Over the river and through the woods
Why I love visiting Chris’ grandparents:
Spending time with the in-laws. The drive there takes us over Boulder Mountain. It is gorgeous, but we did it in complete darkness while eating a yummy banana shake and listening to The Hunger Games on CD. All the while, my mother-in-law, Jolynn, is telling us to watch for deer. Can I say distracted driving? Jolynn must not have trusted Chris and his dad in the front so she was craning her neck to watch for deer and, yes, she always did spot them first. But when a big black blob appeared in the middle of the big black road in the big black dark it took all of us a minute to realize it was a cow. We all were screaming. Jolynn actually managed to shout the word “cow!!” and we missed him by inches. When John-the-attorney told us it is a law we have to pay for cows we hit on the road I was annoyed. After all, if I hit someones life-long companion dog, I wouldn’t have to pay for that! “What’s the difference between a cow and a dog?” I shouted. “About a thousand pounds!” said John. I wasn’t amused. Okay, I was.
Food. The peach pie. The fire pit hot dogs. The Smores. The garden veggies. Yum.
Nature. We live one with nature in that small town and I love/hate it. I love the sound of the stream just outside the window. I love the gorgeous hikes we have easy access to. I love the smell of the honeysuckle bush. But I hate the Humming Bird and the Hornet that were fighting over nests around our heads in the gazebo. I really hate the twenty-something mosquito bites I am sporting, even on my face. And I really hate the big tennis ball sized Beatle that landed on Chris’ back, causing me to fly over the table away from him, screaming about how I was about to lose my husband to a bug incident.
Dude. The kids. Follow the leader, the park, swinging, their funny fighting. My favorite was walking down the stairs after ten pm for bed and spotting almost three year old Logan running away from the television he had been watching, while very nonchalantly shouting at us “Oh, I’m just hanging out.” Then when his mom tells him to get in bed he does, but it is on his stomach with his chin on his hands, kicking his little feet and not about to go to sleep. I can say it’s funny because I’m not his mom. :)
The small town parade. On the drive to the next small town over we spotted a car accident, then the cop car, the ambulance, and the firetruck. There went half the parade. That left a tractor, some horses, a guy in a motorized recliner chair, and a truck pulling the primary kids, another for the youth in the local ward, and then a woman on a four wheeler with a list of excuses why the Relief Society didn’t have a float. It was awesome. And since the parade route is so little we saw the whole thing twice. They turned around and came back before we could leave. Nice.
The grandparents. I love their stories, I love their hugs, I love how everything we do has to be exactly the way they’ve always done it, and I love grandpa trying to figure out what we were talking about when we asked him if we could borrow a CD player.
I can hardly wait for our visit next year!
