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Saturday, November 11, 2006

Dallin's Eagle, and Mom's, what do you call it?

Yesterday was my cousin Carlie's little boy's Eagle...ummm...court of honour thingy. I say he's little, but I probably shouldn't. Dallin is only thirteen but he's probably as tall as I am already and considering how tall Mike (his dad) is, I don't think he's anywhere near being finished growing. It's kind of funny because Carlie is just a short little thing! Anyway, Andrew and I went with my mom and Josie to go to the Eagle...court of honor thingy.

We met at my mom's house. She said, "Don't worry! I know just where it is. Auntie Judy drove there earlier today so that she would know where it was and she phoned me to tell me how to get there."

So, after sitting around and telling stories until we were definitely leaving too late to get there on time, we left. It was only in Lehi so we thought that we would be able to get there on time, but then we realized that we really had no clue where Lehi was in relation to anything else. We drove along and saw the "American Fork Center Street" exit. Mom asked if that was the exit and Andrew said, "No..." So we kept driving.

We got to the Highland/Alpine exit and mom said, "Is it here?" Andrew said, "No, I think it is a little farther." So we kept driving. And then we passed the point of the mountain and the jail and then we decided to turn around, so we did.

As we're coming back south, we see the Highland/Alpine sign again and mom says, "So, is it around here?" and Andrew says, "No, it's a little further." I was like, "How can it be a little further this way if when we were going the other way it was a little further."

Andrew said that he knew how to get to Lehi from Salt Lake, so we trusted him and kept on driving. Finally we spotted the "Lehi" exit and got off the freeway. We passed a little sod store, which we joked about, and continued going strait. We drove around and around, but we could not find the address. We thought that it would be easy since Utah is one big grid, if you have the coordinates, which we did, you should be able to get anywhere. We were driving on a diagonal road though and so it was throwing of our sense of direction. We turned around quite a few times and somehow ended up at the little sod store...again! So, we went past the sod store and did eventually find a church, but it was the wrong one, so we turned around again and headed back to the sod store.

This time, though, we took a different road and started seeing numbers that made sense. After finding the right north street, we were just left with finding the right west coordinate. We drove down the street and looked for the last landmark, a baseball field...we decided that perhaps giving land marks wasn't the best way to give directions since we were driving in the dark while Auntie Judy was driving during the day. Since we didn't see any of her landmarks earlier, I kept telling people that we weren't looking for landmarks--just numbers.

Well, just as I said that, we passed a baseball field with a big sign stating that it was just that. We drove on, not realizing that we had to turn right after the baseball field, so we ended up pulling yet another U-turn.

By the time we got to the church we were easily 45 minutes late! What we heard was good though, and they did a little slide show and that was cool. It was nice to see all my family that I hadn't seen since before leaving for Jordan.

As we were leaving, Mike called out, "Do you know your way home?" Ha, ha, very funny Mike.

On our way home, though, we passed all the familiar landmarks and saw things that we'd seen before. I don't really know how we got so lost on our way there considering that it wasn't the first time we'd been to Lehi...

Perhaps, though, this little story will explain why:

My mom had gone shopping yesterday morning and picked up some Jell-o Instant Cheesecake because it was on sale. We decided that we would stop by Albertson's on the way home from Dallin's thing and pick up some milk so that we could make the cheesecake. After all, the last time Andrew and I were over there this month we had pie, so it would only follow that this time we needed a pie, too...It's national pie month!

So, we got our milk and went to my mom's house to make a cheesecake pie. Andrew and Josie were mixing the graham cracker crust and they asked my mom to get a bowl so that they could melt the butter. My mom looks at them and said, "What's a bowl?"

We all had a good laugh at that one especially because later on she opened up a fortune cookie that was on the counter and her fortune read, "Your widsom is inexhaustible, as is your power." inexhaustible wisdom, eh?

Oh, it gets better though. A few years ago, Josie was telling my mom what she wanted for Christmas. She said, "I want some heelies and a squishy and a watch."

My mom said, with good cause, "What's a heelie?"
Josie said, "It's shoes with wheels in the heels."
My mom said, "Oh, okay. What's a squishy?"
Josie said, "It's a pillow that's silky and has little beads inside and it squishes."
My mom said, "Oh, okay. Well, what's a watch?"
Josie just stared at her...

So, if we were wondering why we had gotten lost, that answered our question. It's not that my mom doesn't have inexhaustible wisdom--she has two master's degrees and is applying for a PhD program--it's just that sometimes that wisdom is not very accessible. As one student once wrote on an evaluation for my mom when she was a humanities teacher, "Like most brilliant people, tends to be a little bit scatterbrained."

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