so two sundays ago mardson asks Vanessa to go on a ‘ride with dad in his new long car’. she thought he was being observant about the length of my car, but he literally wanted to go on a long drive.
we packed up and started out up diamond fork canyon to see how close to the hotpots we could go on the road. it turns out that the gate doubles the distance from car to hotspring; something that’s daunting, but not going to preventing me from trying to get there.
as we were leaving the diamond fork canyon, i asked mardson which way he wanted to go. he pointed down the road, and i asked him, just to be sure, ‘do you want to go that way , or go home to momma?’ sure enough, he said he wanted to go ‘that way!’.
it was so cute. he just played with the toys, commented on the scenery, for a while took pictures of random things and was just plain old happy. the only time he was contrary was when i offered him to come into the gas station to get a treat (turning down a treat was rather odd, admittedly). at any rate, we made it all the way to manti, and we got out in the graveyard across from the temple to take a few pictures. i kept asking him if he wanted to go home to see his momma, but he kept saying ‘no’, and wanted to walk around the graveyard (it was cold and he was wearing my old vest as can be seen in the pictures). there were some old coniferous trees lining the sides of the path, and mardson called them the forest.
i finally convinced him to want to go home (by picking him up and putting him in his carseat), and we made for home by way of fountain green. a truly beautiful stretch of road, mardson fought sleep until we were almost in nephi. such a fun sunday afternoon for me; i absolutely love it when he has fun hanging out with me.