Lake Powell or BUST! Part I

So we decided to drive (or, I should say, Jared decided to drive; I agreed reluctantly, but that's another story!) to the 2012 Anderson Family Reunion, which was held this year in Lake Powell, Utah/Arizona. I had made a decision to not be grumpy beforehand, which, unbelievably, helped tremendously.  There was some good bickering amongst the children while driving (and some trimming of hair, unbeknownst to us), but no sick children, and so my grump-o-meter was uncharacteristically low (much to Jared's delight!).

We first drove from Hanock to Hudson, WI (and we only left a couple of hours after we'd planned to!), where we stayed with some friends, Aaron and Abby, that we'd known in Ashland. (I do need to interject here that I should've taken a whole lot more pictures than I actually did. 'Nuff said.) We had a good time, and continued on (though our hosts doubted our arrival since we didn't have a GPS or a map (that one was Jared's fault--more on that later). They graciously offered to lend us one of their GPSs, but Jared, (being a male and of course, not feeling the need to have a map or ever ask directions!) refused, though I would've loved to have used it. But I digress. Along the way, we all played with my new iPad, to see just how silly we could make ourselves look.  Here are some of my favorites:

They're not terribly flattering, of course, but oh well.


















We then drove to Lincoln, Nebraska, where we stayed with more friends, Mike & Tammy, that we knew from the singles ward in Minneapolis. We were able to help one of their kids celebrate a birthday!
While there, we took a few minutes to tour the Lincoln state capitol, which, as Jared enjoyed pointing out to me, is the only state to have a unicameral legislature in the country!! (Translation: there is only a legislature, not both a House and a Senate).  The capitol building is really quite beautiful.  They had some lovely murals on the ceilings (which I can only imagine took quite some time to make!!)

After that we headed on to Denver, CO, to stay with one of Jared's childhood friends, Rob and Missy Schill. By this time, the kids had watched the movie "Rio" about 5 times, "Sinbad" twice, and they had all fought over use of the two iPads. The "unlucky" one "had" to use the iPhone. Please!  Back in my day, all we had was the alphabet game or the license plate game. And hopefully none of us got carsick! To be continued....