Utah-- Woolley edition

Zack's brother, Sam, got his mission call to the France Toulouse mission. We were thrilled that we got to use that as an excuse to go visit our families in Utah. In order to maximize our time there (and minimize our days off work), we left super early on a Thursday morning. We left for the airport around 5 AM. Our flight to Utah was uneventful, and we even arrived a few minutes early. My mom came to pick us up and we headed straight up to Layton to visit my Grandma Crawford. She had her knees replaced and was staying in a rehab center for a few days for some therapy and recovery.

So, let me tell you, I work in a publicly funded nursing home, and it's not the latest and greatest in terms of how nice it is. It looks old, residents live 3 to a room, sometimes supplies are not available when needed, and budget cuts are always on the agenda. It houses people who just cannot afford to get care elsewhere. This creates a diverse and challenging population. Now don't get me wrong. A lot of quality care is provided within those walls. Lots of good things happen there. I'm just saying that it's not the nicest place ever. So when I walked into the rehab center where my Grandma was staying, I swear I about fell over. It was so nice. The floors were carpet and wood laminate instead of linoleum tile. The paint looked nice instead of old and chipped. There were tasteful paintings on the walls throughout the center instead of puzzles that people had assembled and then tacky glued together. Faux flowers abounded. The whole place just looked fancy. I couldn't resist snapping a picture of the medication cart on my cell phone because I just got such a kick out of it.

I left there with mixed feelings-- happy that my Gram could stay in such a nice place (fyi-- the staff seemed nice and pretty good), but sad that there is such inequality in the healthcare system.

Wow, that was kind of a long tangent. After that visit, we got to go to lunch with some more of my family who live (or were vacationing) in the Layton area. Fun to see people I haven't seen in a while. Then we headed to my parents' house and I got to hang with all my siblings and their spouses. That evening, despite that we had been up since 3-something AM, we hit up the drive-in movies with my family, where we watched (and stayed awake through the entirety of!) Despicable Me. My very brief review-- cuteish and okay. We didn't stay for the 2nd movie because we were just too tired so we went home and crashed.

After a refreshing night's sleep, we got up the next day at headed out to Boondock's Family Fun Center with my family. There we rode go-karts,

played laser tag and arcade games, mini golfed, rode bumper boats, and just basically had a blast.

I should note that our camera had already died by this point in the trip and we did not pack the charger, thus the lack of pictures-- the ones we do have are from other people. It's kinda sad. That evening, my Woolley grandparents drove up from St. George so we got to spend a great evening with them. We played croquet (except we played with Ben and Tosca's weird rules-- still fun). I won! That pretty much never happens so I wanted to note it. Also of note-- Grandma Carol came in 2nd place. Grandma has the reputation of always losing at games, so it was very exciting that she did so well. Way to go Grandma! We polished off the evening with some cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory-- mmmmmm.

Saturday was the 24th of July, which is actually a holiday in Utah commemorating the day that the main body of Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. We started the day off with breakfast and we sorta watched the parade on tv while we ate and chatted. After that, we went up one of the canyons and had a picnic and walked around a lake.

It was beautiful up there. I really love the mountains and that's one of the things I miss the most when I am in Philly so it was fun to get to enjoy them and also enjoy the company of my parents, siblings, and grandparents.

We spent most of the rest of our time in Utah with the Noyces, which will be its own post, but we did get the fabulous opportunity to be there on Sunday afternoon when my little bro Matthew was ordained to be an elder. Lots of extended family was there, so we got to see them for a minute. We also snapped the picture with my family. Thanks to my fam for making the time to see us and have some fun. We love you guys.