California.

(Almost caught up.)

We went to California last Thursday through Sunday. (Another reason I haven't been blogging.) Mitch and I had a planned a trip a while ago and we convinced Emily and Sarah to come with us. We actually left last Wednesday night and drove to St. George so that we wouldn't have to drive as far on Thursday.

Our hotel Wednesday night was pretty sweet (cheap). To be fair, it actually wasn't bad in general. The biggest (only?) problem was that they hadn't left the air conditioning on in the room so, when we checked in, the room was like 150 degrees. Not even kidding. While we waited for the air conditioning to work, we decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. Like filling the bathtub with ice cubes and water.

Seriously, it helped.

The hotel also had these sweet chairs. Too bad we couldn't stay longer and sit in them all day.

Thursday morning we were up bright and early to drive the rest of the way. That's always a fun drive. Many trips ago, we (Em and I?) started the tradition of not telling people where we were in the drive and when we'd be arriving. For some reason, Em and I (and Sarah now) think it's a hilarious game. When our mom (or now Tracy) ask us where we are, we text back pictures of things that could be anywhere along the drive. As though they'd be able to tell from some random tree that we're in Nevada. (Actually, sometimes you can tell the state but not exactly where.) Or, sometimes we'll text recognizable things (the Welcome to Nevada sign, the Baker thermometer, Whiskey Pete's, etc.) but send them hours after we passed them. So much fun.

Anyway, this time we stayed with my sister (Tracy), her husband (Freddy), and their baby (Nathan). Em and I haven't seen Nathan since he was here in March so, he has doubled in age since we saw him. When we first got there, he wasn't in a very good mood.

(When my mom text me asking where we were again, I sent her this picture. That was an easy clue.)

Our plan for Thursday afternoon was for it to be a Girls Day. We'd planned to get pedicures and do a craft together and then go to dinner. Eventually Thursday changed into a Lots of Other Things Day.

We did do our craft, but we don't have any good pictures of the doing part since Mitch turned the camera over to my brothers. {sigh} Instead, we have pictures like this:

And these:

That's right. If you borrow our camera to have a photo shoot and take pictures of bees instead of our crafting, we'll blog your car model pose.

We ended up taking an extended break from our Girls Day (and crafting) to go with the entire family to see Beauty and the Beast. It was pretty good, but also very, very long. And when we got back (at about 10:30), our craft still wasn't done. So. Rather than leave with unfinished projects (that would never get finished), we elected to take twenty minutes to finish them.

Twenty minutes in crafting time is equivalent to approximately three hours real time.

But we got them done!

Cute, eh? And mine match my Happy Birthday banner.

Anyway. Finally, at like 1:30 am (2:30 to us Utahns), we left my grandparents' house and went back to Tracy and Freddy's. (An hour drive.)

And that was Thursday.