Well, readers, did you miss me yesterday?! I know a couple of scheduled things went up, but I was actually on the road ALL day driving to Salt Lake. Because I think of all my readers as friends, I thought I would share with you all about the experience I had...feel free to laugh at my misfortune...I am laughing now that it is over (or maybe I am laughing from lack of sleep...)
If you managed to read through this week's Tuesday's Travels: Salt Lake City you may remember that I am not a fan of Wyoming (as mentioned in the "Getting There" section. If you did not read that blog, you may want to really quickly click here and just read the "Getting There" section so you know how I feel. to put it lightly, I really, REALLY dislike Wyoming in general. I ALWAYS get stuck there.

Last time we were stopped for 5 hours for apparently no reason, so as I drove I wondered what new weather emergency Wyoming would invent to trap me in the prison they call a state on the PERFECT travel weather day that was yesterday. Well, evidently even Wyoming could not come up with a weather emergency to force drivers to stay there this time, but that crafty, crafty state still managed to trap me!

There was a portion of I-80 near Rawlins where there is a 14 mile stretch or construction, During that stretch, Westbound traffic (me) is moved over to the Eastbound side of the freeway and it is a 2 way road with one lane going each way. Well, about 5 miles before that stretch, traffic suddenly stopped. STOPPED! And it took us over 2 hours to get TO that construction, then another hour+ to get through it. What happened you ask? A Fed Ex truck fell over. (That was a bit scary-and please do not take my annoyed and slightly sarcastic tone in the rest of this email to mean that I am insensitive to the seriousness of that situation-I sincerely hope the driver is OK and that all will be well with that!)

Now, as you can imagine, at this point in my travels through Wyoming, I was not surprised that I was stuck there so long, but at least it was only 3+ hours this time and I did not have to pay for a hotel!

We have to charge the hotel on our Credit card and get reimbursed when we return. We just do not use the card, so when we tried to run it at check in it triggered a fraud alert and I had to call the CC company and verify who we were and that it was a valid charge before we could check in. So, 45 minutes later (after waiting on hold for that long), we finally got that done!

We finally got in the room in SLC around 12:30 am. The hotel we are staying at (paid for by my husband's work) is immaculate! I have NEVER experienced luxury like this. We are staying in the lowest level/cheapest option of room that was available to us for this conference and I cannot imagine what the higher levels must be like! We have a full living space and bedroom, and HUGE bathroom area. It is basically a suite, and is bigger and MUCH nicer than the apartment we lived in during Medical school. As I walked in the room I thought this must be a blessing for the hassles of the day!

We get a crib up here, tuck the kids in to bed. Our oldest 2 on the bed, the third child on the couch and the baby in her crib. The youngest 2 kids are so riled up they just want to run so I am fighting them, finally get them settled at about 1 am and I drag into bed. About 15 seconds later, my oldest rolls over in bed and projectile vomits all over her bed, the floor and me. WHAT?!

We have no supplies to deal with this and have to call housekeeping as we clean up the child and move everyone else (all but one child are now WIDE awake) into the living room area so as to keep them out of the barf. Our 3rd child still managed to break past me and cover his arms in it, so we end up with the oldest in the shower, the 3rd in the tub (they are separate) with dad helping them and me trying to keep the baby (she's actually 2) out of the room with the nastiness. It takes housekeeping about an hour to get up here and when they see it they look horrified and go to get more supplies.

Point of this graphically nasty story is that it was crazy and by the time all was said and done, I got everyone cleaned up, asleep and in their own sleeping area at 4 am and slept for all of 2 hours before the wake up call came for Wes's conference this morning.

It has been crazy, and I have a few things scheduled to go up this week on the blog, but I will try to add more as I get the chance. I already have some new SLC deals to post from this morning's newspaper, but will do that later from my parents' house. For now I am getting everyone dressed and we are going to go visit the fam.

More later!