Trip #5 !?!?

Lisa is in Utah - again. I can hardly believe it. This is her fifth trip this summer, I wish we could get "frequent driver miles" like you can get "frequent flier miles". Oh well, as it turns it is for a good cause. Alycia needs her mother. The poor girl was blind sided with several different problems all simultaneously and she was near a melt down. Let's see if I can remember everything:

1) She needed to get her Utah residency in order to save many thousands of dollars on tuition.
2) She went to get her residency and they wouldn't give it to her without a Utah drivers license. I suppose her marriage license would have worked but it doesn't come in the mail for a few weeks and tuition is due on September 8.
3) She went to get her drivers license and they wouldn't give it to her without proof that she lives there. The utilities were not in her name so she used her lease for her apartment but it is in Alycia Crowleys name but her California drivers license says Alycia Leavitt. They wouldn't accept it.
4) Her class schedule was all messed up and she needed to make last minutes changes to get some required classes.
5) While she was on her honeymoon her adviser went on maternity leave and the replacement says she can't help her with her schedule.
6) She is late getting her financial aid taken care of but they need some tax information from me and since I filed and extension I don't have it for them.
7) She needs to move into her apartment this weekend.
8) She is working part time.

I think she needed her mother. Lisa is very good at these kinds of things. She's been on the phone most of the week and is getting to know some of the people very well. Alycia's application was in a huge stack of other applications and the one girl told Lisa that she would find her application and move it to the top of the stack so it would get taken care of sooner. I hope that is a talent our kids are learning from their mother.

With Lisa gone that means that Sarah and I are home alone. In spite of the long list of jobs we have to get done we are having a ball. I was really looking forward to spending the long weekend with Sarah but all of the sudden she is getting all sorts of invitations to do things on Monday. Unfortunately Sarah doesn't know how to say no and she has agreed to do things with five different groups of friends. One group wants to go hiking in the afternoon starting at 1:00. Another girl invited her to a birthday party from 12:00 to 5:00 (I'm not sure how she was going to manage that). Another girl wanted to see her so Sarah said she would do a sleep over Sunday night to Monday at noon and a boy has invited her to "hang out" (not a date but it sure sounds like one to me) Monday morning. The bigger conflict however are the clear instructions from Lisa how Sarah is grounded until her room is done. Sarah worked hard all day on Saturday and got a lot done in her room but it clearly wasn't going to get done before our own date that we had planned for Saturday evening. I pointed out to Sarah that she had a choice to make. Since her room had to get done before she did anything she was going to either have to skip our date and work all evening Saturday in her room or she was going to have to free up Monday morning so she could work then. She was not a happy camper but when I asked her later what she was going to do she told me that she had canceled everything with everyone so that not only could we go on our date Saturday night but we had all day Monday together.I love my daughter.

As you might have guessed from the pictures, Sarah had her first race Saturday morning.She did very well. I think our team may have won the race but we left before the results were posted. Sarah came in forth for our team and the first five score.

I don't know if my wife is returning to me tomorrow or Tuesday but with the long weekend and all it could be a miserable day on the highway tomorrow. I think it may be best if she travels on Tuesday.