More travel

We left Albuquerque pretty early and were greeted by hot air balloons in the sky. They're pretty tiny in this picture but they looked awesome!

I also snapped this picture to remember a funny Max moment. As we were driving Max asked, "What's that big tower?" After a few minutes we figured out he was talking about these mountains! I was laughing so hard. That's when you know you live in Houston. 

We eventually made it to Utah! One of our last stops on the drive was to walk/hike up to Wilson Arch. Millie was attached to the hat she'd gotten at the restaurant the night before and just looked so cute.

It was a little more climbing than I remembered from doing it as a kid, but pretty cool!

We got all the way up and down and put Harvey down so he could walk to the car and he fell flat on his forehead. Got a huge bump. He was crying and I was icing his head and changing his diaper and Tyler tried to start the van, but the key was stuck and wouldn't turn for some reason. We sat there for a few minutes, trying over and over and Tyler reading the owner's manual to see if there was something we could do. Eventually we got it to start but it was a little scary there for a minute! You can't have a road trip without some kind of drama.

As we came through Price/Spanish Fork canyon we saw some wildfires up close. It's hard to tell in this pic but there's a helicopter flying over, dropping sand on it. I was amused by the signs that said not to call and report the fires. 

We made it to Provo and were sad to see that the smoke from that wildfire had made it to the valley. We couldn't see the mountains and the air quality probably wasn't good! Didn't stop us from enjoying some time outside though. Mitchell and Shayna met us at the Provo Temple grounds where we had dinner and played and chatted. It was such a nice evening and we were so happy to be out of the car! And Tyler and I had Cafe Rio, so our joy was full right along with our stomachs haha.

Sunday morning we went to church at Laura and Tom's ward. They blessed their sweet baby Chloe and it was amazing to see ALL of my brothers and brothers-in-law there in the circle, along with my dad, Grandpa Backus, and all of Tom's side.

We had lunch and enjoyed visiting outside. Laura and Tom were so nice to host all of us, it was a big undertaking! We were all just so excited to be together. Snapped a picture with Grandpa and Grandma Joyce before they left.

Later in the afternoon we took family pictures! It was a little chaotic with 38 people but the photographer was awesome and got through it all pretty quickly. Harvey fell asleep on the way to the picture site and was out cold for almost all of the session! The photographer was so nice to take another family picture of our little fam once he was awake, but for the big group ones he was comatose! Funny memory.

Laura hosted everyone she could fit (and her neighbor had the rest of us) that night and we packed up to head to the official family reunion in Weber! More on that to come.