Late night, camera, kids, long lines, kids grow up to fast...Okay, ramblings. Long title for this post...lol

So, today we kicked off our No School for a few more months!!! Last night was a late night, though. No big deal, we can all sleep in in the morning. The late night was not for anything bad, not because kids were sick, but as we were coming home from my cousins baby blessing, we passed downtown Salt Lake and the kids, like they normally do, looked towards Gateway at the train station to see if anything interesting was there. Well, there was. The Grand Luxe. Now, if you do not know what this is, it is the American version of the Orient Express. One day, when I feel like I have at least $5500.00 I want to blow, and that is per person, I, as well as Brent, not sure about the kids though, I do not think they are into trains all that much....lol, I think it would like to take a trip aboard this train.
So the boys noticed the train was in town. So, we made a detour and drove down near it. Garrett, for Christmas, received a camera and he now pack that camera faithfully with him so that he can take pictures of the wildlife....kidding, the trains. Driving down the road and through the window he will snap a picture. It could be Union Pacific, it could be a Utah Railways, or even Front Runner, you just never know what you may see. Awesome, truly awesome. More like fascinating or riveting. I just don't get it. If you ever want to experience the excitement that we experience on a drive with Garrett, let us know, we will let you borrow him. Truly fascinating. The kid loves trains.
Okay, so back to the Grand Luxe. So he takes his camera, because we are now stopped and he is out snapping away. He asks one of the employees what time they will be heading out. To which he finds out that it is 9pm. Brent told him he should ask which direction they will be heading, to which I reply that we can look it up on online since they show their schedule. Well, they have changed their website, but I did not find this out until later. Garrett did look it up, however, and said that they were going to be heading to Yellowstone (I found out later that it could have been a different route they were on which headed in the opposite direction). So, right after 9pm off we head to the Clearfield Front Runner station to watch and take pictures of the train as it passes by.
We sit, and sit, and sit, then do some pacing, then sit, and sit some more. Now mind you, it was windy as we were sitting there, so it was a little bit on the chilly side. All five of us had shorts and short sleeve shirts on, so we are freezing, sort of. Except Garrett, he has a jacket on. Madi pipes up and says, "Garrett was the smart one, he wore a jacket."
"What!?!" Brent and I reply. We never thought we would hear those words....Garrett, the smart one? Just kidding Garrett, we love you, really we do..... So of course, we gave Garrett a hard time, but yes, we did agree, Garrett was the smart one.
So we continued to wait, and wait, and wait. It was 10:00pm and we decided that either it was late, or we missed it, or it went a different direction, which we found out was quite possible later. So, we made a couple more detours past a few different areas and never did see this train driving. But I guess there will always be another time.
So, to make that long story really long, that is why last night was a late night. Only to have today start out very early for Garrett- paper route. Then the phone rang at 8:45am, and we were all asleep. To which Brent and I were quickly brought to life by the answering machine with the caller saying I am almost to you house, just verifying today's appointment. "What?!?!" This appointment was supposed to be Thursday at 1pm. But oh well, Brent answered his cell phone, because now the caller is calling it and said yep, we are home. We fly out of bed, put clothes on and make a mad dash into the family room and start putting clothes away. We had been folding clothes in the family room and that is as far as the folded clothes made it - the couch. Now the kids are awake and we recruit them in our endeavor to quickly clean the house and make it look like we live this way. It was somewhat clean prior to having the clothes folded, and for any of you who know how much I like to fold clothes, you know that it is not one small load of laundry that I have sitting in my family room. No, it was somewhere in the range of maybe four or five loads of laundry.
So the guy arrives, most of the laundry is put away, I apologize for the mess the house is in. And in between him heading to different parts of the house, I would pick things up and put them away.
So I know some of you would think we slept in, but no, not really. Maybe 10am, that would be sleeping in. But no, we woke up at 8:45am. Maybe we will try for tomorrow - sleeping in that is.
I am not sure what we accomplished today, because there is not much to show for it. I guess most of the clothes were put away. But then again, we did head out to Lagoon for a few hours, which can always be fun when it is not busy.
Oh, I guess Brent and I stood in the longest line at the Drivers License Division as well, earlier in the day. Waiting at least 40 minutes behind many teens who were getting their licenses. Fun times for them - scary for others, most likely their parents. I looked at these young kids, I saw one kids birth certificate, and he is only two years older (and a couple of months), but two years older than Garrett!!! SCARY!!!!! In one month Garrett is going to be 14. Wow!!! And he will be going into 9th grade. Not to mention that Parker will be in 6th grade. I remember my 6th grade years. Madi is going to be in 3rd, I remember 3rd as well!
Oh my word, the time has flown by. I found a picture of him downstairs the other day and he was just graduating from kindergarten. People tell you to enjoy them while you have them and how time will just pass quickly. There are times that you think, looking ahead, that it will never go that fast and how kindergarten, then Junior High, High School, and then their mission is just forever away. But really, I am nearing that high school mark now and it has gone by so fast. So, honestly, I think we try to enjoy every minute we have with our kids. Even when they look at photos of themselves when they were small, they cannot imagine themselves that size and do not remember those times.
Oh, and by the way, Brent and I just got our motorcycle endorsement for our drivers license. More on that another day, maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday, we shall see.....
Off on our late night shopping trip - 11pm.