Josh's 31st Birthday!

The fact that Josh's birthday was only weeks after his Dad died was a bummer. He was in a depression and not really excited about anything. So I decided to make this birthday extra special! I had a chat with our good friends Jura and Adrien and made surprise plans for Adrien to take Josh golfing and out to lunch at this expensive BBQ place called Lucilles that Josh loves so much!

The Saturday before his birthday, Josh woke up and got ready to take the car in for an oil change, thinking it was going to be another boring weekend..... boy was he wrong! Before he slipped out the door, I told him to go upstairs because we needed to talk. We went up to our bedroom and there I told him what an amazing husband and father he is and how I've noticed that he is depressed and it hurt me to know how much he is hurting. Then I told him to shower and get dressed in something nicer than the basketball shorts he was wearing because I had a fun surprise day planned for him! He was so excited and he spent the next hour quizzing me and trying to guess what the big surprise was :). It was so fun actually getting to surprise Josh because he is a master at guessing surprises and by the time the surprise actually happens, he already knows about it! But not this time :).

We ate a nice breakfast and then at 9am Adrien showed up! I had opened the garage so he could get Josh's golf clubs without him knowing. Josh was happy to see he was going out for a guys day but still had no idea what they were going out to do! After he left, all I know is what I was told which is that they had a great time and his golf game was actually pretty good considering he hasn't played since we left Utah 3 years ago. I also got a funny video sent to me from them showing that their golf cart had broken down mid-game and it looked like they were forced to change their shirts because the golf course they went to was really nice and apparently collared shirts are mandatory hahaha. He came back in a great mood for the first time in a while and it made me so happy to see!!

Josh getting his golf on. It was the perfect day for it!

Nick told us we needed to come pick up whatever we wanted from Art's house because he needed to get the house ready for the estate sale. Since Josh had already asked his boss to take a 3 day weekend for his Birthday, we decided to use that time to drive up to Utah again. At first it was a really depressing thought, having to clean your dead father's house on your birthday..... but we actually made it really fun!

We dropped the kids off at my Mom's house on Friday morning and then continued the rest of the way to SLC. We took two cars so we could bring as much back with us as possible and decided to just sell the rest of what Art had left for us in the estate sale. It was hard to make that decision but we just don't have the room in our townhouse for all that stuff!

Birthday weekend went as follows:

On the drive there, Josh got a speeding ticket..... yes, on his birthday :(.

We went to Trolley Square and ate at The Old Spaghetti Factory for his birthday dinner and it was soooo yummy! Josh loves that place and has been there so many times he had his order memorized. It was nice getting to talk in the dimly lit restaurant, with no kids screaming and nobody trying to sit on our lap so they could steal our food before we got a chance to eat it!

It's a really cool restaurant with an old midevil feel!

The decor made it super romantic :).

After we ate, we drove to the Anniversary Inn where we had reservations for the Phantom of the Opera Room! After check in we went for a walk around the Avenues to help digest all the food we had just eaten and then spent the rest of the night until noon the next day in complete bliss! We ate the complimentary cheesecake left for us in the room as Josh's birthday cake and drank the complimentary sparkling cider in the gigantic bathtub while listening to music from the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack! The room was so neat and was decorated like an old opera house. We both loved it! Then we spent the rest of the night in bed, enjoying each other and watching old episodes of the King of Queens. It was the perfect night I tell ya!

Getting lovey-dovey for the first time in a while!

That bed was AMAZING!

Behind Josh was the TV. It had red curtains that you could pull in front of it like a theater stage!

Oh that bath tub... we were in heaven!

We slept in until 9am... NINE IN THE MORNING PEOPLE!!! It was nothing short of divine! We would have slept later but room service woke us with an awesome breakfast! We got ham and cheese croissants, yogurt parfaits, and coffee/orange juice. It was so fun eating in bed and enjoying the silence. Our mornings at home and anything but relaxing so this was a nice change ;).

We enjoyed the gigantic bath tub one last time and then checked out and headed to Bountiful to pick out Art's headstone and start the process of packing things up. We chose a headstone that I think Art would have liked with a mountain theme, a motorcycle, and a temple. Those were all things he loved. It was so hard going through his stuff and deciding what to take and we didn't have a lot of time. The neighbors made it even harder by stopping by every hour wanting to chat and tell us how much they miss Art. It was sweet of them but we both had sunk into a depression as soon as we got to the house and didn't want to chat with anyone. That house is full of some of the greatest memories we hold and it killed us that it was all over. It was the close of a chapter in our lives.... a very happy chapter. Since Art had basically already given us what we needed when we first moved into our house, we mostly took food storage and a little model motorcycle that Josh had given his Dad a long time ago for Austin to have. Josh was really struggling. It wasn't what he said, it was how he acted. He was totally at a loss. He basically just walked around in circles and didn't help much with anything. It made me so sad. It must have made Art sad too because the rain came back! Once again, we were sitting in Arts house while the rain fell, missing him more than ever. It was incredible that this would probably be our last day in that house and that Art was not coming back home. We felt like we needed to do something to commemorate the moment, but had no heart to really do anything.

We left 943 E. Indian Springs Road full of sadness. We were starving so we drove to Texas Roadhouse and had our usual. Art used to take us there ALL THE TIME. It was our thing. We talked about that as we ate and watched the rain out the window. The depression was heavy but it lifted considerably after we got to Nick's house. Nick and Jenn treated us to a Utah football game that was so much fun! It rained most of the game and we were sitting clear at the top where there was nothing to break the wind. We had brought garbage sacks to wear as ponchos but that didn't keep us from FREEZING! By 4th quarter Nick bought us all hot chocolate because we were going to have to go home if we didn't do something to warm up soon. We were glad we stayed because the 4th quarter was the best part of the game! Our Utes won!!! It was the perfect present to Josh for his birthday and I'm sure Art was there celebrating with us! We always went to the games with Art. That was another one of our things.

Nick was being such a goofball! He and Josh were so funny to watch. They really got into it!

Our stadium with the beautiful sea of red.

Let's go UTAH!!

We spent the night at Nick's house and it was so nice to climb into a nice warm bed after that game! We left for Nevada the next morning which turned out to be super scary because we hit multiple monsoons in the mountains on our drive home! There were parts of that drive when the rain and hail were hitting so hard I thought the window was going to shatter and everyone on the freeway had to pull off to the side because nobody could see anything! I thought we were going to die multiple times but we made it home! My Mom wasn't going to bring the kids back until the following day because we both had to work so we spent the rest of the night unpacking and trying to find a place for all our new food storage. Between the sadness of the trip, the serious I'm about to die inducing anxiety from the drive home, and the annoyance of trying to find space for two cars full of stuff in an already full house, we ended up fighting a lot that night. Because of this, I was glad the kids weren't coming home yet. It was like we just needed to get all the pent up feelings out of our systems. We made up before the night ended though and spent the rest of the evening in bed, crying and talking for hours. Although it was a fun trip, it brought up so many emotions and neither of us knew what to do with them.