Utah - part I

What a great week we had but it is nice to be home again. Friday morning shortly after the kids got home from Seminary we headed down the highway and we followed the I-15 to Salt Lake City. I hadn't had a lot of sleep the last couple of nights so Alex took over driving at Los Vegas. I was sleeping in the back seat when all of the sudden it got very light, very cold and there was snow blowing in my face. We had run into a snow storm and just past the summit near Beaver the traffic had come to halt. Alex decided to entertain himself by rolling down all of the windows. It was actually a neat experience because I just pulled the blanket up to my kneck and it seemed like I was on a hay ride. My missionary reunion started at 7:00 and we were right on track for getting there on time but after sitting for an hour in the traffic we ended up being a bit late for the reunion.

The reunion was great and although I didn't know too many people there it was wonderful to see the people that I did know and getting to know some others. It was also great to President and Sister Allred. President Allred just turned 8o and they're looking great. It has been about fifteen years since I've been to a reunion. One cool thing was that President Allred had his original missionary records there and I found my page in one of his books. I had remembered many of my companions but there were some companions that I had forgotten. Now I have all of their names.

Saturday was General Conference and we had tickets for the afternoon session. We took the morning getting ready and then headed in to the conference center to get in line by noon. That is two hours before the session starts but we wanted to get a good seat. Kira flew in on Friday and Alycia's boyfriend Trevor also joined us. They opened the doors at 12:30 so we got into the conference center quite early which is a good thing because it was cold and miserable and alternating from snow to rain and back again. It was a far cry from the scenes I see on TV of pretty flowers and people sitting on the grass. I never saw any of that. Lisa figures the cold weather was the Lords way of keeping the Prop 8 protesters away. If that was the reason for the bad weather then it was very effective. There were very few protesters and the ones that were there were not protesting Prop 8. Conference was beautiful and we did get good seats. We were on the front row of the balcony. Following the session we quickly grabbed a picture of the family and then Alex, Trevor and I got back in another line to get into the Priesthood Session as standby's. In the picture from left to right is Kira, Trevor, Alycia, Alex, Sarah, Lisa and me. While we were in priesthood the women went shopping. Trevors family was also in town and his Dad, brother (Derrick) and brother-in-law (Eric) also joined us. Unfortunately, after hours of being in line they cut the line off eight people in front of us. I was so bummed but they sent us to a beautiful theater and we watch conference on a huge screen. The picture was obviously in high definition and it was pretty cool watching our prophet speak when his head was twenty feet high. The picture was so clear you could see every wrinkel on his face.

After the Priesthood session we met up with the women at a restaraunt called Bucca de Beppo. It is an Italian restaraunt and when they saw how large our group was they put us at the Popes table. As you can tell in the picture we had Pope Benedict's head right in the middle of our table. It was a bit disconcerting but we had a great time getting to know the Crowley's better and the food was good. In the picture I will attempt to name everyone. From left to right, Brenda Crowley, Lisle Crowley isn't in the picture, I think he is behind the camera, Kira Palmer, Lisa Leavitt, Fred Leavitt, Sarah Leavitt, Alex Leavitt, Derrick Crowley, Trevor Crowley (all you can see is the top of his head), Alycia Leavitt, Courtney Brinkerhoff and Eric Brinkerhoff.

Sunday was a much more relaxed day. We stayed with the Sanchez family who used to live in our ward but have moved to Utah. They are an amazing family and they allowed all of us to just move into their basement and take over. Not only that, they fed us good food for the whole time. We must have disrupted their lives tremendously but they made us feel very welcome. Sunday morning we slept in and then after a wonderful breakfast we watched the Sunday sessions of conference on TV in their basement. In an effort to prevent this blog from becoming excessively long I think I will continue the remainder of the week at a later date. We did have a great time.