Cracker Barrel for brunch in St George. Peter and Gary took Kira’s car and headed up to Cedar, but us ladies needed a “shopping” fix. We shopped for a couple of hours and picked up some dresses for the girls, had lots of fun and then headed to Cedar in the Accord. That evening everyone pitched in to help wrap Christmas presents and we went to Smith’s to get food for “Christmas Dinner”. No ham of course, but we made do with a pork roast.
Jessi wanted to do a tradition Turek Christmas morning, so we got up early on Thursday Jan 2, to open
On Friday Jan 3, we got up fairly early and went down to St George to do a temple session. Gary and I really enjoyed the session at St George. It seemed to go quicker and there was a lot less stress for some reason. We had been sealed in St. George when we got married and I don’t think we had been back. It
was a wonderful experience. Afterward we took some pictures outside the temple. There was still some snow on the ground from a storm they had before we got there. We were all hungry and since Kira had been craving a good hamburger, we headed to Smashburgers for lunch. It was very good. There were some shops back behind the Smashburgers, and we found some really good deals at DownEast. We then stopped at Target before heading back to Cedar. That evening we tried to go to Café Rio, but it was too busy, so we went to another Mexican restaurant called Brodys which Jess and Peter had eaten at before. It wasn’t busy and the food was pretty good, too. As you can see Eating is a BIG part of our trips.
Smashburger in St George |
On Saturday, we kind of puttered around the apartment, helped take down some Christmas decorations so Jess wouldn’t have to worry about them before going back to school and then we packed up to go to Vegas. We tried Café Rio again and this time we were able to eat there. We really like Café Rio and since we don’t have them back in SC we wanted to get our fix before coming home. When we got to Mike and Kelly’s house, they already had Kevin and Anna staying there We told Mike and Kelly we would be back
Visting at Erin's house |
Sunday morning, we got up and went to church with Grandpa Ed. Afterwards we went to Sherri’s house where Sherri, Kira, Jessi and I made chicken salad sandwiches for lunch. We relaxed around the house for a while. Peter and Grandpa and Jason watched TV while Gary, the girls, and I went out to Lake Las Vegas.
This is a reproduction Italian village (a la DisneylandJ) on some lakes they made by damming up Las Vegas wash. I want to go back the next time we are in Vegas and do a little more roaming around. We hung around out there until late afternoon then headed back to town. We had to tell Jessi and Peter goodbye (sniff) and send them back to Cedar, and we had to go back to Mike and Kelly’s to pack up ourselves.
Monday morning, 6 January. Some of the worst weather in a long time was plaguing the country, including Chicago where we had to change planes. Gary checked our flights first thing in the morning and they were all running. We went for a walk with Kelly and Kira early, but then Kira had to go off to work. She was NOT ready to go to work and have us leave at the same time. That was really hard for all of us.
BUT, it gets better. I checked again on the flights and the flight from Vegas to Chicago was running so late there was no way we were going to make our connection to Charlotte. And we DID NOT want to get trapped in Chicago. I got on the phone with Southwest airlines and the best they could do was a flight on Wednesday going through Baltimore. I had to scramble to get a substitute for Tuesday and Wednesday and Gary called Renee and let her know. He was able to work some on Tuesday remotely. I called my school and found out I wasn’t the only one stuck out. There were a couple of other teachers who were stuck in Chicago. Kira was pretty happy when we texted her and asked where she wanted to have lunch. We met her at Café Zuppas. That evening we fixed chicken enchiladas and 7 layer treats for supper for Mike and Kelly.Tuesday I worked from Mike and Kelly’s living room until we went out to Deseret Books with Kelly. Other than that we just visited.
Wednesday morning, we were finally going to get out of town. We said our goodbyes and headed to the airport. The plane was running on time, and soon we were on our way to Baltimore. (We won’t talk about the overweight passenger who sat next to me and made the trip very uncomfortable.) The flight to Charlotte was running late, but soon we were back home. Both Gary and I had to be at work the next day, so we just dumped everything and went to bed.
Ready for push-back in Las Vegas |