OUR TRIP TO UTAH

Our trip to Utah was eventful. We arrived on schedule with no weather, problems with children, or anything else that you can think of. The rest of the trip was another story.

This is Blaine and his mom's husband who are working at fixing his sister's sink which broke while everyone was there.

He did find some time for a couple of games though between fixing the sink and our song practice for our duet which turned out okay. It is hard to sing at your grandpa's funeral.

We thought while we were going down there we might as well take the kids to temple square. When we got into Salt Lake we turned down the Delta Center road and came face to face with traffic waiting to go to the Jazz game. About 30-40 minutes later we finally broke through and were able to find a parking space not far from the temple. I was so excited to show my kids the lights. To my dismay all they wanted to see were fountains and the escalator. Good thing they have a good dad, UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN.

They did like this particular view.

Right after the funeral luncheon Blaine and I raced to the car to hit the road before it got too dark. We met our friend's "The Arnell's" for dinner in Burley. It was fun to see them. Then we headed off to Nampa to make it before any bad weather hit. We had a bad rain storm but nothing else. On Saturday morning we woke up to nothing and headed off thinking we had luck on our side, after all I was supposed to have a Christmas Party at my house for a church thing this night. When we hit Ontario we started getting into snow. It just got worse from there on. We drove about 30 mph the rest of the way to LaGrande. It took 4 hours just to get there. When we got in to LaGrande we stopped to buy some chains. As we were coming down the off ramp a state trooper was closing the on ramp due to an accident and said the interstate would be closed for 5-6 hours. NO PARTY FOR THE BRAITHWAITE'S. I had to call my friend and ask her to either cancel the party or have it at my house or her house without us. We were stuck. We rented a hotel room which you can see Bodie and Amree enjoyed. We then found out they closed the road at Pendleton. We were staying the night. We also had to speak in church on Sunday. Thank you for all who filled in for us. It was many people who stepped up to the plate. We really were not trying to avoid our responsibility.

This is a picture of the pass the next day as we went over it. Again, it took 3 hours to go from just LaGrande to Hermiston, a 1-1/2 hour trip usually. Oh well, we are glad that we were able to attend the funeral and see so many family members and say good-bye to grandpa Barrow.


THE FUNERAL
Blaine and his cousin Shane Pannell.

Nephews, Duncan and Jordan

Blaine's sister, Theresa from Alabama came.

Blaine, his mom Sherrilyn, and her husband Dan Chadwick.

Blaine's cousins, Wade, Leslie, and Amy Barrow, and Brenda.