Smokey and the Bandit

Today was my sweetie’s 30th high school reunion. We got the invitation about a month ago and he was absolutely adamant that we weren’t going to go. Last weekend I erased the reminder from our calendar. Then during a vulnerable moment I decided to give it one last try. When he showed some signs of giving in, I quickly made the phone calls and got us committed.

The reunion dinner started at 7:00, but Sport’s football game was at 3:00 so we figured there would be plenty of time to enjoy the game, drive to Grandma’s and drop off the kids, and still back-track five miles to the reunion. We were so wrong!

The football game was half an hour late getting started. We were playing the only other team (besides us) in the league that was undefeated. Sport was nervous, but he kept his cool. All the boys held it together right through the final defensive play in the 4th quarter. We beat them 12 to 6. After much celebrating and Sport earning one of the two MVPs for the game (yay!), we piled in the van and headed south.

Now you know where Curly's curls come from!

We were expecting to have time to grab the kids a bite to eat and still change our clothes at Grandma’s before we headed back to Fairview. As we raced toward the freeway, we realized this plan was not going to work. Construction in Utah County was terrible although traffic was moving. (Northbound was pretty much at a standstill…) We decided we could stop at the MacDonald’s in Spanish Fork and change in the restrooms while the Drama Queen took the kids through the drive up. We stopped right before the speaker and my sweetie and I and three other kids (who had to use the bathroom) all rolled out. It seems that in Utah County it is impossible to get out of the construction! Even the MacDonald’s was redoing the stucco on the outside of their building.

As we walked passed the two porta-potties, my sweetie commented that they must be for the workers and we would just go inside and change there. Wrong! The restrooms were totally out-of-order, so anyone needing to use the facilities had to step out to the parking lot and head for the porta-potty. There was definitely not enough room to change in there!

picture credit

Frustrated, we climbed back in the van and headed further south. It wasn’t long before my sweetie was suggesting that we just turn around and go back home. He figured we wouldn’t get there in time, so why bother. That’s when I opened the bag and decided on a “Smokey and the Bandit” change. You remember when Sally Field changes in the back seat of that black sports car? Well, I changed in the front seat of a 15-passenger van with most of my kids riding in the backseat!

My sweetie was impressed and after about 5 more miles down the road, he decided that he could do the same. So we pulled over and quickly changed seats. Soon we were both ready for the reunion. The kids thought we were crazy (they were right!), but it was fun and actually gave us a chance to blow off a little steam since we were stressing over the fact that in 30 years we had aged….oh, about 30 years.

Since this is getting a bit long, I’ll give you more details on the reunion tomorrow. To prepare you might want to turn on a little Journey and break out the Burt Reynolds movies. Oh, and rat your hair up a little. It was the 80s after all.