From the south to the north

This post might have pictures someday, but I'd have to get them from my dad which would mean my brother would have to be in charge of sending them to me. Someday maybe.

My parents flew to Utah 3 days after we got back from Texas. That weekend I kissed my boys (big and little) goodbye and drove to Idaho with my mom, dad, and Mollie. We went to attend Megan's senior clarinet recital. She will be graduating from BYU-Idaho in April, but she is done with all of her classes and will spend the next semester student teaching. She had a piano accompanist and then her clarinet professor accompanied her on one song and a cellist accompanied her on another.

We arrived in Rexburg on Friday evening and went to check in to our hotel...the lovely Super 8. When my mom went to check in the clerk handed her a slip of paper explaining that "due to circumstances beyond their control" and "because of upgrades to the city's power system" the hotel would have no power from 7-11 a.m. the following morning. Being a little dazed we went up to check out the room. Once we looked around for about 2 minutes we figured out that there was no way we were staying there with no electricity. No electricity would have meant all 4 of us having to either shower with the bathroom door open (ummm...awkward) or having to shower in the pitch black. It also would have meant no heat and the high temperatures for the weekend were around 15 degrees. I made a few phone calls and found that there were plenty of rooms available in town, and, curiously, no one else had heard anything about "upgrades to the city's power system." I'm pretty sure the guy at one hotel I called thought it was some weird kind of prank call when I asked "Will you have electricity tomorrow?" There was a long pause and then he said "Umm...yes." I explained why I was asking and he just started laughing and said "Yeah, we'll have power." So not sure what was up with that.

We switched to a hotel that had heat. Unfortunately, the thermostat in our room appeared to be malfunctioning. We set it to 70, left the hotel, and when we came back it said it was 77 and the heat was still blowing. So then we turned it down, but it would randomly turn itself on. The heat was on all night long. We hear it was blowing right on my mom's face all night and she couldn't sleep...or so she told us...many times throughout the next day. Maybe the room temperature was trying to compensate for the lobby temperature. The hotel had a free breakfast and they had tables set up in the lobby. I don't think the lobby got above 50. We had to wear our winter coats to eat breakfast.

The next day we were out running some errands before Megan's recital and she said that she wanted a breakfast croissant from the drive-through at Jack in the Box. That proved to be a fateful request. We got in the drive-through and placed our order. Then we sat and sat and sat and sat. The drive-through had the restaurant on one side and a high wall on the other, so with a car in front of us and car behind us we were totally trapped. After 18 minutes Mollie got out of the car and tried to go inside to figure out what was going on. I say she "tried" to go inside because the door was locked. Some customer let her in and told her that the employees had said "they were really behind so they were just locking the doors." Mollie said the restaurant was full of people sitting around waiting for food. I'm not sure what was going on in the back. I think the cook was in a corner crying. Because no one inside had any food and no one in the drive-through was getting any either. So they locked the doors. Because apparently when the going gets tough in Rexburg you lock the doors and hide. After a good 20 minutes, the truck in front of us drove off. We pulled up to the window and the girl says "So you had the #2 and the #3?" No. We had a breakfast croissant. "Oh," she says. My dad hands her the money and she just looks at it and then looks around the kitchen helplessly. After about 3 minutes she was still just standing there with the money in her hand so my dad said "You know what, just give me the money back." Looking relieved, she handed the money back and we drove away. Just to make things more fun, while she was standing there with the money I noticed the little sign on the window with the customer service number exhorting me to call if we had any problems. So I call the number only to find out that their customer service system is only available on Monday-Friday from 9-5. It being Saturday their recording advised me to "call back on Monday." Touche Jack in the Box.

This is just kind of how Rexburg is.

Then Megan gave her recital which was lovely. And having a weekend with no one requiring that I wipe their rear end was lovely as well. I even ate a meal without getting up 25 times. While I was gone Bryce took the boys to their first ever movie in a movie theater. I thought it would blow Will's mind to see a tv screen that big, but I guess he wasn't overly impressed. They also went bowling, so the boys weren't too upset that I was gone.

On Sunday we drove back to Utah. My parents were here for another week or so. My dad, Sawyer, and I got a Christmas tree while my mom took Will to see The Princess and the Frog. I think he thought it was a little bit scary. My mom and the boys made cookies while I went to the mall with my dad. It was kind of an early Christmas celebration since it was my year to have Christmas with my family...only problem being my family was going to be in Connecticut and we were going to be in Utah. Which makes it a little hard to have Christmas with them.

Next stop, Christmas!