Conversations in My Head: Utah Day 3 (and 4, and Beyond): Everything Everywhere All at Once

Sunday, September 20, 2026

Utah Day 3 (and 4, and Beyond): Everything Everywhere All at Once

We were absolutely NUTS on Sunday. We got up early and headed into Salt Lake to watch Music & the Spoken Word. It was amazing, of course. I can't believe the Tabernacle Choir prepares that much music every week and has it all memorized!!!! If they were just singing hymns it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it was a ton of different music. ALL MEMORIZED!!!! And they do it every Sunday! That's just so crazy to me.

Then we got some breakfast at Starbucks. I felt bad eating out on Sunday, but Jenna had been fighting an awful cold and I would have felt even worse eating all her food. We figured this was the lesser of two evils.

We went to church with Nick and the kids, and nearly died laughing when the opening prayer included a plea for moisture (I had literally just warned Kendra that people in Utah LOVE praying for moisture!!!!). And then we left after sacrament meeting, dropped my Mom back at her hotel so she could get a nap, and Kendra and I drove north to Syracuse to visit our friends, the Rawlins. They moved away from Virginia about a year ago, so it was good to see them again! They were very kind and fed us lunch AND gave us each half a loaf of chocolate chip sourdough, which was AMAZING (and kept me from starving on my flights home the next day!).

We would have loved to have stayed much longer visiting, but we needed to get back to Jenna's and collect Kendra's stuff (as well as my Mom!) so we could get her checked into her dorm room!!! 😱😱😱

Kendra showing us that she is a bit nervous to be here

We got the best parking space ever and headed into the Cannon Center to get her keys

and take a picture with this amazing blow-up Cosmo!!!

it wasn't hard to find her room (and she's super lucky to be living on the first floor!)

and then it was just a few quick trips to get everything into her room

Holding the key to her dorm room (yes, that's a poster of Fallen Monarchs!)

We unpacked everything we'd brought, but there was still one huge suitcase left at Jenna's that we couldn't fit in the rental car, plus whatever Kendra needed for the next day or two. But it was good to get this done!

And then, figuring we hadn't seen enough of our friends and the fine state of Utah, we headed over to Heber to have dinner with Luke and Kat Hogan!!! Like with so many other people on this trip, I forgot to take pictures, but Luke and Kat look remarkably similar to how they looked two years ago when I visited them with Bentley (weirdly enough, their girls all looked two years older)! Luke could not believe that I had last been there two years ago. Me neither, Luke. Me, neither. We had a wonderful time with them and probably stayed later than we should have! By the time we got on the road, there was a terrific lightning storm going on and we enjoyed watching all the bolts of lightning while my poor Mom got to drive. The rain didn't hit until we were on the other side of the mountain and getting close to Sandy, but that was some real rain finally, not just Utah moisture!

And then the next day was the hard one. I was planning on getting up around 5, but woke up at 3:30 and just tried to force myself to sleep a bit longer. We left Jenna's with all our stuff and finished unpacking everything else into Kendra's dorm room and got her re-packed for the Foundations of Leadership Conference.

This time there was a bus to pick up the students living in the dorms, so there were a few kids all waiting around at the Cannon Center for their bus, and Kendra dutifully joined the group. Mom and I stood there waiting with her for a minute until I looked around and realized we were the only grown ups there and everyone had stopped talking the minute we'd shown up. It hit me that we were the problem and it was time to leave so Kendra could start making friends. So of course I burst into tears, gave her a big hug, and then just walked away like the loser who can't manage goodbyes that I am.

Oh, life can be hard.

Mom bought me French toast before we headed to the airport to cheer me up. And everything went very smoothly and it was nice to be home. And as far as I can tell, Kendra is having a wonderful time at BYU. It's funny how I can be so happy for her and still miss her so much. My little girl.

It wasn't long before we were getting lots of texts and pictures about all the fun she was having. What a tremendously exciting time for her!