It's Terribly Simple. The Good Guys are Always Stalwart and True. The Bad Guys are Easily Distinguished by their Pointy Horns or Black Hats, and, uh, We Always Defeat Them and Save the Day. No One Ever Dies and... Everybody Lives Happily Ever After.

We are back from our three week trip to hometown. We had a lovely visit with everyone in hometown but my goodness I am so glad that trip is over. It was terrible.

The first day of our trip Drek's cousin died. He was only nineteen, so it was very tragic. The only upside was that Drek came out to the funeral, giving us a few days together were otherwise we wouldn't have seen him for several weeks.

After Drek left my dad went in for his scheduled surgery and stayed overnight in the ICU. He made a miraculous recovery, and it was great that I could be there to visit him and my mom and the hospital, but the results from the surgery were devastating: my dad has lung cancer.

A few days later came the diagnosis I was expecting but dreading for a dear friend of mine: Also lung cancer.

The day we left my grandpa died.  So, really, I wanted to leave as soon as possible before something else catastrophic happened.

The people and the events we did while we were there were wonderful. It was simply bad timing.  On the bright side, I got to hang out with my wonderful family, family in-law and friends. My sister came home from her mission and I did get to see my mountains that I miss so much while I am away. Although it did snow. SNOW. I despise snow. I'm so glad we are home.

I'm Paying. Which Means I'm Paying. You Know That's Right.

While doing our treasure hunt we discovered this place has a playground! I took the girls down to the park and let them run around with a dozen other children. One other parent was sitting at the bench across from mine; He had a boy and a girl that were playing quite nicely with Ash, but I couldn't see any other parents. After a few minutes I realized that all the other kids knew each other. I also noticed there a group of adults moving luggage between the parking lot and the suites just next to the playground. A few of the adults, as well a few of the children, were wearing BYU apparel. I smiled: A family reunion.

A few minutes later the grandmother came out of her suite to watch the kids. She sat down next to me and I asked if it was a family reunion. She grinned and proudly explained that six children and seventeen grandchildren were here for five days. "I'm only missing one daughter, my youngest. She's at school in Hawaii and couldn't miss class."

"BYU Hawaii?" I asked
The grandmother looked startled so I quickly explained: "I just noticed all the BYU logos."
The parent across from us overheard the conversation and chimed in "I'm actually not with them." It was then I realized he, too, was wearing  BYU hat. He came over and we all talked about BYU and what we were all doing here. The grandfather came out to join us. I asked him why they planned a family reunion so lat ein the summer, after school started.

The gradfather answered: " Well this year was a little different. We do a family reunion every year, see? I like to get the kids back together for a few days. We've done different resorts and cruises during the summer. The kids like to pick and make me pay for it. Hahaha! But this Christmas one of my daughter's found really cheap airfare to Hawaii, so as a Christmas present I gave everyone a Hawaii vacation so we could all see the youngest daughter. We did that in March and it was there that it came out one of our sons-in-law has never been to Lake Powel, and that was the family camping spot every year, so I rented a few boats and cabins down there and we roughed it back in July. No one wanted a camping trip to be the actual reunion so I did this with all my reward points. Gotta use 'em sometime, right? We got five suites right next to the playground for all the grandkids."

...Man. I am apparently attending the wrong family reunions. Who do I see about switching?