road trip to utah

Brady, Melanie and I took a quick road trip last week.  By quick, I don't mean a short drive. But quick as in we drove to Utah and were only there 2 days and then came home.
Here are the people we ran into:

Cynthia J, Melanie's friend from Phoenix. We didn't communicate well with her and we had a hard time meeting at the right time when we were traveling through and she was getting off work, but it was worth it. Cynthia has been a good friend for many years. (and she got engaged this past week!)
Brady dropped us off at the temple and drove a few miles down the road to the nearby college campus to find a place to study for a couple hours. The minute he stepped out of the car and onto the campus, he got a text "Are you in town?" "ummm, yes, I just got here" "What are you doing here? I just saw you out the window of the library! Come meet me up here"  It was a friend from the mission field. (Elder Christiansen, no picture)  What are the chances?

We stayed with our nephew and niece, Dave and Chelsea and their 4 adorable kids.
It's always fun when there are an abundance of Hales in one house. Thanks for your hospitality - you made our visit super easy.

As we were walking into the conference center, I realized Brady was talking to someone.  I know there are lots of people who attend conference, but of 36,000 people walking into 5 different sessions of conference, (that's 180,000 people?) what are the chance that someone you went to high school with would be walking in right beside you?  Rachel and Norman B.

This is Melanie's friend from college, Lisa.  She sat with us at conference.  Melanie ran into several friends from college (a college in Arizona).  Three of them she made plans to visit, or at least to cross paths with for a minute, but one she just ran into on the side walk in SLC, on our way to conference. Little Miss Popular!

We ran into the prophet and apostles. Well, from a distance anyway. 

None of us had ever been to the conference center before. I went to conference once with Lauri when she was in college, but we didn't actually get into the tabernacle, we attended in another building, so this was a first for all three of us. This was the 184th General Conference - I remember when I was Mel's age, I watched the 150th General Conference session. Time flies!

Although we don't know these women, they are pretty much celebrities - Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The choir is so exact when they stand - as they prepare to sing - when someone scratches their nose or something is so noticeable (of course no one scratches their nose during a song).  We attended a non-conference performance in Phoenix once. They snapped and swayed, it seemed so wrong. Their outfits and their height assignments along the rows are so precise. The lights caught the glitter of gold necklaces and they appeared to sparkle as they performed.

We didn't accidentally "run" into Rachel T, it was definitely a planned visit. what a great reunion for these to best friends, (along with a new best friend, Ryan). For many years, Rachel was at our house, or Melanie was at their house at any given moment of any given day.

One of the reasons Brady traveled with us is to attend a mission reunion. He had a great time meeting up with many people he served with in Iowa and Illinois. His Mission President is one of his favorite people.

We had a quick visit with Lesa W.  She lives down the street from a store were were going to be shopping at.  I called and asked her if she was home and could she come visit while Melanie tried on some clothes.  She did and we had a nice 15 minute visit.

Our last visit was quite early on the day we were driving home. We stopped by to see Michael. (he goes by Mike now, but he will always be Michael to me.)  We were going to take a picture with him, but we caught him in his pajamas, so I'm going to swipe this one from Lauri's facebook. It was taken the same weekend so that counts, right?

So that was a lot of visiting, right? AND we got most of the shopping done for Melanie's mission. Mission accomplished! (get it? "Mission" accomplished!).

Here are my travel partners.  I don't really like to drive long distances and they don't mind sharing the driving duties. Plus, they are a lot of fun!

What's with the crazy eye, Mel??