Moving, Mystery and Memories

I spent the first part of last week helping my sister and her family move from Montana to Washington. I guess by helping, I should say driving since that's all I really did. They had lived in a small town in Montana for almost 13 years. In that time it became a "home-away-from-home" for me. It was where I would usually go for Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as other times during the year. There have been several times that I have longed to live there myself. Now that they're gone I don't imagine that I will ever go to that town again. There really isn't much of a point to go to the best weekend in Montana fair, rodeo, parade and Patagonia sale if there isn't family there to enjoy (and provide free lodging and food). I'm going to miss it but it was good while it lasted.

I mentioned that all I did was drive and that is very true. On Sunday night we drove from Utah to Montana. Monday we drove from Montana to Washington. My dad drove the U-Haul, my brother-in-law drove their suburban pulling their camp trailer, and I drove our Jeep pulling a small trailer. We were lucky enough to have great weather and everything go really smoothly. As a side note, the worst road that I have ever driven on is by far I-90 through Spokane. The ruts in the road were so bad that I couldn't get out of them even if I tried. It didn't help that it was pouring rain. Anyway, on Tuesday after watching my dad and bro-in-law unload in the pouring rain, we left Washington and drove back to Montana (so we could return the trailer I was pulling). We woke up Wed. and drove back to Utah. See, it was a lot of driving.

I seem to have the tired mother syndrome and in order to keep myself awake we listened to some Sherlock Holmes books on tape. I had never read any of them and it was interesting to hear them. One of them that we listened to was about the Mormons and totally not accurate. Apparently Arthur Conan Doyle really didn't like the LDS church. Um, it showed. I tried to listen to it as a story and not have too much attachment to the fact that he was totally slandering the early saints and was way off. The second book we listened to was "The Hound of the Baskerville's" and I liked that one much better. It kept me awake anyway.

I was traveling with my dad for much of the trip and it was nice to spend some time with him. We were talking some about trips we had taken when I was young and my dad asked me if I remember the marathon trip we took to visit his interns in California when we was working at BYU. I do remember the trip but the funny thing is that I don't remember anything about visiting interns. Apparently the trip was to visit all of the interns from BYU in California, Oregon and Washington. What I remember about the trip is driving through California from the south all the way through to Oregon. In Oregon we stopped at Crater Lake but it was too foggy and we couldn't even see the lake. I also remember stopping at the towns where my dad lived and seeing the houses that he lived it. My brother and sister were with me and my dad tripped on a curb once at the beginning of the trip and that was the big joke the whole time. See, nothing about interns. It led me to a great conclusion. Do things with your kids. Even if you have to fit it in with work or something else. They are likely only going to remember that you brought them with you and they had fun. They won't ever remember the visits to a million interns.