April Not In Paris But Idaho, The Merciful End

After the open house, we helped clean up. I don’t know that we were much help, as my legs were shot. They truly ached. So we sort of faked it while the others cleaned up.

We then returned to the Curtis residence, where Kate was able to open a lot of presents. A lot of presents!!! And lots of gift cards. I wish I could have cared more, but all I could think was "That’s a lot of thank you notes you have to write."

On that score, I must say that I am proud of Kate. We received many compliments from folks about her thank you notes. They all said how personable the notes were. One woman in the ward actually called us to let us know what a great card Kate wrote. Another woman came across a restaurant to discuss the card. I was very pleased that Kate did these things right.

After about two hours of opening presents, Harold drove us back to our motel. I was exhausted, but hungry. Boise appears to close up at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night, so we had no where to eat. We purchased a pizza at the motel lobby store, but the room had no way to heat the pizza other than the stove. So we tried to heat it on the stove. We about set the motel on fire. And the food was horrible.

We left the next morning, flying home through Reno. The flight was unremarkable, other than we sat apart from my parents on the plane. I think that Bob and Sharyn were sick of us by then.

In the afternoon, we went to Easter Dinner at my sister’s house. And that folks, ends this trip.

What did I learn on this trip:

1) The trip from Boise to Rexburg is at least as bad if not worse than the trip across Nevada.

2) Idaho Falls has one good restaurant, which is more than can be said for Rexburg.

3) Kate married into a very nice family. Jacob married into us. Jacob lost on that deal.

4) Kate says that she could live in Boise, but not eastern Idaho. No thanks to both from me.

5) It really helps if you have done something tangibly positive at your school before you leave the place. Christian had built planter boxes and worked on the gardens. These were something that he could point to with pride.

6) Graduations are boring!!! But the ceremony is necessary.

7) You should probably avoid traveling with me across long desert spaces. Strange things happen out there.

And now the stats: Yesterday, I walked 11,545 steps, most of them in the hot sun of Dixon. Overall, as of this moment, 3:33 p.m. on Wednesday, August 27, 2009, I have walked 766,332 steps in 63 days.