Freezing Cold Idaho

Last Thursday Phil's parents and Phil and I left for the freezing North. I didn't get my camera out for any pictures. I kept leaving the camera in the car, and there was no way it was important enough to face the snow and wind to go back for it. So all of my pictures are from Cheryl (thank you!). And no, I'm not bitter about the cold =)

We drove up to Provo on Thursday, stayed the night an then drove the rest of the way up to Rexburg to attend Phil's sisters' graduation from BYU Idaho. At first, the weather was deceivingly mild, but by that night the snow started....

The graduation was great (President Uchtdorf spoke), and we were excited to see the girls graduate! It wasn't as fun to walk around the campus admist the cold, cold winds. I'm sure it's a beautiful campus, but I didn't see much as I tried to just survive from building to building. I'm such a wimp about the cold.

Here's Cheryl




And Wendy




And here's Cheryl's nice apartment complex covered in snow. Doesn't it look so pretty?!?



The snow is beautiful...until you have to go out in it. And the freezing wind. Well, let's just say that I'm not planning a return trip to Idaho in the winter. EVER.


We left Rexburg on Saturday during a nice snowstorm. Scary times. Luckily the weather for the rest of the drive to Salt Lake was clear. And Sunday morning we attended the Tabernacle Choir's "Music and the Spoken Word" that they do each Sunday, but this Sunday they also had a mini concert afterwards where they sang most of the songs they'd done at their Christmas concert from the previous week. It was amazing! We had to walk a few blocks from our parking spot to the Conference center in the light snow--but I didn't mind the cold at all. Maybe I was getting used to it, or maybe it was just that it was so much better than the freezing winds of Rexburg, but it was so peaceful and beautiful Sunday morning.


We left for home after the Choir concert and stopped at a gas station in Nephi where we ran into....Elder Packer!! He and his wife and security people (that's what they looked like anyway) were there for a restroom break. We didn't bug them by saying hi or anything, but it was pretty fun to run into them. Only in Utah =)


The drive home was painfully long. And when we were only twenty miles away from Thatcher (at 1:30 in the morning), I saw some nice flashing lights behind me. I hadn't slowed down enough in Fort Thomas. Bother! Luckily the nice policeman just gave me a written warning, and we FINALLY made it to Phil's parents' house.


We were excited to get the kids from my parents the next morning. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for taking care of them Mom and Dad!
We visited for a while, visited with my Grandma and Grandpa Flake (who gave the kids cute crocheted butterflies that made them happy--so cute to hear Ty say butterfly), and then make our last drive home. It seemed like a piece of cake to drive three hours home after all the driving we'd done. We feel blessed to have made it home safely before the roads got bad in Northern Arizona--it was scary to read of several accidents on roads that we had traveled that night.


So glad to be home in Arizona! I'll take the last few rainy days over the freezing snow up in Idaho ANY DAY. I think I'll have to reread this post several times this summer, to help me remember how thankful I am to live here =)