July 4th

For the 4th of July, we went up to our trailer for 5 days.  It was so nice to have 5 days with no phone calls, laundry or video games.  Of course, there was plenty of laundry when we came home.

We had a great time.  Our friends and neighbors, the Tufts, came up, too, along with Tim's parents, Josh and Brittney, Cody and Lindsay, Daniele and Matthew, and Kip and Sabrina.  It was fun to have so many people there.

We went fishing and swimming, and rode the 4 wheeler.  On the 4th, the kids and I painted shirts.  Tim was a party pooper and didn't want to, so note his BSU shirt instead.  We went with Josh and Brittney and their kids to Red Fish Lake and then watched the fireworks in Stanley, then came home the next day.  The kids loved playing on the beach!  Pardon my hair--this was my 4th day w/ no hair dryer or flat iron.  Good thing I wasn't a pioneer!

My Hero

My dad is pretty amazing.  This is a picture of all nine of his children at a reunion a few years back.  I have some great ones of him and me on my camera from just a couple weeks ago...but that's another story.

This man has somehow endured raising 9 children--7 of them girls!!!  He is amazing, like I said.  I was reminded on my recent trip to Texas how easily he can comfort me and make me feel everything is going to be o.k...

The night I flew in, my flight was delayed several hours.  Instead of driving the 3 hours to my parents' house late at night, I stayed the night at my sisters' place in Dallas, then drove Liz's car the next morning.  She has a GPS and programmed it for me.  She and Maggie had to work that day and were going to drive Maggie's car to Mom and Dad's later that evening.  I was a little nervous to drive in Dallas traffic, but I had a GPS--everything would be fine.

***Side note--I grew up 2 1/2 hours from Dallas and didn't get my driver's license til I was 16 1/2.  I left Texas at 18 and have never really lived there since...so not much Dallas driving experience...***

Anyway, I started out that morning to drive and headed for the first highway.  I was at a stop light waiting to turn, when the GPS started freaking out.  First it said I was moving into a large body of water.  No water in sight...  Then it said the battery was low, even though it was plugged in.  Then it said cannot find signal and shut off.  I couldn't get it to work.  And I had no idea where I was.  Or how to get to where I wanted to be.  Stupid technology.

I pulled off onto a side street and tried to think of what to do.  I tried calling my sister to ask her what the heck was up w/ her Garmin...no answer.  I decided to get back on the one freeway I knew I was supposed to be on, but didn't know what to do from there.  I kept hoping the Garmin would magically turn back on.  Even better.  My sister Carolyn called my phone.  She was at Mom and Dad's and my Daddy was right there w/ her.

It was like Superman had just swooped in to rescue me.  He asked what road I was on and got on the computer and for the next 30-40 minutes, talked me through the great city of Dallas.  He has driven that route hundreds of times and was able to literally tell me every landmark that was ahead all along the way.  It was still a little nerve-wracking to drive through that craziness, but such a calm came over me once I knew he was in charge and with me every step of the way.  Once I was on the main freeway out, we hung up so I wouldn't burn through all my minutes.  He called every little while to check on me, though, and I made it there o.k.

And the Garmin did magically come back on, about 15 minutes from my parents' house.  :)

Lessons learned:

• I am eternally grateful for cell phones.
• I never want to live in Dallas.
• My dad is my hero.

Actually, I already knew all of those, this was just a reminder.

My daddy is amazing and can literally do ANYTHING.  The end.

Mini-vacation to Utah

Last month Tim took a couple days off work and we drove down to Utah for a few days for a real quick vacation. His dad's siblings were having a reunion in Logan that Saturday, so we decided to make a long weekend trip out of it. First we went to the Sweet Candy Factory to see how they make taffy and other sweets. It was fun and the kids really enjoyed it (and it was free, always a plus in my book!). There were no cameras allowed, though, so no pics from in there...

Next, we drove to temple square. We hadn't taken the kids there in a long time, so it was kind-of new to some of them. Later that afternoon, my sister Maggie and my niece Megan came up and we all went to the Joseph Smith movie together. It's always so fun to see them! Once we were all super-hot and tired, we all went to the hotel and went swimming. Our hotel turned out to be really nice, and the pool was open 24/7, which was real nice. The next day, we went to Lagoon. The last time we went, there were huge thunderstorms that day, and the water park was closed. It was a let-down, to say the least. No let-down this time! It was a super-hot day. Maggie and Megan again joined us, which was awesome!

I realized when I was going through these photos that I have no pictures of Brandon from Lagoon. That's because he was always on the big rides, while I was not. :) Tim took him around at the beginning, then later Megan and Brandon buddied up and hit all the big stuff. It was great she could take him around to all of that. Tim and I are just too old for big roller-coasters these days...we're too old for a lot of things these days...

We spent most of the really hot hours at the water park, where my camera stayed in the locker, so no pictures from there. We all got to go on everything we wanted. Ryan and Sydney went down the kiddie waterfall/slide like a hundred times. SERIOUSLY. With 4 adults, we were able to take turns watching Jake in the shade and split up to go on things with the other kids. It was so nice to have the extra help! And company!

Once it was dark outside and we finally left the park, we all went to McDonald's and had a late dinner. Then we said goodbye to Mags and Meg and hit the sack. We slept way in the next morning. :)

Day #3 was Reunion in Logan day. The park we were at had a creek running along right by our pavilion, and the kids jumped right in! Ryan and Sydney could have stayed in there all day. They built a dam on one end with a bunch of rocks and had a great time. My niece Alyssa was able to come up and pretend to be a Bryson for the day. It was so great to see her!

Five of the eight Bryson siblings were there. There is definitely a family resemblance among all of them! I guess I know what Tim will look like in about 40 years, haha! We also realized that there were 3 different Sydneys there, all with different name spellings. We had to get a picture of all the Sydney Brysons. Syd thought that was pretty cool. She kept saying to people, "You can only be in this picture if your name is Sydney."

This last picture is just for your viewing enjoyment. I loved it to begin with, but then I started tweaking it on Picasa and this is the final result. Pretty sure I'm going to print it real big and frame it. His pink cheeks and blue eyes just melt my heart!

Disneyland recap--Finally

Make a Smilebox slideshow

So I'm finally getting around to blogging about Disneyland! I just had so many pictures to post, so I tried something new--a smilebox slide show. I still have a lot to learn about smilebox, apparently, but hopefully you can view the pics if you want to... Here's how our vaca went down:

We left our house on Fri, Aug. 24th. It took 16 hours for us to get to our hotel, but we made it safely there and the kids were actually pretty good in the car. (On a side note, Jake stayed home with my mom and dad, and Liz...thanks you guys!!)

On Saturday, we braved Disneyland. Our tickets got us into the park an hour early, so we got the really popular rides out of the way first, like Space Mountain (which most of us didn't like so much). It actually wasn't all that busy, considering it was a Saturday in July! We rode a ton of rides and were worn out by the end of the day, so on Sunday, we just hung out swimming a lot at our hotel and napping. :)

Monday, we hit Disney again. This time we figured out how to buy the right bus passes so we could have unlimited trips back and froth to Disney. On Saturday, we had walked back...sort-of a bus pass mix-up... On Monday, we again went full speed and tried to get all the rides we had missed on Saturday. We went home for a little while in the afternoon, then back for the parades and fireworks, which we almost missed. Again we were worn out, but had a ton of fun!

Tuesday, we tried to meet as many characters as we could. We got several in, including some princesses for Sydney while she and Cathy waited in line for an hour and a half--the longest line of our whole trip!!! Needless to say, we took our time with those princesses once we got in there. We went back again that night for the fireworks so we could be closer, and this time, they were amazing! It is by far the best fireworks show I've ever seen! It really was great!

Wednesday morning, we drove down to San Diego and hit Sea World. We mostly just went to the shows: Shamu, the dolphins, and Cirque de la Mer (amazing). We were pretty tired from our time at Disney, so we left a little early to go swimming at our hotel, which we hadn't seen yet...

It was awful! The Garmin said we were at the right spot, but we just couldn't believe this could be our "hotel and suites." Tim went to see if it was the right place, and sadly, it was. Our room was o.k., but the place itself was scary. The pool that the kids wanted to swim in butted up to the hotel bar and there were scary people in it (I'm pretty sure they were some sort of gang...). So we told them they couldn't swim, which made them really sad, but seriously, we were afraid for their safety. Needless to say, the next morning we checked out of that place before we left for the zoo...

Thursday was zoo day. We had a good time there, and the kids' favorite thing was feeding the giraffes. Again we were SOO tired, so we left in the afternoon and drove back to Anaheim to stay the last night in our "safe" hotel. That way we had a head-start for our drive back on Friday. We took a different route home and shaved off about an hour and a half, which was great. It was good to get home to Jake and to relieve my family from watching him.

All in all, it was a really great trip--a little too long, perhaps, but still great. I hope the kids can remember it for a long time cause we won't be doing it again for a while!!!