Utah and a wedding!

My good friend and roommate from college, Erin got married last weekend in Salt Lake City. Julia and I made the trek to witness the great event, and Julia was the flower girl, even though at 17 months, she is too young to process the directions "walk down the aisle, scatter rose petals and smile!" We were confident that even if she failed to do these things, at least she would look adorable in her dress. The drive was 10 hours, but we camped halfway in Winnemucca, Nevada, turning the drive into two 5 hour days. This was a really good idea, as a 5 hour drive includes two naps and many stops for playgrounds along the way. 

We stopped several times for a break alongside the road

Cooking dinner campfire style in Nevada. yet another occasion when a hook-on high chair was the best idea ever!

Naps

Self portraits

Cuteness

Sprinting away into the alpine meadows

Kate and Tyler were among the lots of old college friends present,
including all 8 of the girls I lived with senior year at St Olaf

She looks happy but momentarily, she will try to fling herself over a stone wall and nearly succeed. 

Rehearsing, which Julia would do none of. 

instead she wanted to get her hands on the cat

There was lots of hanging out with friends

It was REALLY great to see them all! It hasn't happened that we've all been together since college!

Incredible views over the city and the great salt lake

The bride, brunching

Kay and Maren, also brunching

Waiting for photographs to begin

The bride!! sooo pretty!!!

The flower girl, who enjoyed dumping the petals out and sprinting towards the pond of ducks

and enjoyed re-arranging the programs

She did not enjoy the photos so much, but a few good ones were probably gotten!

I don't have photos of the wedding itself because I was very busy wrangling the baby! I held her in my arms and we walked down the aisle. She did scatter petals very well, but paused and glared when she realized that people were watching her! I actually missed a great deal of the wedding as Julia was determined to run amok, so we spent the wedding wandering the back area, checking out the presents and the water stand and the rocks. I plan to get a copy of the wedding video to see what I missed. From a distance, it looked lovely!!! At the reception, Julia danced! She wanted nothing to do with dancing at Kay's wedding last month. I suddenly missed Dave so badly that I had to go and cry for a little bit. Julia was very pleased with all the stairs scattered around the reception site. She went up and down and around and around. Then she took a nap in the stroller and I got to really enjoy myself. It was a really wonderful event, and we were exhausted by the end, but I stayed awake long enough to sit in the jaccuzzi! We had lots of dinners and lunches and brunches in the 4 days we were there, and Julia did not break anything in the house we stayed in!

As we were leaving we stopped to check out the great salt lake

We dipped our toes into it. 

The drive was empty, but beautiful in that stark western way

This is the edge of the road, and the drop is about 400 feet down. No guard rail!

and there were herds of cows on the road

a calf tied to a 4 wheeler

as we drove up to the cattle in the road, one of the cowboys roped a calf. He got off his horse to hog tie it, and the horse wandered up to the hood of my car to sniff it. The momma cow circled my car and her baby getting hog tied very anxiously. I was rather afraid of getting charged. The cowboys tossed the calf onto a 4 wheeler and drove off down the road. my path cleared and I nosed along the herd. on the other side, I passed the 4 wheeler and calf and cowboy who was driving pretty much at max 4 wheeler speed, and in my review mirror watched as the calf kicked loose, fell off, and was run over/dragged  to some extent by the 4 wheeler that jerked, nearly flipped and nearly went over the incredibly steep cliff just off the road. It was an intense 5 seconds before I saw that the cowboy and calf were not going to fall over the edge. I didn't stop to help, mostly because there was no good spot to pull over and I couldn't really leave Julia in the car. There were other cowboys working the herd, so I knew he wasn't alone. I felt bad for the calf though!!!! That was the most drama we had on the trip back. Julia had caught a cold and slept quite a bit, and I listened to podcasts and drove and drove and drove. My car trip tricks for entertaining her consist of a bag of candy, such as dum dums, twizzlers, and gummy worms, cookies, water, books, drawing pad and colored pencils and small toys that she only sees on car trips. She's to an age where she likes listening to Raffi and other kids music, so I've started playing that for her. She also likes pointing out airplanes and cows. when she gets really fussy, I stop in the next town, tank up on gas and ask about a playground. Pretty much every small town has at least a school playground, and the small town ones are pretty easy to find. It is harder in some ways to travel with her at this age, and easier in some ways. I think we are done with major travel until we head north to Alaska.