Road To College week One!!

It always seemed like the time would never get here or it was always like a month away before the time came to have to deal with the emotion of having Javier no more in our home.. Today we are off on a two and a half week road trip. The packing has not been very fun but the excitement and proud feelings I have are hard to describe. We are off to Idaho as our first stop on the road to college...Mercedes, Nick and Landon here we come to bombard your home with noise, people and of course a mess in small quarters but even with all that a blast we are determined to have.

Everyone was right for the record.. It is a LONG trip even with three drivers.

My road trip started with the break out of a nasty little cold. No fun for me but I pushed forward and then Analise felt the weakness that came with the cold as well. If we stood for too long then we felt light headed and had to lay down to recover. It lasted about 3 days and we were with Mercedes for only 4 days. We made the best of it.. Started out visiting their splash park.. it was warm but not warm enough to make up for the cold water. My kids lasted about 10 minutes and then they were done and Analise wasn't feeling very good so she didn't even last that long.


We made our way to the dry playground


joked around had some laughs and walked back to Mercedes house. Analise and I had to walk very slow.. our illness plus the difficulty breathing in that thin air made it a bit difficult.

We took the next day off to recover and Mercedes cooked for our family. I must say it was oh so very nice to have someone cooking for me.

I think the highlight of the Idaho portion of our trip was our visit to Bear world.
 
We got to drive through a park that had various animals even wolves.


We had our stroller strapped to the back of the car and the wolf ran at us with a mission and he ripped the side pocket right off the stroller.


After notifying the park employee they were able to get it back from the wolves. That was a very fun moment in our day.


Then we saw the bears. It was so cool to see them up front and be that close to them.


We opted to go on a guided tour where we were able to feed them. The heat got to Dante and he almost had a fainting spell so he sat down the rest of the trip as we tried to get some color back into him.



We had to rest after the tour because Dante was not looking good at all.

They had a little area that was filled with rides for the kids and us bigger kids all got to ride something..


except Landon is always getting a ride..Hey no fair!

We finished the day with a visit to the petting zoo.. where they had an aggressive goat and a pot belly pig.. Only in Idaho..



On Sunday we had such a great time visiting another ward.. The kicker was that one of the primary teachers told me my son Gabe seems so shy...HAHAHAHAHAHA!! If only he was shy..must have been out of his element. After Church we had lunch and headed to the temple. My favorite place in the whole wide world is a temple. The grounds are just so peaceful... We had some fun with our photographers Javier and Elly.. Not too bad for a two year old, if I do say so myself.

The temple was a nice way to end our stay in Idaho..Part 2 of our trip..Utah! here we come.