Wedding trip . . . and I'm weird.

Wanna know what Sam will look like in 30 years? Peek over his left shoulder. That man is the bride's father. How crazy is that??

Pretty girl

Snacks at the temple

Bench family at Shannon's house

Aquarium. We need to raid Uncle De's camera again; he took all the pictures.

We headed north last Thursday for the "Samber" wedding weekend and stayed with our Austin friends Lance and Rachel Jensen, who treated us to a delicious barbecue dinner and great company. The kids played their hearts out. Got to the Salt Lake temple early Friday; Lindsey Bench watched screaming Dax while we went to the sealing. Lots of waiting around. Then we went to an Italian restaurant for the luncheon. I spent a lot of time in the halls and outside with fussy Dax and was sad to miss all the nice things people said. We were there for 3 1/2 hours! Went to Leif's cousin Shannon's house to plan our fun and eat dinner super late. Slept at Aunt Darcia's house in Highland (I use the word "slept" lightly . . . Dax was horrible. Leif took him for a drive for an hour in the middle of the night and he screamed the whole time.) I really wish I could have gone for a run Saturday morning, but I was too dadgum tired. We played at the aquarium in Sandy, where I spent a lot of time strolling Dax outside (Notice a theme here? Fussiness!); ate sandwiches in the parking lot; then went swimming at Leona's uncle's house in Alpine for the afternoon. And had a barbecue. (Question: what is your preferred spelling of that word? Barbecue. Barbeque. Bar-B-Q. BBQ. Barbie. English is somethin' else, ain't it?) It was really, really nice catching up with the Bench family.

Anyway, we decided to drive home that night rather than handle another Dax night, but our trip was delayed due to Dax puking all over himself in his carseat. We pulled over to clean him up, only to find he had had a diaper explosion as well. Awesome. We had just left Darcia's house, so we turned around to bathe Dax and clean his carseat. Leif's family tried to convince us to stay the night, but I really didn't want to unload the van yet again only to have another sleepless night and drive home in the morning with bright-eyed, needy children. Drive while they sleep, I always say. (Okay, maybe not always. I've probably said it one other time in my life. Still, sound advice.)

So we loaded up again and I slept for a little while then took the wheel so Leif could sleep. I thought I would drive all the way home, but I must have been so tired because I only made it to Fillmore before I had to wake up Leif. Bummer, too, because I wanted to listen to my audiobook all the way home (1776 by David McCullough). I thought Leif's family was dispersing Sunday morning anyway, which is why I preferred to leave at night, but I think they all stuck around and hung out all day, so I felt bad that we had left. Oh well--it was still nice to see everybody.

All of Leif's siblings were able to travel for the wedding: Jed's family from California, De & Kat from Richfield, Ane & Rowyn from Wyoming, and Alta & Michael from Oregon. Sam was the last Burton sibling wedding! Weird how everyone has scattered. I think back to our newby years of marriage--before there were any grandchildren and only half of the kids were married--and it's easy to see how quickly life changes. But in the moment, life's routines seem slow and steady--like a highly viscous lava creeping across the earth. Only when you look back at the path and distance the lava has traveled can you see how it's completely changed the landscape. So it is with life, my friends. I know, I know, I'm so full of profundity and wisdom. Yeah, profundity. Look it up; it's in the thing.

So, to recap, I've picked my top 5 favorite words from this post: dadgum, barbie, dispersing, viscous, profundity. First words that come to mind when you're talking about a wedding, right?

I'm so weird.