Visiting friends in Utah

Recently our family took a trip to the USA to participate in the Swinton Family Reunion. Our family flew out a few days early to adjust to the time zone...well that was the plan. What ended up happening was I flew from Sydney to Washington DC with the girls, dropped them off with Stan in DC and then got back on a plane and flew out to Utah for my grandpa's 90th birthday which was that weekend. Here is a crazy bullet point of my travel schedule.

• 15 hours plane ride from Sydney to DC
• 7 hour lay over in LA (thanks Kay and Matt Stayner for saving us)
• 6 hour flight from LA to DC--get in at 1:00am DC time...
• Travel time so far....28 hours... no sleep....drop off the kids
• Free day
• 5:00am get up to catch an early plane from DC to Salt Lake City- 4.5 hours (shorter this way back)
• Stay up until midnight (Utah time) playing games, next day visit friends, celebrate grandpa's 90th birthday and then catch a plane out to DC at 1:00am (Utah time)
• fly to Atlanta have a 4 hour layover
• Get into DC at 12:00 noon
• Drive 3 hours to Deep Creek....really tired of sitting now....AND I broke out in hives for the last leg to DC :-)

Below are some pictures of all the people I managed to see. . ..

My dad (he lives in Park City now) and was able to pick me and my little sister up from the airport. Here he is holding Shannon's youngest (Austin). We stayed at his house on Friday and then drove up to Orem for our grandpa's 90th birthday party on Saturday. On the way up to Orem we stopped by to see....

Jonathan & Annie Swinton and their new baby SPENCER! I have been watching him on FB and he reminds me so much of the kids in Australia, he was recently adopted at 18 months from Taiwan. Our family gave him an Australian Aborigine shaker, we are so happy for them.
Secondly, Miss Millie Flamm and family. They were our friends from Oxford while doing the MBA and Millie is currently fighting cancer. :-(
Kathy Bills and kids (Tyson was gone). We went to BYU with them and Stan served a mission with Tyson...AND Tyson and Stan are cousins. So these guys were a must see, but my visit was too quick with Kathy, I seriously hit a wall mentally/ emotionally right before I got to her house. Ok, I ACTUALLY knocked myself out with a bike rack and fractured my nose which then resulted in an emotional break down--thanks Ben for making me sleep :-) I forgot her baby gift and then she had the baby like 2 weeks later. I noticed I was low on sleep that morning when I would try to talk and some words were not coming out right...by the afternoon my coordination was going too!
After the 90th birthday party I went to Leslie Bartons house (good friend from high school)and had some friend from Australia meet up there. Above are Eric & Jinsuke who were my friends in Sydney and then got married and moved to Utah. It was great to see them and fantastic to have Leslie let us use her house as a meeting place until my flight at 1:00am.

Laura (my twin) and Leslie...hanging out and playing cards!

PS. A HUGE hats off to Ben & Laura Carter T & Shannon for spending their ENTIRE Saturday (yea, from the time they woke up until 1:00am) DRIVING ME around to see friends and then the airport. I got to see people I otherwise wouldn't be able to see and hang out with family at the same time --(talk during the drive) It honestly meant so much to me that they would do that. Seriously, I don't know if I would have done that for them :-) I am sure we went through at least two tanks of gas, PLUS--I hate driving when I come to the USA (as we Sydneysiders drive on the other side of the road) so the fact they drove me around was awesome....I also hate getting lost and no one had a GPS so I would have gotten lost if it was me, but since Ben was driving we didn't get lost so that was awesome too. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!