Fun in Wyoming...and then a deer jumped in front of our car

On Wednesday, the 18th of April, Sam, Jori and I set off for Wyoming, to visit Sam's oldest sister and her family (of nine!). We decided to wait to begin our journey at Jori's bedtime, because long car rides are such a struggle for her. Unfortunately, it's a roughly eight hour journey, and neither Sam nor I were able to sleep while the other one was driving. But we got there safely at about 3:15 in the morning Thursday and all was well.

We had a really great time while there! We spent time outside in their backyard, pushing Jori on the swings and jumping on the trampoline; we had fun in their hot tub; we got to see two of our oldest nieces and nephews, Phillip and Elena, perform in a dress rehearsal for their high school production of Into the Woods; we went out to eat; we rode their four wheelers; we watched movies in their theater room; we spent time with the family; and we even got our dental work done for free! (Jim, Heidi's husband, is a dentist. We were really grateful he could take care of our teeth for us while there-it was very generous of him.)

Perhaps my favorite aspect of our vacation, though, was how our Jori acted. She was fantastic! She's become much more independent over the past...by now it's been about 3 weeks, I think because she finally figured out how to use her knees while crawling. So she has been (and was up there) so pleasant to be with! It certainly didn't hurt that they have a fairly large house, so she had lots of areas to explore, and had lots of people paying attention to her. Whatever the reason she was so happy, I'm grateful! All mommies I'm sure could agree with me: the best vacation is good behavior of kids. ? Well that's what I think anyway.

 Hot tubbin' it up

 Dentist face!!!

 Cute Breidi

This is Jori's newest favorite trick: she smiles with realll squinty eyes 

 Tommy is two years older than Jori, which to me felt like good practice almost. :) 

 Ari is so sweet and thoughtful: she made me something almost every day I was there.

 Jori and Penny (the bird) did not really hit it off

 We (regretfully) came back to reality on Monday the 30th, daring to leave earlier and deal with an un-happy Jori in the hopes of getting a better night's sleep that night.

But this was actually a rather interesting happening too: we were going along at, all things considered, a very reasonable pace. Our projected arrival time was 11:00 pm, which I was very happy about. And then at about 10:00, a deer came out of nowhere and we hit it. Gah!!!!

It was one of the scariest moments in a car I've ever had. Sam was driving, so as soon as I saw it I grabbed the door handle and just squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for impact. (I wouldn't have done that if I was driving.)

But Heavenly Father was looking out for us: somehow, miraculously, Sam swerved enough that he didn't lose total control of the car (we WERE going 70 mph, can't swerve too much going that fast) but the only damage to the car was the driver's side mirror being knocked off. I still to this day can't believe how lucky we were. We started fish-tailing right after impact but Sam gained control again, and we were just fine.

Where the mirror hit the window when it was flying off

 Remains

Jori was all too happy to get to play at eleven o' clock at night

Anyway. Moral of the story: driving to or from Wyoming in the dark, be sure to pray for protection.