Thanksgiving in Utah

A week ago we were in St George, Utah for a Thanksgiving reunion with the Taylor tribe.  We all had rooms in a hotel near Grandma & Grandpa Taylors home (Omi & Pocky) and spent our days at their home.  With a total of 24 in the house (grandparents, 4 sons, their wives and children), there just wasn't room for everyone there... and I'm sure the grandparents needed the quiet at night after all the bustle of the days.

Somehow I became the unofficial photographer of the trip, and ended up taking over 200 photos and a couple of handfuls of video clips.  Some were of the events around the house and some were random sunset/landscape shots from our travels down at back.

It was a total of 18.5 hours on the road each way for us (not including time for refueling, food and restroom breaks), and I was initially a little worried about road-tripping with a toddler.  Rather than make the full drive in one day, we decided to break it up over two days, since we needed to stop by the kids' home in Lehi to pick them up on the way. We wanted to leave the house around 9 in the morning on Tuesday, but didn't really get out the door until 10:30.  And then I got really nervous when, 90 minutes into the drive (we were in the Snoqualmie pass), Juliana let out with her first call of "POTTY!"  I was worried it would be a v-e-r-y long drive with frequent breaks, but luckily we only needed to make two more breaks between there and Twin Falls, Idaho, where we stopped for the night.

The sunset over northeast Oregon

The next day, Juliana was a little more reluctant to sit in the car and kept calling out for potty breaks a little more frequently (90 min to 2 hours versus the 3+ hour intervals from the day before) until we got to the Lehi area.  We had a good stretch of the legs there, as we made time to sit down for lunch with the boys and their mom.  (Due to our car only seating 5, we didn't have room for all of the older kids in the car, so arranged for Jessica to ride the Greyhound bus from Provo to St George that morning)

The remainder of the trip from Provo to St George was rather smooth, since we had the boys to entertain Juliana (besides the portable DVD player, which did a rather commendable job of entertaining her the day before).  The movie of choice this trip was Finding Nemo... in case you were wondering.  Oh! and some Backyardigans episodes we received from Netflix the day before we left.

We arrived in St George around 7pm, checked in the hotel and made a brief visit to the grandparents' home to say hello to everyone.

Mitch was swarmed by all the cousins and proclaimed "favorite cousin" by three of the little ones.

Thanksgiving morning, we slept in a little (7:30 am... that's sleeping in for Juliana), had a small breakfast and made our way over to the house.  All the grandkids (ranging from 22 months to 18 years) got along pretty well--- some of them meeting for the first time, since our last family get-together was at Derek's and my wedding five years ago.

Initially a little reserved, Juliana loved playing with all her cousins... it didn't matter how old they were.

Emmaline & Juliana

Tyson and Derek spent some time throwing the football with the kids during the day:

Dinner was served around 2pm.  Everyone chipped in to help prepare some food, although Shae (Perry's wife) spearheaded the coordination and prepared the turkey and dinner rolls (which the younger girls also helped with).

Grandma played some "Mensch Aergere Dich Nicht" with the grandkids at night (it's similar to Sorry!):

The next day we decided to take advantage of the whole group being together and take some family pictures.  Scott thought it would be a neat idea to film the whole proceedings, so I set up our video camera to catch the action.  We used a little tabletop tripod and set it on the retaining wall of the vegetable garden.  What we got was about 70% filming of the group, 10% filming of Nikki sniffing at and standing in front of the camera and 20% filming of someone's backside... usually Shae's.  Here's what happened when we hooked the camera up to the TV afterwards to preview it:

"You're going to edit this out... right?  RIGHT???"

I managed to get a candid shot of Jessica smiling as she models a new scarf and hat made for her by grandma:

That afternoon, the Taylor women (Grandma, the four daughters-in-law and Jessica) had some bonding time without the men or children.  We left them all at the house and caught an afternoon showing of Michael Jackson's "This Is It".  (See my next post for my opinion of the film, if you're interested.)

After the movie, we all went to Denny's for dinner and then met back at the house before going out separate ways.  While at the house, Mike and Michelle King stopped by.  Mike was the man responsible for getting the Taylor boys dancing in high school, and had recently moved to St George with his family.  There was quite a bit of catching up, since it has been so many years since they've seen each other.

The next morning we all made our ways home. (Some started out the night before)  Derek and Jonah dropped Jessica off at the bus station and came back to pick up the rest of us at the hotel.  On the way back to Lehi, we stopped briefly in Provo and said hello to Derek's (favorite) cousin Dara.  She's about 7 months younger than Derek, and they used to see each other a lot over the summers growing up.  I've talked with Dara a bit over Facebook for the past year, but it was so nice to finally meet in person.  She is so personable and has a grace about herself that makes her so easy to talk to.  And yet she has a goofy, fun-loving side that she doesn't hesitate to let out ---  as evidenced when I asked her and Derek to recreate a picture taken when they were little:

After our short visit, we drove a short distance north and dropped the boys off at their mother's and continued our drive home.  We made it as far as Nampa, Idaho before settling in for the night, leaving about 8 hours worth of driving before we would be home. 

The last day of driving was the hardest.  Juliana had reached her limit and was continually asking for potty breaks (I think she realized it was more effective than just asking to be let out of her chair) and we were stopping what felt like every 20 minutes. Luckily, after lunch, Juliana fell asleep (she didn't nap at all on the drive down) and Derek got in a couple of good hours of uninterrupted driving.  Once we got over the pass, we stopped by Sahm-Yi's home, had some dinner and picked up the cats (she was kind enough to watch them for us).   Even with all the stops, we managed to get home around 6:45 in the evening).

Whew!  We're so glad to be home again (or at least not in a car for hours on end).


I've only posted a few of the photos here, but if you want to see more, you can visit my Facebook photo album using this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2042037&id=1418475777&l=835293f6b6

It shouldn't ask you to register or anything like that, so if you have your own reasons for not joining Facebook or MySpace, I'm not forcing you to join.  My sister (an avid avoider of the social networking sites) tested the link and says it works fine.