We just got back from an almost 2 week family vacation. It was so nice to get away from all the
stress at our house. We started out in
Manti where we saw the Manti Pageant. I
had such a feeling of calm and peace sitting on the temple grounds watching the
play. I haven't seen this play in over
14 years and it was before I knew what it was like to be a baby loss mommy so I
saw it this time through different eyes.
There is a part in this pageant when one of the pioneer woman is
kneeling before her babies grave weeping and then tells everyone to just go on
without her because it is just too hard to leave her baby buried in the
ground. I started crying then because I
know what that feels like. At the very
end of this pageant they have people dressed as angels singing by the temple
and then you see this little girl angel who is representing the baby in the
previous scene, run down to meet her parents who have just died and gone to
Heaven and they gather her in their arms.
I started really crying then because I want that scene in my life with
Janessa, Hope, Jason, and Rae Anne and it just seems so far away.
For the first 3 days of our vacation we lived out of suit
cases at different hotels and ate out for most of our meals. It was hard, but, it kept me so busy packing
and unpacking that the stress of my grief and everything else wasn't able to
catch up to me and I truly found joy and happiness just being with my
family.
We went to Bryce Canyon next where we hiked to the Queens Garden. It was a pretty short hike but
really steep in places. We had overcast
skies and the temperature was actually only in the low 70's so it was
perfect. There wasn't too many people
there either. Each of our older kids
picked a younger kid as a buddy and it made me so happy to see them hook arms
with their buddy and not be embarrassed and they truly did watch out for each
other. There was parts of the trail
where we had really strong winds blowing so we would gather in a circle and
huddle until it passed. It was so
peaceful and quiet there. I left another
Carson's Courage Car by one of the tunnels and by the time we had gone back up
the trail someone had already found it.
Another place we stopped at was a state park called Cedar Breaks. My husband and I discovered this park on accident on our Honeymoon because we took a wrong road. It is about 10,000 feet up so it was actually really cold. We went from about 50 degree temperatures to a few hours later it being over 100 degrees. Quite the shock! We took a picture at the same sign that 23 years ago my husband and I posed at, 11 years ago our little family with little kids posed at, and now in 2014 with all our older kids--didn't bring my angel bears out for the picture so I had on 4 different colored bracelets that stood in place for them. Love that I now have 3 different pictures of the same sign with our family at different stages.
We were really glad to finally reach our rental condo in
Mesquite Nevada. Problem was we didn't
realize they were on a different time zone than us, so what we thought was the
right time ended up being an hour early in the Pacific Time zone. That kind of made traveling back and forth to
St. George and Zions a little more challenging.
We stopped at a church in Littlefield Arizona to waste a little bit of
extra time and take pictures by the palm trees.
It was 100 degrees when we got out of the car. The next 7 days we spent in Mesquite and it
was 110-115 degrees outside every day!!!!
Thank goodness our condo had awesome air conditioning and we didn't even
notice the heat hidden inside. Walking
outside was a different story--it was so hot it took your breath away!!! This condo was so beautiful and large. The view off of the patio of what we figured
out was the Arizona mountains was so beautiful!! I hated to leave that view and I miss it.
We went to Tuachans outdoor play of The Wizard of Oz and
that was fun, except at 9:00 pm. at night is was still 100 degrees. By the time the play got over at 11:30 p.m.
it had only cooled down to 95 degrees.
That really made it kind of miserable to sit there. I definitely would have enjoyed it better if
the temperature had been a lot cooler.
We ended up canceling some of the places we were going to go to because
it was just too hot.
We got up really early to go see Zion's National Park hoping
to beat the heat. We just went on 1 hike
to the lower and middle emerald pools.
It was really pretty and we did enjoy walking behind a waterfall and
getting wet, but, it was again just too hot to really enjoy it. Near the water fall there was this big
beautiful yellow butterfly that kept flying around us. I tried to take a picture, but, it was just
too fast for me. They have shuttle buses
that you travel on from one stop to another, but, they are not air conditioned
and they were really crowded so that was kind of miserable too. I did have fun in the air conditioned gift
shops!!!
On the 4th of July all the grief and stresses of life and
realizing that we were headed home the next day had caught up with me and I was really
depressed. It didn't help either
realizing that this year was Jason and Rae Annes first 4th of July in
Heaven. That just made me so sad again
having gone from 2 angel babies last year to 4 this year. For Janessa and Hope I've always taken the
glow sticks and made hearts with their initials in it and I just didn't have it
in me to do anything for all 4 of them this year--I just wanted to sit and cry
instead. Thank goodness for one of my
younger daughters who wanted to include them.
She went and got all their angel bears and picked a glow stick that
represented each of their colors and put it on their heads as a glowing
halo. When I came out and saw that they
had been included it made me really happy.
We were able to watch a fireworks show in Mesquite right from our
balcony and that was really fun. The
nice thing was in the actual neighborhood we were in there wasn't anyone doing
fireworks and it was nice and quiet--that was wonderful!! In our neighborhood it sounds like world war
3 and it goes on and on and on way past midnight--really annoying. I was happy I was missing it, only when we
got home yesterday I realized our city was allowing them to do fireworks then
too, so I still had to put up with it! :(
Yesterday as we packed everything up and I was doing a final
check to make sure we had everything, I was just overcome with emotion because
I didn't want to leave and go back to all the stress of real life. I wanted to just stay there forever feeling
the joy and peace that I had felt. Every
day but 1 in my scripture reading on this trip I read a scripture that had the
word JOY in it. That is what this trip
was for me--true JOY and PEACE.
I am really overwhelmed since coming home. We were instantly faced with wedding plans,
and people bringing over camp lists for my daughter who leaves on her first
girls camp next week which is really freaking me out, our house was hot and was
taking forever to cool down, and all the other stresses just really has me
wishing to be back on vacation again.
Then our washer stopped working and that was the last straw for me as I
collapsed on our bed sobbing. The washer
got fixed, the ac finally started working, and the camp stuff is almost all
together, but, I still long for the peace and joy I felt in a remote little
town called Mesquite where it was 115 degrees.
