Kerry's Travels: Nora's Blessing

When I first said something to one of my employees, Marie Walton, about going to Kansas City, she asked if I would do her a favor and drive her truck there and back. I figured she was joking, but it turns out she was serious. She has had the truck for two years and has only driven it 3000 miles. The night before we took off for Kansas City to attend Nora's Blessing, we loaded the freezer in the back of her truck and then decided we needed to go find some fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July with Caleb and Spencer before we left.

This is Rebecca, who got an immediate crush on the truck, taking me and the boys to get the fireworks.

The next morning Lauri took this photo of Spanish Fork Canyon from the back seat where she was stretched out. The truck is nice, but big, noisy (although not bad for a diesel), and a bit of a fuel hog, but we did a favor for Marie and got a freezer delivered to Cydney and Ken in the process.

Later in the day, we discovered that cleaning the windshield is no easy task. This service station even had long handled cleaners, but I still had to climb up onto the tires to reach the center of the windshield.

The kids were having fun in Kansas!

We stopped for dinner at a McDonalds just after it got dark. The girls quickly put this cake together for Lauri, since it was her birthday. We even sang to her there in the restaurant. I can see these Ho Ho cakes becoming a tradition. That is how some of them get started, you know. Anyway, it was not a very fun birthday, but I will make it up to her.

This video shows a little bit of the lightning we experienced that night as we drove through the plains of Kansas. We have another one that is better, but we haven't figured out how to upload it, yet. I am still working on that and if I figure it out, I will alert everyone.

The rain did come eventually. It had been pouring where we stopped for dinner, even though it was not raining at the time we got there. The parking lot at McDonalds was a river. Later, when we caught op to it, it was the heaviest rain I have ever driven in. I have been in some real gully-washing rainstorms, especially over in Trinidad, but this was every bit as heavy as those, and it was a night, in the dark and at 65 mph. We had to slow way down, and even pulled off at one point to try and wait it out from the relative safety of an on-ramp.

It was really late when we got there again, so we just unloaded the freezer and the canned goods and went to check-in to the hotel.

Later in the morning, we went back to the apartment and everyone got to know little Nora. She is a doll!

Guitar Hero was one of the main activities during the couple of days we were there. Most of us took at least one turn with it at one point or another.

At lunchtime, the girls disappeared. Lauri found them out on the front "porch."

When we were here in May/June, we tried to grill using Ken and Cyd's little gas grill. It has a significant gas leak in the valve, which ends up in flames as you use it. We decided that would not work to make Manti Turkey, so they tried to borrow a grill. That was not working out too well, so I went to WalMart and bought them a grill. We spent the afternoon and part of the evening putting it together.

Ready for church the next morning.

She is sleeping, but the proud parents are doing photos anyway.

Of course, we had to get the whole family too. We took lots of photos with lots of cameras, but I figured with all the other blogs, I would just include these.