Salt Lake City or Bust

Our last night on the road across country Clint thought it would be nice to detour through the Rockies, even though it would add six hours to our journey. I'm so glad we did! We drove through mountains, gorgeous mountains, so steep at times the little civic couldn't bust past 45 mph. We stopped for dinner in a little resort town called Winter Park, Colorado. It was 43 degrees, on August 1st! That day it was a heat wave across the country with 112 degree temps in Memphis. The locals were wearing polar fleece, shorts and sandals. I know the sandals were just so they could trick themselves into believing it was summer. We stayed at a ski resort hotel in Steamboat Springs. The next morning we really wanted to take the ski lift up and hike down with the boys, but the lift had didn't start until almost 11:00 a.m., but we were due to pick our keys from the rental office at 5 p.m. in SLC. So we promised ourselves we'd do the lift thing in Utah and took off and enjoyed the rest of the route through Vernal and connecting onto the I-80 to enter the Salt Lake Valley through Emigration Canyon. It was beyond surreal driving into Salt Lake City not to visit, but to become a resident! Let's just say my mind has been on tilt ever since we got orders to Utah last October. It's been 16 years since I've lived in Utah and never really believed I'd get to live here again. Even though I totally loved and enjoyed Memphis and San Diego, I have been really homesick these past few years. We haven't even been able to visit Northern Utah for three years. I've been sad about missing out on so many births and other life events. Now that I'm here I realize how much I just missed Utah itself. The clear blue skies, the dry air, the cool evenings, the mountains and the smell of the rain (it really doesn't smell the same anywhere else). It's just nice to be in scenery that is so deeply familiar.
As we pulled up to our house the children next door came out and introduced themselves and within an hour of arriving, Talmage was buried up to his neck in sand at the playground across the street from our house.

The boys took to the sports court in our back yard immediately and Clint remarked in awe, "All our boys are playing happily outside together with balls!" Who knows maybe one of them will even become sporty, not likely, but maybe.

We saw this double rainbow over the house the first day we moved in. I thought it was a nice sign that maybe we are in the right place.