We Had A Trip to Utah (and a Third Wedding Reception!)

On May 24th I took a long, delayed flight to Salt Lake, got in too late to pick up my rental, crashed on the Clark’s couch, and then got my car early on the 25th, getting up to Highland in time for a Don Joaquin lunch with Kristen and Cory.

That evening I drove up to Logan. I was going to be speaking at the Mormon Scholars of the Humanities Conference that weekend and Andrew’s mom was letting me stay at her house. I’ve been up to her place a LOT over the years, it was nice to take the familiar drive to the familiar home one more time. We had tomato soup for dinner.

On the morning of the 26th I got up bright and early and enjoyed some familiar sights around the home before going up to the conference. I was glad to be speaking on the second day so that I got the first day to “suss out the vibe” of the conference. It had a good vibe! I also got to explore Utah State’s campus, a campus I had basically never explored before.

That night guess who turned up in Logan? None other than everyone’s favorite, My Wife Liz — here she is playing the harpsichord the next morning.

And then it was time to go back to the conference for my presentation on references to Mormonism in Finnegans Wake. I am so glad to say that the presentation went very well and was well received as well. Here is a photo of me and my co-presenters when we were doing the Q&A after wards. That’s basically all I’ve got to show from the presentation. Oh and here, I’ll try to embed the Instagram Live video Liz took. Did this work? https://www.instagram.com/p/CswVg2roawd/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I was lucky to speak right before lunch. For lunch we celebrated with turkey steak sandwiches, something I had never had before or even heard of before.

After the rest of the presentation more Utah State and Logan were explored (Liz finished college at Utah State so it was a Liz’s Logan Reality Tour), culminating with dinner at Le Nonne, Liz’s favorite Logan Italian restaurant.

On the 28th we enjoyed a wonderful bacon and fruit breakfast with Candy (that’s Andrew’s mom) but I have pictures of other favorite things around her house instead of that. After church we went and found my pioneer ancestor Susannah Stone’s grave and then bid Candy farewell after an extremely good time at her home.

Then, in a move I was not expecting myself to make, we went up to Downey, Idaho so Liz could see where all the Barneses and Brims come from. Aunt Linda welcomed our surprise visit with open arms and gave us a VIP tour of the farm house and all the cemeteries. Candy had set us up with some lilacs for the graves and it was good to check in with my great grandparents and grandparents.

Then, the next day, May 29th (a.k.a. “Memorial Day”) we took Liz’s Davis County Reality Tour (after a little morning Highland hike) to see where she spent her formative Utah years. We got Tasty donuts (and a french dip) before visiting some modest Layton homes, running into friends, and bumping into the almost-complete Layton temple and then had a lovely fried chicken meal from C&B’s, which everyone says is the same as Maddox — but honestly, I don’t remember Maddox being this good!

Tuesday the 30th: a big thing about this day was we had dinner up in Midway with Andrew and Sidney and Henry’s house and got to tell them what a great time we had at Andrew’s mom’s house.

Let’s just say these pictures are from that Wednesday? I was working out of Kristen and Cory’s house, don’t always have a lot to show from it. BUT Wednesday night I went to get pizza with Cory and Walker and the restaurant wound up comping the whole meal because of some order confusion and that was pretty cool.

Thursday, June 1st — very unexpected happenings that morning: turns out “my” company ran out of money and they’re not “my company” any more. Maybe if I hadn’t been busy doing my job I would have noticed things weren’t going well? Oh well. I’ve been sending out resumes and looking forward to the next opportunity and telling myself that the company must have been in real bad shape if they had to let me go.

As a consolation, I got to go to Provo with Liz to pick up koloaches and wow they were good and probably not spelled like I just spelled them?

Another bonus was I got to meet up with all the Woolleys and Gardners and Pearsons and go see the Little Mermaid, eat Hawaiian food, and visit an awesome park in Magna with them. (An especially cool thing: The Pearsons rented out a whole auditorium so we got it all to ourselves to watch the Little Mermaid to — pretty cool and fun way to do it)

Night time walk in Highland upon our return. Bumped into my old roommate Quentin while we were out, too.

Friday, June 2nd — Ah! Freedom! Started the day with a morning Highland hike with Liz and then that afternoon Owen’s family turned up. Finally got to meet niece Phoebe and reunite with nephew Hayden. And I think I picked my folks and Emily up from the airport that afternoon? Probably? That night we went to see Across the Spiderverse but didn’t rent out a theater to do it.

And then, before we knew it, it was Saturday the 3rd, the day of our Big Party. Liz and I started the day with another drive up to Provo, this time to pick up BYU mint brownies. Turns out the guy in charge of where you pick up brownies was a real jerk high on brownie power but, ok dude, hope you enjoy being king of feeling important about brownie pick up. Provo traffic was also a pain because of a half marathon. But we were able to make a visit to a nice, quiet Sam’s Club and get lunch at Taco Time so the expedition was a pretty good one.

Back at Kristen and Cory’s things were full swing with the setting up and such. Sarah and Sally M*rrison from growing up in Chicago were over early to help and also Sarah gave Liz and me the most incredible gift, a gift beyond our wildest dreams:

Uncle Dick and Aunt Beulah were among our first arrivers. As the party was approaching, we really didn’t know how many people to expect as we didn’t ask for any RSVP’ing. Turns out a lot of people came! Probably around 200? I forget the number but the taco truck sold close to 400 tacos, or was it more than 400 tacos? Anyway, turned out to be quite the party. And something I’ve learned from having 3 wedding parties now is: You’ll see a lot more people that you want to talk to than you’ll ever be able to actually talk to as long as you’d like and also you will not know where your “other half” is most the time because they are talking to other people, but occasionally you’ll get to introduce some of your visitors to them. Maybe this is why receptions have those lines?

Here is Liz and Mom and Kristen and then Kristen and Ellie and Rachel

Our Taquero Preferido Ricardo was on hand to keep everyone fed

Old roommmate Quentin had driven by and noticed me while we were on our Thursday night walk so he dropped in for a minute

From here on out I’m at the mercy of what photos I grabbed or was sent. But so many wonderful people came out to see us and lots of fun things were happening in Kristen and Cory’s back yard, and there was all this good food, I wish I had photos of everyone and everything.

Huge score to have Jill Br*m pay us a visit! Made a real Suburban West Ward Reunion of the event.

Here’s pictures with the Beans and then Shane, Jen, Whitney from London, Erin, and Cindy — I’ll call these all 1995/Thee Martinis-adjacent friends, what a thing to see them all again in June 2023!

And speaking of 1995, here’s the arrival of none other than freshman roommate Matt L*mmon (and were roommates a lot of other years, too). What’s in that container he’s holding? Oh, we’ll be finding out!

Extremely honored that Paul (1999 buddy) and Lynsey (finally just meeting her!) came up from Las Vegas to honor us.

Also totally tickled that Jennie (1998) and Ryan came to the party. Oh that I could have had a whole party with each of these sets of guests!

Nice picture of Mom (1977) . . . I don’t have any pictures of Dad (1977)? or Emily (1981)? or so many people?

Candy (2001) and Me . . . we didn’t get a picture with Andrew (1995/2000) and Sidney (2019) and Henry (2021), too? Shoot. Too much partying!

POV: you’re about to get a hello hug from Heather (2000). Again, so tickled and honored to have 3/4 of her family come up to the party.

Ok so Matt appeared to be up to something behind the fence and then was like Hey Guys Hey Guys come look at this so here we are coming to have a look . . .

Mom’s reaction

But what were we looking at? WEll. Turns out Matt had brought a dead rat to the party?

Friends forever, what can I say?

As the party wore down I was able to snap more pictures of Liz and friends and family. What a great bunch of people! I keep saying this kind of thing but it’s true!

And then it was Sunday the 4th — time for Liz and me to take a long couple of flights home to Columbus … we had a nice long layover in Dallas so we had plenty of Whataburger time. And wow, those Whataburger can sure run a hamburger stand!

Ok . . . now I just need to blog:
-Our honeymoon
-May-June Columbus overview
-Ongoing New York Stuff!