Sending Jordan off!

Downtown PDX on a warm summer afternoon.

On Thursday I went into the Portland office for an in-person meeting. With a flight to Utah scheduled for Thursday after work, I decided to take my weekend bag with me and travel straight to the airport on MAX after work. On my way, I decided to take a picture of the beautiful late summer day. I love this view of the Keller Fountain with the Wells Fargo tower in the background.

It was sad to leave Suzanna and the kids for the weekend, but I was excited to head back to Utah to spend a few days with Mom and with Jordan and co. in Holladay as he spoke in church prior to leaving on his mission to Peru!

Traveling without kids is kind of a breeze! Despite arriving at the airport much later than expected due to some backed up MAX trains from an earlier train malfunction, I flew threw security and still had time to grab a bite for dinner before boarding and taking my window seat. Departing in full light was unusual as well, so I got a few cool pictures as we took off.

Vancouver and the Columbia River from the sky.

Pearson Air Field in Vancouver.

Looking at Oregon from high above.

I sat next to a nice guy on the airplane who reminded me a bit of Dad in some ways. We got into a great conversation and before I knew it, we were landing in SLC! Mom picked me up from the airport and let me drive "home" to Provo. It was a strange feeling, being back in Utah but without Suzanna and the kids. I realized that this was the first time I had gone "back" to or been in Utah alone since getting married seven and a half years ago. Mom and I got to talk as long as we wanted without worrying about sleeping children.

The next morning, Mom headed off to work, and I stuck around at the house to work from there. I opened the fridge and saw that she had found a couple of Cokes with Kristin's and my name! Kris came over around lunch to do a little project for Mom, so we got to talk and catch up for a while. It was fun!

Share a Coke with Mark and Kris. Thanks Mom!

I Skype'd with Suzanna and the kids so I could see the kiddos. Emmie was really cute and started saying, "Dada dada!" when she saw me on the screen. It made me really happy!

Emmie talking to me on Skype

She was so excited!

Friday evening when Mom got home from Westridge, we went to an Italian place by University Mall for dinner. The food was a little underwhelming and somewhat forgettable, but just like the night before, the company and conversation was great. We sat there after finishing our food for a while and just talked. No place to rush to and nobody to meet or worry about. We just sat there chatting about work and family and people Mom knew from Italy in the Stake.

On Saturday morning, I was supposed to do my longest training run of my entire marathon program, a 22-miler! Since I knew Mom wanted my help around the house and I didn't want to get stranded far away in case my right IT band injury flared up, I decided that I'd just do a bunch of mile laps from her place up to Westridge and back. It's just under a mile, so each time around, I'd have to go just a little further on the next lap to hit the next mile mark. I was only about 5-6 miles in when the pain flared up, and I decided I needed to stop for a quick rest and some stretching. When I went inside for some electrolytes and stretching, Ben had come over and was talking to Mom about moving some of the stuff from Dad's dark room.

I never really got going on my run again, but I did jog over to Kristin and Ben's to use their foam roller. While there, I got some pictures of Hayley and Alyssa in their PHS Spirit shirts. But actually, these photos were actually from the night before when Mom and I stopped by after dinner. The girls were there with some friends watching a movie while Kris and Ben were out. But that's beside the point. Cool shirt.

Hayley the Senior

Alyssa the Freshman

Once back and Mom's, we got busy cleaning out the dark room. So much of Dad's art equipment and supplies are just so outdated that we didn't think there was much opportunity to re-sell any of it. I did have to take a few pictures of some of the more significant or sentimental items.

Old sliding desk.

This old desk used to be in Brian's and my room upstairs. I remember Brian hiding all sorts of things in the back compartments of this desk. I remember baseball and basketball cards, coin banks and even those Fudge stripped cookies that I used to put on my fingers and pretend like they were little sombreros.

There was also a heavier desk that Jack had built. I didn't put a picture of it here, but it was the one that Dad used specifically for his artograph. It had a small rectangular section cut out where the vertical artograph post was situated. I remember climbing under that desk one time when I was little and squirming up through the hole so it looked like I was a living bust, sitting on his table. I know Mom has a picture somewhere, so I should find it sometime.

Getting the artograph down and out of the dark room proved to be pretty challenging. Fortunately, Steven, Steve Chipman, and Brad Wakefield were all around at the moment and were able to help pull it from the spot where it must have been for the past 20+ years and haul it out to the "car wash" where we set it down until Mom could get it down to the dumpsters. Ooooh, I wonder what Dad would say or think if he saw us pulling the artograph out and sending it packing. Hopefully he'd approve, but all day it seemed like I could hear him saying, "Be careful with that when you move it! Watch out for that heavy/expensive part!"

The artograph

Dad's dark room without the desks and artograph.

We eventually finished up our work for the day and headed out to do some errands. The first was a stop at Blickenstaff's where I picked up a bunch of these little animal figurines that Mom bought Logan for his birthday. On that day she took him, he picked out a small number and was content with them. After we brought them home, we could tell he loved them so much that I decided to buy a bunch more when back in Utah. So I picked up 38 more!

2 each of 19 different animals

One of Mom's friends recommended Sammy's Burgers & Fries to her a while back, so we decided to give it a try this afternoon after the other errands. It was so good! More on my burger blog about that, but for the third day in a row, Mom and I got to sit and chat for a while without chasing kids around or worrying about rushing off to the next thing. we sat at a table on the sidewalk outside and got to enjoy the warm afternoon weather.

Sammy's Burgers & Fries; a 4 or 4.5 fry burger in my book!

Once back at Mom's, I took a quick rest before getting ready to head up to SLC to meet up with a coworker (Travis) to go rock climbing at an indoor bouldering gym. Mom got busy in the kitchen, prepping a bunch of dishes to take up to Jordan's post-church-talk luncheon in Laurie's backyard. She was so busy and prepared so many dishes that she was still working when I got home! I had to take a picture of the aftermath in the kitchen!

Mom's kitchen in the midst of preparing many dishes

In Salt Lake, I met up with Travis at the Front Climbing Club, a relatively new gym with lots of great routes and an interesting set up. I liked the lawn chairs lining the crash pads, where climbers would sit back in between climbs and study the next route.

The Front Climbing Club bouldering gym in Salt Lake

Just like last time, I started tearing my skin pretty after a few attempts, so I quickly taped up my finger

The Front

It's amazing. We didn't even climb for two whole hours, but I was so thoroughly exhausted and felt like my core and arm muscles had been worked harder than they had in a LONG time in that short amount of time! Good stuff though, and I wouldn't mind getting into rock climbing on an ongoing basis.

Unfortunately, on Sunday morning as Mom and I were preparing to leave, she told me that she wasn't feeling so well and was having some serious nausea. She told me I'd better go up to Holladay without her, but I insisted that she come along since I didn't want to leave her alone, and I was hopeful that she would get feeling better. This has happened to her almost predictably once a month for each of the last four months, and we can't figure out what's causing her nausea!

Once we got into the car, we were a bit behind schedule, but we hurried up and made it in time for me to head over to the church. Mom stayed back, so I recorded Jordan's talk so that Mom could listen to it later. Laurie got an even better recording from her location, so it was nice that Mom got to listen. Jordan's talk was really good, and I'm confident he'll be an effective and hard-working missionary!

Jordan and Hayley, grandkids one and two

Mom, Alyssa, and Kristin

Mom camped out across the street, on the couch of a couple of neighbors who are serving a mission in Palmyra. It was fortunate to have that couch and living room available to her because she didn't want to be around a ton of people while feeling so crummy. David, Brian, and I gave her a blessing around noon, and it wasn't much longer before she started feeling noticeably better. By later in the afternoon, she was feeling well enough to come over to Laurie's to help out with preparations for the second after-church reception (this one for friends and neighbors, while the first was for family). She headed back to Provo with Chris's dad, so I was glad she had somebody to accompany her. I stayed in Holladay to help out for the evening and then to spend Monday working there before heading back home to Washington.

A few pictures of the spread at Jordan's after-church family luncheon.

Desserts!

Fruits and vegetables

Salads and sandwiches

It was good that I stuck around because I got to help prepare for the friend/neighbor reception by helping reheat tray after tray of Chick-fil-a chicken nuggets and biscuit sandwiches. It was quite the process! I then got to help eat a ton of the chicken because they may have over-ordered a little bit! Part way through the evening reception, I borrowed Laurie's VW diesel Passat to head over to Daybreak to meet up with Erica (Sara Lenz's sister) who had been our family portrait photographer earlier this summer. She had finished making edits to our photos and was ready to deliver a DVD with the photos, so it was convenient that I was up in the area when they were available!

msh