Heading Home

     Vacation.  It's such a lovely word.  Vacation is a synonym for relaxing, fun, adventure, relief, and enjoyment.  Fortunately for all students living in Park City, the time has come.  Vacation is upon us.  February break starts this Friday as soon as school ends.
   
     On most school vacations, my family would all do something together, whether it be a road trip or skiing.  This vacation happens to be different.  Next week, my grandparents are taking my older sister and myself back home.  Home for us is California.  The drive will be very relaxing.  Usually I sit in between my two little sisters to help them stay entertained.  This time, I actually will get to sit with a whole seat separating me from the next person.  This time, the drive will be quiet.  Usually, the drive consists of my little sisters asking repeatedly, "Are we there yet?"

     I'm so excited for the moment that we will be arriving at.  Friday night will be our estimated time of arrival.  As soon as we get there, Katie and I have planned to eat dinner at one of our favorite spots, and then settle in for a nice night's sleep because the rest of the week won't include that.  Here's a rough outline of how the week is going to go.

Friday: Arrive, eat dinner, sleep

Saturday: Eat lunch with very much missed friends, go to our old choir's show

Sunday: Go to church and see our church friends, have Sunday dinner with all of our family

Monday: Swim in my grandparents' pool, visit my mom's side of the family in Huntington Beach

Tuesday: Youth Activity with our church friends, eat dinner with old friends

Wednesday: Go to Seminary (a church class) at 5 am in the morning, go to school and shadow some of
                     our friends, go to the beach

Newport Beach Pier 

Thursday: Hang out with friends, go to Disneyland with friends

Friday: movie night with friends and family

Saturday: Get on a plane and head back to Utah

    Seeing my friends is going to be so fun.  Since I lived in California in the same house for my entire life, I have a lot of friends that I am dying to see.  As noted in my schedule for the week, most of my time will be spent hanging out with friends from church and school.  I also am getting to see my old choir perform which will be so fun because I get to see how much everyone's improved since we have been gone.
     I'm so glad that Katie and I are heading home, but there is a downside.  My grandparents live on the same street that we lived on before we moved.  That means that we have to see our old house.  It will be so weird to see my house with other people living in it.
     This vacation might be the best one yet.  I'll be able to see my friends and my family that I left behind. It will be so fun to hang out with  everyone and catch up on the things that I've missed out on.  California's in for a treat because here I come!


If you ever find yourself needing to do something on a long road trip... look at this website.

Ouch...

    My family is accident prone.  Everyone with the exception of myself and my mom have had many injuries. The most recent one occurred on Super Bowl Sunday 2013.  Let's just say, Brigitte didn't go to school on Monday. We'll get back to that story, but for now, here's the list of injuries from oldest to youngest excluding my mom and myself since we've had none. 

Dad:  My dad is very outgoing.  With adventure and danger comes injury.  My dad has done several things while skiing including, breaking his shoulder and breaking a finger.  He is a leader at my church too.  My dad works with the boys ages 12-18.  When we lived in California, my dad went on a boating trip for a week with all the boys.  On the first day, he was wake boarding, and he broke his femur.  That night, he went into surgery, and he couldn't put any weight on his leg for six whole months.  It was awful.

Katie:  Katie is very clumsy.  Most of her accidents occurred a while ago, but they will never be forgotten because they are kind of funny.  Her first injury occurred when she was three years old.  My dad, mom, Katie, and myself were all taking a walk in the mountains.  Katie tripped and fell.  You need to know that when Katie was young, her head was too big for her body.  She caught herself with her hands, and then Katie's head hit the ground because it was too heavy.  A couple of Christmases later, she tripped over a bouncy ball and broke her arm.  In third grade, she fell off the jungle gym and broke her arm again.  Most recently, on an outing with our church, we went sledding, and she slid off the sled and broke her arm for the third time.

Nick:  Nick also started his injuries very young.  The first one was when he was one.  Katie, Nick, and I were playing "Ring Around the Rosies", and he tripped over his toy and landed on the corner of the table. That night, he got his first set of stitches.  Since then, Nick has gotten stitches seven times. One included our new puppy grabbing his lip instead of the chew toy. Whoops! 

Natalie:  Natalie got her first set of stitches when she was really young.  She fell off of a bench and cut her eyelid.  That was not a good day for her.  The next time she received stitches was at Walmart.  Natalie was hiding under a metal clothing rack, and she fell and hit her head on the metal.  That led to around twenty stitches.  The cut went all the way to her skull.  Her latest injury was during our house remodel. Brigitte and she were throwing bricks (bad idea) around.  Brigitte, being three years old at the time, threw one really far and hit Natalie in the eye.  Natalie had stitches again on the same eyelid.  

Brigitte: Finally we get to Brigitte.  Brigitte has had many injuries.  Her worst one happened on her second birthday.  Nick was messing around with Brigitte a chair.  Brigitte was sitting on the arm of the chair, and my mom told them to stop messing around because someone was going to get hurt.  Right as she said that, Brigitte fell off of the chair and hit a table.  Part of her ear was ripped off and had to get sewn back on by a plastic surgeon.  Another time, Nick was pretending to jump on Brigitte's stomach.  All of a sudden, Brigitte turned blue, and my mom thought that Nick had actually sat on her and was stopping her breathing.  When she saw Nick was pretending, my mom did the heimlich maneuver and out fell 3 quarters.  Now to Superbowl Sunday 2013.  Brigitte was walking up the driveway to help Nick take out the trash, when she slipped on ice and fell flat on her face.  She ripped her lip open and received five stitches that night.  They put half of her face to sleep.  The next day, Brigitte did not go to school.  

Brigitte's latest injury. 

If you ever experience an emergency, here's a link to a website with the phone numbers of the police, fire, and other departments in Utah by county.  I also added an emergency contact template. 

Bountiful... Here We Come

     Every Friday, my sister, Katie, and I go to Bountiful for singing lessons.  Unfortunately, we don't  have good luck when we are driving back.  Katie is really bad with directions, and so when it's dark, and we can't see any signs, we get lost.  Getting lost is not the only factor in our trips to Bountiful.

     The first time that we went alone, something bad happened.  Katie was driving alone for the very first time, and she didn't know where everything was.  Well, that day we were driving home from singing, and we noticed that there were a lot of cops on every street.  The cops were blocking all of the entrances to the streets that we knew led to the freeway. Little did we know that there was a light show going on.  We called my parents, and were able to navigate our way to the freeway.  We learned that night that we could have used this new thing called Google Maps. 

     The second time that we went, Katie had to be back really quickly for a piano recital. Unfortunately, that night it was snowing, and the freeway was very busy.  The traffic was unbearable, and I became very frustrated.  Katie had to cancel her plans, which she didn't appreciate.  Luckily, I was prepared and had a movie that I could play on my computer.  Unfortunately, the traffic lasted three hours before we were even out of Salt Lake City.  It was a long trip, and when we got home, both of us were too frustrated to talk and have fun for the rest of our Friday night.

Bountiful

     The next time that we had to go to Bountiful, we had to get gas.  Unfortunately, Katie had never gotten gas in a car before.  My dad called us and tried to talk her step by step through the entire process because it's really not that hard.  Katie was very angry at him for not teaching her before, so she got back in the car and handed the phone to me without a word.  I said hello to my dad, and he made me go out into the cold and do it myself.  That day, which just so happened to be today, I realized how much more mature I was than Katie in some situations.

     The good thing that comes out of Bountiful is visiting my grandparents.  Before I moved here, I lived across the street from my grandparents.  My grandparents also have a house here in Park City, so whenever they are in town, we go visit them after singing.  We vent about the events that happened to us in the car, and we also make sure that my grandparents know EVERYTHING about our lives such as what we did every second of that week and who Katie wanted to ask on a date. We also play cards and watch movies.  That is the only thing that comes out of going to Bountiful that is really good.  It's very fun to visit my grandparents.

      Lesson learned, if you have somewhere to be on a Friday night, don't visit Bountiful in the afternoon.  The traffic and the events that occur will stop you from even getting close to accomplishing what you need to.