Really Boring Prep Day

What do you do when you write an entire blog entry and then the app crashes, and when you reopen it, you get a blank screen?  It WAS saved!  Where did it go?  *sighs heavily and tries to convince his scribe (aka Clare) to type it all again*  

 So, starting over, I woke up to the smell of bacon cooking.  Mmmm... Sadly nobody offered me any.  Bad humans!   I still don't get this Halloween thing, but I gather certain younger members of this household decided that I must have a costume as well, and so the first part of my morning was spent being dressed in small doll clothes until "oh that's perfect" was agreed upon by all (except me!).  I will spare you the details, since I'm guessing that you will get to see pictures at some future part of this trip, whether I want you to or not.

 Clare also spent this time trying to get hold of someone at the car rental place in SLC (after being given their number from the 1-800 people).  By 9:30 we were in the car again heading back to Salt Lake to discuss it in person (ie nobody ever answered the phone).  Sadly it was a wasted trip.  The guy who "helped" us treated Clare and KayRena like "dumb girls" and retried what they already did.  When one light setting turned the lights on, he said "Don't touch that dial and you'll be fine."  Somewhat annoyed, we drove away, but instantly found the dash was so dim that Clare had to turn the dial back to the regular setting order to see how fast she was going.  Final decision; not go back and feel stupid, but just switch between what we will now call night and day settings in the car.  Not ideal, but it works, and maybe Clare can work her magic when we return it, and earn us a discount on our upgrade.  

 The rest of the afternoon was pretty boring as we drove from store to store getting groceries for the trip, and the family staying behind.  The highlight of the entire journey was some very weird type of drive-thru banking system, that Clare refused to do and ended up pulling forward so KayRena's husband (who had joined us between two of the grocery trips) could do it from the back seat. Let's say it involved canisters and some pressurized tube system to send the cheque into the bank so someone could deposit it for you.  I asked why they didn't just go inside to do it, but apparently the bank was closed for that kind of stuff.  Very strange!
 

  Once back at home, I sat on the bed and watched Clare pack... again!  What is it with you guys and packing?  I'm good to go pretty much at a moments notice (although I will point out that Clare left MY raincoat at home).  She pulled everything out of her suitcase to make two piles, and then pack one bag to go on our trip tomorrow, and the rest to stay behind.  *yawns and takes a nap*  

 The last errand of the day was after dinner, to a friend of KayRena's who kindly made both of them personalized backpacks specifically for this trip.  She had also serged the edges of a few hand towels with rainbow thread so that Tristen (her son) could make towel animals for them to take (something about him reading that Disney hotels make folded towel animals in all of their hotel rooms and didn't want us to miss out on such things).  Not sure I get it, but I have to admit the towel bears are rather cute (just not as cute as me of course).  

 Oh, and we saw a deer in the headlights on the way there.  I didn't know that was a real thing!  

Thus ends the prep day for a trip that seems like a much bigger deal that it should be, but what do I know, I'm just a bear.  

 Whatever