Westward Ho

Growing up, I often heard the term "back East" in reference to the East Coast. Since moving to South Carolina, I often hear the term "out West," which always sounds funny to me. It brings up visions of pioneers and covered wagons. Last week, Baylie and I went out West for a girls' trip to meet up with all the women on my side of the family.

As mentioned in my earlier post, we had a little trouble getting to Las Vegas. I neglected to mention that since we carried Baylie to the car at 3:00 in the morning, we forgot to grab her shoes. I had some Sunday shoes packed in her bag, but they were hurting her feet. I ended up buying her a $10 pair of flip flops in the Houston airport. The design on them was peeling off before we even got to San Francisco. Such a bummer.

Once we got to Vegas, the fun started. Baylie always tells people she wants her dad to get a job in Las Vegas. People always look at me funny when she says that, but they don't realize it's because her twin cousins Lauryn and Clara live there. Baylie LOVES her cousins. She is so happy whenever she is with them.

Mostly they swam, but we also went to the shark reef where the girls petted sting rays (and Lauryn almost fell in),

hiked Red Rock - initially with great enthusiasm shortly followed by extreme exhaustion. (It was hot, but these girls are pretty dramatic.)

I got a "new look," which I love.

On Wednesday we headed to St. George to meet up with everyone else. We stayed at a great little condo just north of St. George. (Initially my sister-in-law gave us the wrong number and my sister marched in on some guy and his baby. Whoops!)

We all went to the Pizza Factory for dinner. Yum! (The Pizza Factory in Lindon is where my brother Scott met his wife Beth, so we have sentimental feelings for the place as well.) We had me, my mom, my sister Tiffani, my three sisters-in-law - Dianne, Shanelle and Bethany - and eight little cousins (well, five little, one so-so, one teenager and one married). So much fun!

The enormous bread sticks were a huge hit.

That night we went to see The Little Mermaid at the Tuachahn Amphitheater, which was the main reason we planned the trip. It's is a great venue.

All of us.

 Our little mermaids.

And their mothers.

Waiting for the show. These girls are all within a year of each other and it's so fun watching them together.

Once the show started, the girls were on the edge of their seats. It was really a great show. They were able to have a curtain of water right on the stage. The acting, singing and special effects were fantastic. It was so fun to be there with all the girls in my family.

The next morning, the girls just wanted to swim. They spent hours in the pool and hot tub.

The pool had a waterfall feature with a shelf behind it so the girls could really play mermaid.

How many mermaids can fit in a shower? At least four!

Swimming was followed by a shopping spree.

These girls really hit the town.

They did some serious damage in Old Navy. I'm sure they were relieved to see us walk out.

We were sad to bid farewell to a big chunk of the family as Di and her girls headed home and Baylie and I headed for the airport. (The St. George temple is where my parents got married.)

But first we made a quick stop at Swig for snow cones and smoothies. Delish!

Baylie and I flew home right from St. George - a small, but nice airport. We flew from there to Denver to Washington D.C. without any problems. Unfortunately, when we got to D.C., we discovered there had been storms in the south and our previously open flight was now overbooked. More on that in a minute.

While we were gone, Jalen and David had fun at home. Jalen was entertained by his best friend Ian and his brother Josh. They went to Monkey Joes.

And they also got ice cream.

David and Jalen went hiking at the state park near our house.

And Jalen also navigated them through the zoo.

Most surprising of all, David got rid of our old blue sectional and got a new couch from some friends that were moving. The blue couch had belonged to my sister and her husband before us and it was pretty beat up, but I loved that couch! I like the new couch and it looks better in our living room, but I really miss the old one. David was smart to make the switch while I was gone.

Unfortunately, while moving in the couch, he put a nice gash in the wall. He has since repaired it, but Home Depot's paint matching leaves a great deal to be desired.

And back to me and Baylie, flights were delayed, rerouted, cancelled, etc. It was obvious we were going to be stuck. I finally found a flight to Savannah, Georgia, that we could take. Savannah is 2 1/2 hours from Columbia and only an hour flight. David had to wait and be sure we were on before leaving to pick us up. We had to wait for him for about an hour once we got to Savannah.

I love the airports in the Carolinas and this one in Savannah. They are so charming. You can see from the clock that it was 3:20 a.m. at the time of the picture. David got there at about 4:00 a.m.

Baylie just slept on the floor and waited. We had been traveling about 13 hours.

Once David picked us up, we stopped at a rest stop for a couple of hours because we were all too tired to risk driving. We got home at about 9:00 a.m. - making it about 19 1/2 hours total travel time.

It was a fantastic trip, despite the marathon journeys. I love spending time with my family.

Doubly Blessed

Today is Father's Day. It is also David's and my 12th anniversary. Rather than write something new, I thought I'd share previous posts that express my feelings about both of these occasions.

Father's Day

Anniversary

Creeped Out at the Airport

Baylie and I spent the previous three days trying to get from Columbia to Las Vegas. We finally made it yesterday. We left Columbia at 3:00 a.m., drove to Charlotte, caught a flight to Houston, then a flight to San Francisco, got bumped several times and finally made it to Vegas at about 11:00 p.m. last night (2:00 a.m. Columbia time, which means 23 hours traveling!). It was an adventure. Thank goodness Baylie is a trooper.

The trip had lots of ups and downs, but something happened at the San Francisco airport that really creeped me out. We were waiting for yet another flight when I realized that a man was holding his iPad pointed at us as if he were taking our photo. I looked at him and so he turned and stopped. Later I realized that he had started filming two little girls. The girls were playing with each other and were in loose fitting sun dresses. I made a comment out loud, but not really loudly, that I thought it was weird that someone would film children like that without their parents' knowledge, but I'm not sure he spoke English or heard me. I just got a weird feeling about it until I finally had to get up and go tell the mother what was happening. She was surprised, thanked me and then started to watch him. She then got up and went and stood between him and her children with her back to him. He moved closer to the girls and kept watching them, but stopped filming. She ended up going and getting her husband and asking him to stand by the girls. When the husband got there, the man moved away. The whole thing just felt creepy and odd. It lasted for several minutes.

I kept my eye on him and he would still periodically watch Baylie, but mostly the other girls. He kept his distance after that, however. Had he tried to film Baylie again, I would have confronted him. I am bothered to know that he might have pictures of her. I'm glad that she was dressed very modestly.

There was nothing illegal about his actions, but they were strange and made me very uncomfortable. I had read Jaycee Dugard's book about her kidnapping and one of the things she mentioned is that her kidnapper would go to parks and have a hidden camera that he used to film little girls who were playing. Child pornographers use these types of photos on their websites. This experience made me think of that. He could have been completely innocent, but his behavior was just weird.

So I'm curious what other people would have done. Would you confront someone in a situation like this? Do you think I was overly paranoid? Do we have any control if someone takes a picture of our child and uses it inappropriately? I have caught people taking pictures of Baylie before, but it never upset me like this experience did.