a friends family reunion

This past weekend my friend Amanda and I went down to St. George to her mother's sides family reunion. I wondered why my family has never had a reunion, I then I pictured what it would be like. I pictured 1. getting everyone together would be a nightmare, 2. Kelly, Libby, Manda, and I would be sitting in the back laughing, and 3. Fried food everywhere. I think its better that my mom does the genealogy and if we want we can read the stories of our ancestors past on our own time.
We left Friday after I got home from work. I told her we were leaving 4:30 sharp so we could miss 5 o'clock traffic. I figured from previous trips with friends that we wouldn't get out of the house until 5. When I walked in the door she was standing there ready to go. I didn't even have a chance to do a quick walk through. I loved it, I guess this comes from scheduled vacations as a child. We stopped for sodas and off we were at 4:45. We had a pretty good time. It did bring back a lot of memories, both sad and happy memories. While we were waiting for Amanda's mom to get there we went and walked around the temple. As soon as my foot crossed the gate into the temple grounds I lost it, good thing it was night time and no one was there. Amanda and I walked around until they chased us out at 10:30. But as I was looking at the detail of that temple, threw the tears, I began to have a greater appreciation for those saints who built it. This also helped get my mind off of other things. Being a detail oriented person, I first saw how completely straight the seams of the stones were. The details of the tower, the engineering that went into the pulley systems and getting that heavy stone up to the top without cranes. It was all done by hand, no detail shop or manufacturer. Other than that the trip was pretty low key. I'm just thankful that Amanda was there to keep me level headed and laughing. Included are some pics we took Saturday night at Paula's, a tex-mex restaurant, and at the reunion in Pine Valley.