Artists, French Toast and Tumbleweeds!

Our last day in Utah, we went to visit great grandma and grandpa T.
It hailed while we were there! That was exciting!

We had fun visiting and looking at grandma's beautiful artwork. The girls love to look and wonder how grandma paints these scenes. (Just yesterday, Sarah was looking at the one in our living room trying to figure out how grandma did the ripples and reflection of the Tetons in water.) I think it's neat they really appreciate grandma's talent and hopefully it makes grandma feel good. (o:

Grandpa is very talented too. He does amazing things with wood. I remember the smell of his woodworking shop in his basement when I was growing up. He made most of the frames on grandma's artwrok. This ship took grandpa two years to make. (If I remember right.) I love to look at the details. He said tying the sails was the hardest part. Look at all the strings - if I had tried to do that, they would probably be in a huge messy knot. It must have taken so much time and patience.

These were two of grandma's most recent pieces. The detail is amazing. Isn't it beautiful? I'm so happy that my girls have a good relationship with my grandparents. I love them so much!

Before hitting the road, we had a lovely brunch with my parents and Rudy's* parents at Marie Calendar's. I love and feel very lucky that our parents get along so well. We are so blessed to have such wonderful and fun parents! We love you guys so much and HATE these goodbyes! Sarah was very teary shortly after taking this picture. We are always a little depressed after leaving our favorite people.

Kisses goodbye. )o:

Bye mom. )o:

The ride home was fairly good, but we drove in some CRAZY wind!

The girls were dying as I took this - it was sooo windy. They are showing a tumbleweed that got stuck in the grill. The tumbleweeds were insane! It was hilarious. They were rolling all over the place on the freeways in Idaho. It was like watching Rudy* play a real game of Mario Cart as he tried to avoid as many as he could while staying in our lane! We've never driven in anything like that before. It was funny and scary at the same time.

Here's a piece of one that came flying up over the car and got stuck on the antennae! It stayed with us for a good half hour or so!

Road trips can be exhausting, but when they are to see family, it's well worth the effort!

Here's a video for your enjoyment to give you an idea of the excitement the tumbleweeds gave us. It's hard to see on the left side of the road in the video, but if you look close, you'll see tons of big old tumbleweeds rolling along. Enjoy!