The Highs and Lows of Our Family Vacation

Well, the family vacation has come and gone. It's always amazing to me how fast these vacations go by. We planned this vacation back in January and have been looking forward to it ever since, and just like that, the 10 days are gone and we are back at home. So, as the memories are still fresh in my head, I want to give a quick run down of our vacation, give you the highs and the lows, and share a few pictures too.

So our first destination was Las Vegas to visit my family, which was great. My whole family lives in Las Vegas, so we got to see everyone: my mom and dad, Ben and his wife Trina, and Summer and Matt, and their son Beck, whom I hadn't seen in over a year. They all seem to be doing great, especially Beck. I don't think I've ever seen a kid with as much energy as he has. Summer pointed out to us that he runs every where he goes, and as I watched him the last 10 days, I think I agree. There were somedays that I got tired just watching him run around. He is a good kid though. Some of the highlights of the trip were: went and saw Dark Knight (great movie), went to dinner at Claim Jumper with some old high school friends, went to Bonnie Springs, which is an old western town outside of Vegas.

We stayed in Vegas for about 4 days and then flew to Wyoming to see my grandparents/aunts and uncles that live there. That was a good trip for the most part. Two things happened that kind of put a damper on that leg of the trip. First, on the way up to Wyoming, both Rachael and I got sick. I'll spare all the details, but suffice it to say that Rachael was throwing up on the plane, and I was throwing up on the 2 hour drive from the airport to my grandparents house. Luckily my mom came with us so she could drive (my sister came but she was sick too!) The other was that my grandpa died on Monday, July 28, which was the day after we got into town. It wasn't sudden or unexpected. He had suffered a stroke a week or two earlier and had been in the hospital ever since, but it was still sad to see him go. I did get to see him one last time though. Rachael and I, my mom, and Summer went to the hospital and spent about an hour at his bed side. He never opened his eyes and I'm pretty confident he had no idea we were there, but I did get to see his face and for that I'm extremely grateful. I'm reminded of a talk Elder Bednar gave in General Conference about "tender mercies of the Lord." This was a tender mercy. For an hour after we left, he was gone. He was 86, and I'm going to miss him.

As you can imagine, that put a damper on the rest of our vacation as we assisted my grandma making funeral plans. We did have some fun though. We got to see my other grandparents farm and visit with my cousins, aunts and uncles. We also headed up the mountains towards Yellowstone, although we didn't actually go into the park. The scenery is beautiful up there and I really miss not having mountains here in Houston.

Overall, the vacation was great and I'm sad that it's over, but such is life. I guess I just get to look forward to the next one!