The Exodus

The week after the family flew out of Omaha, I went to John and Julianna's wedding (May 19th).  It was one of the fanciest weddings I had ever been to!  I actually didn't take any pictures with Julianna, so I borrowed this picture from their thank-you card they sent out.

They held a beautiful reception at the new aquarium at the zoo.  The zoo had just finished redoing their aquarium, and Julianna's wedding was one of the first events to be held in the conference center, which featured a huge fish tank.  It was so fun to dress up fancy and wander through the zoo.  Too bad most of the exhibits were closed by the time we got there, especially since I don't think Will had ever been to the zoo before.

Me and my "plus one."  Seriously, we even had little place cards for our table!

I just love this picture of Dave!

One of the many fun things about their reception was they had "animal ambassadors" which meant they brought in animals we could interact with.  They had an armadillo, a turtle, and a penguin!  After the wedding we headed to Chase's house to watch a movie in his sweet basement.

The zoo worker with a cute little penguin!

Sunday was our last day at the ward.  I don't really like saying goodbyes, so I tried not to focus on it too much.  Dave and I luckily got invited to have dinner at Chase's house that afternoon since we literally had no food in our houses.  That also happened to be the day of the solar eclipse.  We took a walk around the block in Bellvue and tried really hard to see it, but were unable to since we didn't have one of those sweet homemade view boxes.  Yeah, not very smart of the two new dentists ruining their eyes staring at the sun!  I didn't feel too bad since it didn't fully eclipse in Nebraska anyway.

Early the next morning Dave and I set off on our exodus back to Utah.  We were both driving our own cars back to Utah, so we had decided to caravan back together.  Dave was an amazing travel buddy, and we kept each other entertained through walkie-talkies.  We left around 8 am and made it to South Jordan around 9 or 10 that night.  We stopped the night at Dave's parent's house, and I finished driving home to Cedar the next morning.

I was so bored...  I can't tell you how welcome the sight of the Utah sign was by late Monday afternoon.  I did try to keep myself entertained by burning about 10 new CDs, and having a fully stocked cooler in the front seat next to me!  Officially we were in four states - Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.  We were only in Colorado for a very short period of time because I may have taken the wrong exit...  Grand total mileage according to Google maps: 1,177 miles.  Awesome.  After that, all road trips now seem short!

I was thrilled to be done driving, and excited to see my family.  Okay, more stuff later!