A Birthday Weekend Visit

The doldrums of late winter and early spring are behind us.  Susan and I have hit a few weeks of high activity that will take us into mid-May, starting with my birthday and a visit from my parents a couple weekends ago.  On the agenda for the next few weekends are a trip to San Francisco, the Salt Lake City Marathon, and a trip back to the Midwest that includes the Kentucky Derby, a family wedding, and Dr. Susan’s graduation.  We also get to know more about our baby in a week.  But first, let’s look back a little…

My 28th birthday (I have to double-check my actual age) came and went.  It was a Wednesday, so it was a pretty typical middle of the week day.  However, I did get some cards throughout the week and got some style upgrades (clothes) from Susan so it was a good day. 

On Friday, my parents came into town for a visit.  We haven’t seen any family since January so they were the first to get to see Susan’s bump in person.  When they arrived in the afternoon, Susan was still working so I took them around to do some garden shopping for our porch.  My mom helped me pick out some decorative flowers and I also grabbed fresh herbs for the mini-greenhouse.  Friday night we just relaxed and caught up while also gearing up for the upcoming release of the new Arrested Development season by watching old episodes.  We capped off the evening with a trip to Zeppe’s for a Gelata.

Bump update

Saturday arrived early as I got everyone up pre-dawn so I could drag them down to Ogden for me to run a half-marathon tune-up race.  The Strider’s Winter Running Series half-marathon was actually in the mountain town of Eden and covers the first half of the Ogden Marathon in May (which I will not be running).  My SLC Marathon training schedule needed me to do a 10k race on Saturday, but 13.1 miles was the shortest I could find that wasn’t sold out.  Somewhat unintentionally, I ran the first 10k of this race like it was a standalone race, and then suffered through the rest to finish just under 1:30.  At the finish I grabbed a couple yogurt and granola cups (nice finish food!) and jumped in the car so we could bee-line to Salt Lake.  Derby had an appointment to catch!

The plan was to bring Derby down to the race with us so we could send him to daycare while we toured around Salt Lake City.  However, since the pup would be visiting a new place he had to pass a temperament test (i.e. play nice with others) before we could leave him, and this had to be done before 11am.  While Derby aced his test, I sought out a fitness center (Planet Fitness) where I was robbed of $20 in exchange for using their old, cramped showers.  At least it got the job done.

All business matters out of the way, we reconvened for lunch where we hit up the Red Iguana for delicious Mexican.  Refueled, we navigated away from Temple Square since it was General Conference in the LDS world and went toward University of Utah’s campus and to the Red Butte Garden.  They were having an orchid show which we checked out before meandering through the rest of the manicured gardens.  Small flowers were in early bloom along with herbs and the gardens also provided some nice panoramas of the rest of the city in the valley below.

  

Leaving the gardens, we considered hitting the Natural History Museum next door, but with my tired legs and Susan’s pregnancy fatigue we weren’t sure we could handle walking through an entire museum.  Instead we decided to brave the crowds and headed into the greater Temple region of downtown Salt Lake to check out the City Creek Center.  This is the newest indoor / outdoor shopping center and has been receiving a lot of praise for its design.  For being a high-end mall, it was indeed impressive including features like a retractable glass roof, fountains, a large outdoor fireplace, and a “creek” that runs the length of the promenade.  We were there for a couple hours while Susan and my mom did some dress shopping and I was entertained without spending more than a minute or two in an actual store.  After the shopping trip, we were beat so grabbed the dog and returned to Logan for another night relaxing at the apartment.

City Creek with Temple Square in the background

Sunday we awoke to chilly temps, low clouds and light rain…lovely.  My parents and I still trooped out for a morning run so we could earn our brunch at Angie’s.  Once done eating with the locals the weather was still gross, but we had planned to see some of Logan canyon and didn’t have a lot of other options on a Sunday in Utah.  We decided to drive through the canyon to Bear Lake to see if the weather was better on the other side of the mountains (it wasn’t).  It was actually much worse just before we got to Bear Lake when we hit the high altitudes and the snow.  As we came over the top to descend to the lake (where you are normally rewarded with a stunning panoramic view) we just saw low clouds.  Where was the Jimmy Dean sun when you needed him?

Making lemonade, we continued into town and descended to the point where the lake came into view.  By the time we got shore side, it was actually sunny, but too cold to get out for a hike.  Instead we drove north along the shore until we passed into Idaho before turning back and returning home.  Sunday evening we took the parents out to our favorite Chinese place, The Black Pearl to show off their Lo Mein.

Monday was the last full day of their visit and I had to work in the morning to not burn through all my vacation time.  At lunch time (in Utah), I called it a day and we ventured out to the Crepery for coffee and crepes.  Then since the weather was still depressing, we opted for indoor activities and visited the USU Art Museum.  It was small, but more than I expected from a University art museum.  We especially enjoyed trying to interpret the more abstract works.

Monday evening, we capped off the visit with yoga class (all four of us) followed by dinner at BW3’s which was crowded for a basketball game of some sort.  Tuesday morning, they took off for the airport completing their last visit to us while we are Utah residents.  I’m looking forward to seeing them (and the rest of the family) again in just a few weeks.