Trip to Idaho and Utah

Well, after driving more than 48 hours in the last nine days, we are back in Texas. We took our new-to-us van and drove to Rexburg and spent Labor Day weekend with my parents and Tiffany's family. We went to the BYU-Idaho gardens and Layne wandered off and got lost. (He does that a lot.) Devin is now best buds with is cousin Zach (Tiff's little five year old). Here are Cameron, Zach, and Devin wrestling in the gorgeously soft grass that I miss so much.

Then Grandpa joins in. . . .

It's all great fun with all the testosterone flowing. I got Devin to sit down for a few seconds to get a shot of him with the flowers.

Here is the beautiful Rexburg temple. It was really fun to go there and see all the people I know. It was pretty crazy how many people I knew there.

We got to attend the temple with Ben's family for JoAnn's endowments. That was really neat. Then we drove to Utah and attended JoAnn's temple marriage in the Salt Lake temple. We are so proud of her! When we arrived back in Logan, we had a lot of work to do. I was supposed to make her wedding cake and Ben was supposed to take pictures at the reception.

Here is the cake with just the fondant. I was so pleased with how the fondant came out on this cake that I thought I would post it like this. The bottom three teirs are dummy cakes.

Here is the finished cake before the flowers were put on. It is amazing to me what a few simple beads of frosting will do to finish off a cake! This angle really shows off the hexagon shape.

I was so pleased with how this cake turned out!

Here it is with the flowers on. It is not a very good picture and it was after the reception was over, so the flowers are not looking their perkiest. I will have to post some better pictures when I have them available. JoAnn was beautiful and the reception was awesome. Sara and Hollie helped bring it off since they have been working in the wedding business for the last four years or so. I will post more pictures when I get the raw files processed.

On the way home, we were crossing the very long and desolate state of Wyoming. (Sorry if you are a fan. We aren't.) Suddenly, the sparce traffic slowed and came to a complete stop. After waiting for about ten minutes, we decided to park the van and investigate. What a mess! A sheriff's deputy was pulling a large trailor full of ammunition when one of the tires blew out. The trailor flipped over on it's side blocking both lanes of the freeway. To add to the chaos, the gas tank ruptured and spilled gas all over the road. Anyway, because of the explosive nature of the accident, they wouldn't let anyone pass.

After waiting for about an hour and forty-five minutes, we finally crossed the barrow pit, backtracked on the freeway for a few miles, and took a dirt frontage road past the accident and re-entered the freeway. That was our homebound adventure! The boys loved it. We made friends with the truck driver behind us and he let Devin and Layne sit in his rig and even honk the horn.

Devin sits in timeout during the traffic jam for dumping dirt and rocks on his head.

Devin and Layne in the big truck!

I don't know if you can see in the this picture, but there are miles and miles of trucks stuck at a dead stop on the freeway. It took a long time for them to even start working on clearing the road since there wasn't a town for forty miles. Thankfully, it didn't seem like anyone was hurt. I imagine it would take a while to get an ambulance too, so that was doubly lucky.

Anyway, if you have read this far, you are a dedicated friend!