Returning Home

Once we got to Utah, the two days we were there flew by with few pictures.  It was kind of a whirlwind of eating at our favorite restaurants, quick stops at grandparents homes and shopping.  Rylissa was looking for a semi formal dress for her upcoming 8th grade dance, and since selections aren't great in Wichita Falls, we decided to check out Layton, where she tried on a few dresses, and we walked away with one for $80!  Not bad!

Of course, the real reason we were in Utah was for Moonlight Serenade.  20 years ago, I, a silly 17 year old high school girl, asked out my crush.... a 23 year old college student, to attend this with me.  For some reason he said yes... and well, the rest is history.

So we got dressed up, and off we went to enjoy a meal, and some great music.

Band was my life in High school.  I was part of a lot in High School, but band was my life.  Mr. Hendricks (my band director) was kind enough to let me join the marching band when I was in 9th grade.  (In Utah, 9th grade is still Jr. High).  I was one of three 9th graders, and it was pretty cool.  That year, our field show was the music from Nightmare Before Christmas.  I wish I had photos, because it was THE BEST!  I already loved the movie and music, but this just cemented that Nightmare Before Christmas would be my all time, favorite everything forever.  In 10th grade I was in the concert band, and upgraded to playing piccolo in the marching band.  By my Jr. Year, I was granted entry into Wind Ensemble, the elite band, and was a squad leader in Marching band.  By my senior year, I was in charge of all the piccolos, AND I got to play a solo in our field show... Independence Day.  It was the greatest way to end high school.  My group of best friends were all my band-mates.  We were the fab five, and we all met through band (except you Amy..... you and me go WAAAAAAAAAY back!)  So to drive to Utah to congratulate my band teacher on his retirement after 30 years of dedicated service, and to celebrate at his final Moonlight Serenade seemed the least I could do. 

Mr. Hendricks singing along to the Jazz Band.  Fun Fact, he was in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that while band was my life.... Dance held a huge spot as well.  I was super lucky because my dance company director and band director allowed me to do both... which meant that while at a rehearsal for one, I was missing part of a rehearsal for another.  At homecoming the band would play in the half time show, and the Dance Company would dance.... each year both directors had to make allowances for that, and they did, and that made my High School time so great.  Dance company would dance as a floor show in the Moonlight Serenade, and it was fabulous!

Kim King, my Dance Company Teacher!  She doesn't look a day older than she did when I graduated1

Moonlight was fabulous!  We caught up with former teachers, friends, and met new people.  We ate and laughed, but eventually the evening ended, and with that our time in Utah.  We packed up and headed out early the next morning.  We had planned to try and hike in the Arches, but by the time we made it to Moab, it would be too late to hike, and get into our next stop at a reasonable time.  So we ate lunch and continued on.

On Saturday we made our way into Santa Fe.  The kids were a bit confused to go to a place with a giant robot in the parking lot.  We told them we were going to a place called Meow Wolf.  

Meow Wolf is an oddity.  I would describe it as a kind of Winchester Mystery House, meets Art Museum, meets Mystery.  They built a house, in a warehouse, and give you a mystery to solve.  If you have all day, you can probably solve, or at least make some headway, but when you only have a few hours, it's more fun to just explore.  Tim took the big kids and they tried to solve the mystery, I followed the little around, and it was exhausting!

Looking for clues in the newspaper

Oh look!  a refrigerator......

.....or a doorway to another dimension?

We walked through a bookcase secret door and found ourselves in a forest

The bones of a mastodon..... that you can play like a xylophone

Tim was emerging from another dimension..... through the dryer

 Will I ever go back?  Probably not, but I'm super glad we had the chance to go there.   While being in the military can be hard because of all the moving around, it's amazing for networking.  All I did was message some old friends who live in NM and ask them what they'd suggest we do, and I got a laundry list of ideas, most of them we implemented.  Carlsbad and Meow Wolf never would have entered my radar otherwise, and the experience was fantastic!  It was a great trip, and the kids had a blast.

Vacation Time!

We decided to take a special trip to Utah to go to Moonlight Serenade.  Moonlight is a fundraiser for the Davis High School band in Utah.  It's a fun event put on by the band director, his wife, and the families of band students, and the students themselves.  It's a dinner and dance event that is just out of this world.  I was a band student that helped with Moonlight throughout high school, and it was also the first date I had with Tim.  This year marks 20 years from that first date, but it was extra special because it was the last Moonlight that my old band director would do as he is retiring this year.  So we decided to make a special trip to Utah to attend.

We had plans to leave at a certain time, but ended up not getting out until about an hour after our planned time.  As we were driving, we happened upon a car that had obviously rolled.  Then we realized the wheels were still turning.... this had just happened!  We pulled over quickly and saw that the driver was still in the car!  I was on the phone with emergency services, and Tim hopped out to go and see what help was needed.  Some truckers pulled up behind us and jumped out and between the four men, they were able to ascertain the driver was unhurt, and help her out of the car through the back window.  She was very lucky, and walked away without a single scratch.  Cops, a firetruck and ambulance all arrived and confirmed that she was perfectly fine.  Thank heavens!  The police took it from there, and told us we were fine to go ahead and continue on our travels.

We decided to take our time and see some sights along the way to Utah.  We also decided to surprise the kids, so they didn't know what we were planning to do.  Our first stop was in Roswell New Mexico.  Tim added that to the trip for me!  I've been on haunted sites tours in Japan, looked for bigfoot in Washington, searched for Nessie in Scotland, and now I was looking for aliens in New Mexico!  We stopped in at the UFO museum after checking into our hotel.  It was a museum with a lot of reading.  Lots of documents and timelines, and pictures, but not a whole lot to excite kids.  If it had just been the two of us, I probably would have found a lot more of interest, but the kids were not willing to be patient so we could go through and read everything.  So we read a little, looked at the few displays, found a Christmas ornament and the gift shop, then left to find some dinner.

Roswell was kind of like North Pole, in that they totally know what their claim to fame is, and so main street is overrun with alien parephenalia.  The streetlights are aliens, the mailboxes are decorated like R2-D2 (unfortunately, I didn't get a picture)  Almost every store had some form of alien by it's entrance.  It was cute.

Coat rack in our hotel!

The next morning we took a drive down to the Carlsbad Caverns.  We were told that we had to do the hike instead of the elevator, so we had planned to hike it the whole time.  What I didn't know is that it's a long hike.  Usually people will hike down into the caverns, look around, and then take the elevator back up.  We were informed however that the elevators were broken, so as the ranger said "hiking down is optional, hiking up is mandatory."  We did the hike anyway.  It's about a mile and a half down, with a 20% grade almost the whole way.  Once you get down to the "Big room" it's another mile walk around that, then the hike back up.  It's absolutely beautiful.  It's a bit steep in some areas, and really dark in some areas, but they have lights often enough you can see where you're going.

After Carlsbad, we spent the night in Albuquerque, and left early the next morning for the semi long drive to Moab Utah.  Tim and I have been to Moab several times, I've been with my family a ton, and Corben and Rylissa have been a couple times, but Davin and Tayzia were too young to remember when they were there.  We decided to stop by the arches and show the kids probably the most beautiful National Park there is.

Lots of hiking, and climbing and running, and enjoying nature!  We weren't able to stay too long because we still had to get up to Bountiful, but we were there long enough for the kiddos to have a lot of fun.