Surprise Road Trips are always fun...

By May, things were starting to get a bit dicey at our house, what with Mr. C having been gone for as long as he had. The kids missed him, I missed him, and I was ready for a bit of an adventure; and I mean a real adventure! So when you're pregnant and single parenting four kids, what do you do?

Me? I cram them all in a car, and take off on my own on a surprise road trip to see Daddy in Salt Lake City.

We have had a tradition of talking over the web cam every night before the kids go to bed, and then again in the mornings, so that we could all read scriptures together before school. My goal was to leave (the kids amazing teachers told me to take them out of school early rather than wait until the end of the day!) tell a small fib about why we couldn't talk that night, and then arrive on his door step right about the time he'd be calling us to read scriptures the next morning. It totally worked!


This is us starting off on our adventure. Everyone was besides themselves at the idea of surprising Benjamin!

These next photos are what I like to call the progression of Kate the Great as she drives nonstop for 14 plus hours by herself. :)

all smiles
still smiling
somewhere over 200 miles in... not smiling so much anymore.
I will not fall asleep.... I will not fall asleep...
freezing my head off b/c the boys were all complaining they couldn't sleep since the car was too hot. ppft!
Thankfully we arrived shortly after that.

Along the way we encountered some really fun things, like:

Snow in late May!

When we got there, I called Benjamin (it was about 7 am) and told him that before we read scriptures he needed to go check his front door because his father's day present had just been delivered and if he left it outside it'd get ruined. The boys all stood quietly and had to stuff their fingers in their mouths to stifle the giggles. When Benjamin opened the door they all leapt out and shouted surprise!

Once Daddy was over the shock we took some time to rest and then spent the next four or so days enjoying being together and seeing the sights of Salt Lake.



Travel Froggie took us on a tour of Temple Square and the State Capitol.



We hiked around Antelope Island






And went to visit Kenacott Copper Mines (which is the largest open face mine in the world and one of two man made things you can see from space).



Sadly, all too soon it was time to head back home, since there was still school. We said our good byes and ventured back to Oregon. I was worried when around 4 am or so as we were passing through Brigham City, UT, Sheepie threw up ALL over the place in his sleep. Thankfully, it must have just been car sickness b/c it didn't happen again and the rest of the trip was smooth sailing, and fun sight seeing.


Sheepie wanted to stop and get a picture we every LDS temple we passed.

We stopped in Twin Falls and all the boys took turns standing over the huge valley on this cool over hanging view point they have. If you know how FP feels about being high up, this picture is amazing!




We stopped at the Boise Temple too.

Amenddeous my faithful traveling buddy never left his guard on my mirror.

Our last real stop on the way back was at Multnomah Falls, in Oregon and then, 18 hours later (remember we were sight seeing) we were home.




Little did we know that the real surprise would happen later that week when as I was getting the kids out of the car Mr. C popped up behind me and grabbed me (scaring the living day lights out of me) and was back in Oregon for the weekend. He too had been planning a surprise to come home to take the three oldest to our wards annual Father and Son camp out. My Father in law had agreed to take the boys, all along knowing that Benjamin would be coming home. He and my MIL picked him up and kept the whole thing from us. It was a 'cherry on top' for sure.