Trip to New Mexico and Texas

I've been back for a week or more and I'm finally getting back into the hang of thing, jobs, house cleaning, laundry. I finally have a few minutes to share about my trip to New Mexico and Texas.

We started out in Logan and traveled to Spanish Fork to see Anne and Nate. We put together a gift for Kirsten's girls (flower hair clips that Anne has been selling). Then we drove to Price, UT to pick up Dan's brother Joel and his girl friend Barbara. So if you see pics of them, you will know who we are talking about. The trip was alot of driving and alot of fun. After a 12 hour drive we reached Las Cruces to see Kirsten, who was pretty sick when we got there, and the girls were just getting over a pretty back cold. (none of us got sick..) We didn't have much of a chance to stay at her house on the way down, we pretty much slept the night and left the next day. I wanted to stay but we all knew that we would have some time on the way back through... we continued our drive and another 8 hours later and a sleepless night we were in San Antonio Texas. We arrived at 6 in the morning, and found 3 little boys playing in the living room on their wii. We all looked at eachother wondering why the kids were up, then realised that the time was actually 7 am there. We slept on the floor for 2 hours, and I heard the boys saying to eachother, "Man it sucks they can't go to Six Flags with us, wish they would wake up." I prodded the others awake, and our day was already starting with just 2 hours of sleep! It's a good thing we were not a bunch of little whiny kids, cuz they would really have not wanted us to come on that much sleep! I think Dan had the worst of it, he did all the driving. I wanted to drive, but we had just traded in his other car for a new Subaru STI the sports edition and he really wanted to "get to know her". I don't blame him for not wanting me to drive, I'm not really that good at manual and I wouldn't want to ruin something right after we got it.

Six Flags was a blast, we all got in with special passes for the day for just $10 thanks to Dan's uncle Joe. We rode the new ride Galiath and other crazy rides, it was really just like Lagoon, but bigger. 3 little boys running all over the park like it was their own back yard was pretty crazy, I don't know how their parents handled it mentally, emotionally.. but they didn't lose any of them.

The part of the trip that Dan was most excited about was getting to see his dad. His dad owns a club called atomix. We drove to downtown San Antonio after Six Flags and walked inside of his club. The bouncers were not excited about letting us in until we told him that we were Jame's kids. He smiled really big and gave us all passes right away. We sat at the bar and waited to talk to James. He came over after serving a few drinks and we talked, I could tell Dan was very excited to be there. We watched people sing Karoke, (none of us had the guts to sing). That night, worn out we slept pretty soundly until the boys woke us up again, "You guys coming to the beach with us?" It was about 10 in the morning this time, but even with more sleep we all felt more tired than the night before!

We drove to Corpus Christi and went to Mustang Island... there we tride out boogie boards and Joe's Surf board. We played in the sand and burried a couple of the boys. It was about the only really sunny day we got, but it was windy. We had fun anyway. Our San Antonio trip ended with the afternoon spent walking around downtown with Dan's dad and eating at the Hard Rock Cafe there. (pretty expensive, good food though). It was good to see Dan's dad in his own atmosphere. No dress up clothes, just a regular guy in a regular restaurant.

Well, the trip had to come to an end sometime, so we drove again, all day and slept again at Kirsten's. This time we got to stay for another day. The kids went to school, we picked them up early and went to White sands. It was pretty windy (again) but we got some neat pictures. I was worried it was going to be a bust at first because of the wind, but Dan said, "We're here so lets have some fun" and he ran right out into the dunes, everyone followed. I was glad for his initiative. The girls really took to Dan and Joel, Macy even took alot of time playing with Barbara and trying to get her to sit by her and play with her. It was really cute. Dan took some videos of his car in the sand, that was a little scarey for me and fun for Dan. I guess this trip was ready to end a week later, all of us crabby and tired. I'm glad we got to go though.

Dan texted his dad just this last week, "Glad we got to come see you... I won't have the chance in the next year to see you." His dad texted that he enjoyed seeing us and wondered why Dan would be able to see him in the next year. Dan has gotten his orders to go to Kuwait. He gets deployed this coming July. He's leaving on July 6th 2009. It seems so fast coming, and even though we have been trying to plan for this, I never expected it to come so soon. I'm hoping I can get through this time by staying busy. I know Kirsten is doing now what I'll be doing in a couple of months, getting along without the one you love most is going to be hard. We are going to be moving in with Dan's grandparents in Brigham City so that I don't have to pay rent while he is gone. (I will also have emotional support as well). Here comes another big change in our lives, but I can't help feeling a little helpless and lonely at the thought of Dan leaving.