True Stories from the Front of the Minivan: 3,500 Miles Later

If you are friends with me on facebook, and most of you are if you are reading this, you know that my family recently took a roadtrip.  I made it look really good on facebook.  But, here, and now, with plenty of while space in front of me, I'm going to spill the real deal, well most of it anyway.  Here are 25 truths about our road trip. The include the good, the bad, and the ugly.  If you want to cling to the idea that everything was fairy tale perfect, return to my facebook page and look at my photos again. For the rest of you, enjoy reality:

1. Judd and I didn't sleep much the night before our trip. He got 4 hours of sleep and I got 2. Luckily, we made it to Boise alive the next evening.

2. Three hours into the trip, just as I started driving, I notice the check engine light was on!  NO! We had just had the van serviced the day before.  Luckily, again, it ended up being due to the gas cap not being properly tightened when we filled up.

3.  I thought staying with someone I had never met might be awkward, but Lizzie Buchmiller, her cute baby, hubby, and his Mom and brother were all really nice and we greatly enjoyed our night with them. It was honestly a highlight of the trip for me.

4. Soda Springs, ID. . . . the blowhole geyser thing was kind of cool. It goes off every hour because it's controlled.  Apparently, it was messing up Old Faithful.  But, what isn't cool is the free mineral water that is bubbling up from the ground at a nearby park.  It's a lovely setting, but the water tastes like a rusty pipe. Judd loved it and drank several glasses. The rest of us gagged and spat repeatedly to get the nasty taste to leave our mouths.

 

5. Camping "on the Oregon coast". . . I was hoping to actually be camping on the beach, but it was about a 3 minute walk.  That was still cool.  We were super cold and got hardly any sleep, which resulting in us all waking up at 5 AM and being the very first people on the beach to hunt for sand dollars. We didn't take them ALL, but we took most of them.  You snooze, you lose.

6. Tillamook Cheese factory was a free self guided tour and it was a very pleasant and interesting experience.  Less pleasant was the experience an hour later when Audrey expelled her Tillamook cheese and chocolate milk all over the back of the car.

7. Seattle. . . it was a lot of fun to have dinner and hang out with my cousin Christine Larsen and her family.  The Space Needle was interesting and so was the Chihuly glass exhibit, but what I found to be the MOST interesting thing was all of
the Toyota Prius' in Seattle.  In SLC, my orange car is pretty rare, but they use them as taxi's there and tons of people drive them, so they were all over the place!

8. The Redwood Forest is as cool as everyone says it is.  Usually, I feel disappointed when I see something I've seen pictures of before. It's never as big as I thought, or as grand. But, those trees are bigger than I imagined and, well, simply breathtaking. The mosquitoes were less breathtaking, and more bloodsucking.  Bring bug spray!

9. We made our kids watch the TV series Avonlea on the trip. It took about 8 hours of it before they got into it, but now they are hooked.


10.  San Francisco. . . It was a lot of fun to walk around Pier 39.  We loved seeing the Zoltar machine, the chocolate store, and the left hander store.  This was also the only time that one of our kids got lost.  Thank goodness that Emmeline knew to get a store keeper to help and was able to provide him with my name, number, and the store we were walking towards.

Alcatraz

11. Another interesting thing about San Francisco is that Clara was able to walk around wearing a Sponge Bob SquarePants robe for 3 hours without getting any strange looks.  Um, okay.

12. One of the things that I did to help me stay awake, and also to keep the kids from fighting, was to make up songs while driving.  The favorite of the trip has the following lyrics:

I feel jiggly
I feel wiggly
I feel brainless
I think I am a jelly fish

You wish you knew the tune now, don't you?

13. We managed the stay in 9 different places over 12 days, and only lost one mousepad and a pair of tennis shoes.  I feel pretty good about that.

14. We went to a waterfall in Oregon that was stunning- Multnomah Falls. It was free and easy to see it.  People were just as stunned by the waterfall as they were by a family with 6 kids. Really. We were an oddity everywhere we went.

15. Getting on a cruise ship with 6 kids turned out to be quick and easy.  I was expecting it to take a long time, but we showed up as early as possible and got right on for a delicious buffet lunch. Reuben spent 5 minutes walking around and then declared there wasn't that much to eat. Apparently, 7 sandwich choices is subpar. However, they were quite pleased with the 24 hour access to ice cream.

 

Emmeline and Audrey slept through dinner on the second night

16. My kids were horrified by all of the drinking and exposed skin on the cruise ship.  And the smoking, And the pornographic 3D decor in one part of the ship.  Many of them decided they would rather not cruise on a "fun" ship again, but wanted to know if there were any Mormon cruise ships. Other cruise highlights were the two barfing episodes, one fever, kids club fun, delightful night time dining, and the water slides at the top of the ship. 
 


17. Ensenada, Mexico was also disappointing to our kids. We walked around and shopped, and tried not to see the ceramic porn being sold at most stands. And I was utterly disappointed that the only Mexican vanilla for sale for the same stuff I can buy at Walmart- but it cost more in Mexico! We did find some other nice things to buy.

 

18. When we disembarked on Sunday, we wore our church clothes.  We always wear dresses and suits on Sunday. It was sad that many people remarked on our attire and were surprised by it.

19. The LDS ward in a sprawling country town in Washington where we visited on our first Sunday got a C for friendliness. We were in our seats 10 minutes before the meeting started. Many people walked past us, but not one person acknowledged us, until the meeting was over and one Young Woman in the hallway invited my daughter to class. Good for her!  And thank goodness we weren't investigators. We wouldn't have felt very welcome.

20. We drove through Portland, OR 3 times.  Once was one time too many. The traffic was horrendous.  Utah drivers are extremely rude, but at least the traffic isn't all that bad compared to the big cities we passed through.

21. It is possible to fit all of the luggage and camping supplies for 8 people for 12 days in the back of a Sienna minivan, as long as you wear your clothes twice and wash halfway through.  And making everyone share a toiletry bag and a pajama bag and a church bag and casual clothes bags. . . you get the picture. . . was a fantastic decision.

22. Las Vegas. . .third exposure to porn .  I don't know what people like about Las Vegas.  As a person who would never ever gamble, not even for fun, I don't feel like the entertainment is worth the gaudy atmosphere. Not only was it unreasonably hot, but our hotel rooms ended up being smoking rooms. They were non-refundable, so we were going to leave and lose our money, when the gal at the desk magically was able to get us into non-smoking rooms that weren't available the first time I asked.

All that glitters isn't gold

23. I had my first meal at Costco, and I was pleasantly surprised.  It may not have been super healthy, but the pizza was very filling and the churro was surprisingly delicious.


24.  Eating out with 8 people at fast food can be quite the experience.  At nearly every restaurant we visited, our order was messed up. These were not small mistakes either.  They would miss 4-6 items per order.  After this happened 3 times, we started ordering in two separate orders. Another thing I learned is that my homemade salads are so much better than the ones at Wendy's, Burger King, McDonald's, and Jack in the Box.  For $7 you should get more than lettuce and some tomatoes as your veggies.  Next time, I think I'd be happier keeping salad supplies in my cooler.  On the plus side, it was AMAZING to not cook for 12 days or clean anything at all.  AMAZING!!!!

No cooking! Muhahahahahahahah!!!!!

25. There's no place like home. By the time we got home and finished unpacking, everyone was thrilled to sit down to a simple dinner of spaghetti.  I think three of my kids actually said that it was the best meal they'd had in two weeks!  Ha! Kids are so funny!  But, seriously, the trip was fun.  It was educational. It was bonding. It was exhausting. And it was so nice to come home.

Oakland Temple

The Weirdest Church Calling I Ever Had (and probably none of you have had)

While chatting with a young lady who is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, attending my alma mater, Brigham Young University, I had the chance to reminisce about church callings.  I shared with her the story of meeting my husband through our mutual church calling during my second year of college, which was teaching Sunday School together every other Sunday.  We couldn't get our lessons planned, so. . . .we decided to date and the rest is history.

Anyway,  in a BYU ward, a VERY high percentage of the students accept church callings. Student wards lack nursery (really little people), Primary (medium little), and youth groups (bigger young people). The only  "old" people are in the bishopric, so pretty much every single ( no pun intended) person is able bodied and excited to serve. This presents a bit of a challenge for the bishop who must create and assign callings for an entire congregation within the first few weeks of school starting.   It's a daunting task, and to add to the challenge, there just aren't enough traditional callings to give one to every person. So, they get creative, resulting in things like two people teaching a class at the same time and only teaching every other week.  On top of that, BYU wards have multiple Sunday School classes, whereas most family wards have only one or two. So, we had something like 16 Sunday School teachers instead of 2-3. This was a pretty smart way to come up with callings.

However, in my Freshman ward the year before, the calling that I got wasn't quite. . . legitimate.  They say there are no small callings. They say there are no made up callings. But, well, I'm not sure I can agree with those things that "they" say. My calling was Relief Society Board Meeting Spiritual Message Leader.  That sounds good, right? Right? It's a nice long title and it included the word "Leader".

WRONG.

There's a chance that it could have been a decent, albeit incredibly easy calling.  But, it wasn't. And it was so disappointing.  I came to college straight from Vladivostok, Russia, where I was the only LDS teenage girl in a city of many millions of people.

I was used to being needed.

I was used to playing the piano for sacrament meeting, going on splits with missionaries, and doing anything and everything that was needed. I was used to being an example to the new members of our church.  And I was used to sacrificing- traveling an hour to and from church on public transportation with bad weather most of the year, going to more than one branch, being cold and hungry, all for the sake of the Gospel.

So, let's get back to my made up calling.  A Relief Society Board consists of the presidency of the women's organization, the teachers, the music people, the visiting teaching people, and the activities people.  It's a bunch of people.   I was asked to come to their monthly planning meeting and give them a VERY short inspirational thought. Think 5 minutes or less, but they really wanted it to last about 60 seconds.  After the prayer and my thought, the girls would divide up according to the different groups and plan things.

I was awkwardly excused to leave.  See, they didn't know what to do with me.  I wasn't needed, wanted, or welcomed to join a committee and help plan anything.
I'm not sure what the bishop intended with that calling, but the way it was implemented was an epic fail.  Instead of feeling needed, I felt like the fat kid on the playground, the oreo cookie that missed the frosting machine, like the banana popsicle, like the overpriced leftover Easter candy at Reams: nobody wanted me.   Luckily, I had good self esteem. Even though the monthly snub was hurtful, I didn't let it seep into the rest of my life.  I adored my experience in college and most of my experiences were truly wonderful.  But, the unintended lessons I learned remained.

People need to feel like they are needed.  If somebody wants to help, let them. That seems so obvious, but sometimes people in leadership positions can't let go of control enough to allow others to contribute. It would have been nice to be invited to stay for the meeting and maybe help formulate ideas for activities, or something.  Sometimes Moms get so good at being "domestic goddesses" that they fail to teach their kids how to cook, clean, and do their own laundry.  Sometimes people get stuck in a rut of doing something themselves because they can do it better than the people "under" them.  It's easy to think this way and it takes some conscious effort to turn this kind of thinking around, to see the damage that is being done.  People not only need to feel needed, but they will never become better at doing laundry by watching Mom do it for them.  Just like I have to do my own physical therapy for myself if I want to get stronger, I have to apply that principle to my work with others.  I have to let my kids do their own homework, laundry, and room cleaning, with assistance from me, but responsibility on them. And when I rule the universe next year as PTA president, um, I mean, when I facilitate the PTA program and activities next year, I need to let every person help who wants to help. And I need to step back and let them all do their best, even if it's not as good as I could have done. And let's face it, most of the time it is going to be so much better than what I would have done.  I am one person struggling to hold it all together.  I don't need to rule the world.  Maybe Relief Society Board Meeting Spiritual Message Leader is just right for me.