As soon as Ben figured out that in order to watch conference we’d have to go to a church house he decided we needed to go out of town. Utah was our first choice. My cousin was scheduled to have a baby and it would be great to see our families. There was one problem that ended up preventing us from ultimately choosing Utah. Ben had gone down earlier that week for the BYU career fair and didn’t want to make the drive twice in one week. (He had tried to get me to skip my glasses Thursday and Friday but anyone who knows me knows that wasn’t even an option.) We decided Burley was a great alternative. The could hitch a much shorter ride with Mitchell and Farrah and the “grandma’s” would spoil us. (not that our mom’s wouldn’t!) The grandma’s did end up spoiling us. We had home cooked meals for two days and we got to snuggle on the coach and watch conference instead of sitting in an comfortable chair in the chapel overflow.
One adventure that we had occured Saturday morning. In a previous visit Ben had taken my family to see his old house up in Paul, Idaho. It was going to be torn down and I wanted to see it so I’d have a visual to go with all the stories Ben tells me. The house was in pretty bad shape, but we were able to walk through it. Ben showed us the corner he peed in in the basement and shared other memories with us as he took us room by room.
As we were leaving Ben mentioned the hand and foot prints he and three of his siblings had put in the cement about 20 years ago. He thought that if somehow he could cut out the chunk it would be a great present for LaRae. So back to this weekend. This time when we went the house was gone. We were told the police comducted training on it first and then after they were through the firefighters came through and also conducted training (which meant they burned the house down.) Ben made some calls and got permission to use the neighbors backhoe to break the cement free of the drive way. It was cold and snowing! The wind up on that hill felt like we were back in Rexburg. We didn’t bring coats for our trip, but Grandma and Grandpa Crane were gracious enough to let us borrow two of theirs. If you can picture two “little people” (as Ben called us once) in oversized coats shivering to death (at least I was), trying to operate a backhoe and break apart a huge cement block with hand and foot prints that had faded over the last twenty years. I got too cold and decided to sit in the truck for a bit. After watching Ben do everything himself I asked myself what kind of wife I was and decided that my dad hadn’t raised a sissy. I got out of the truck and tried to offer my help but really I just stood out there, watched, and bounced up and down to keep myself warm. Mud was everywhere and it got messy, but we broke it free. It was a huge block that was way too heavy to carry so Ben tried breaking it down smaller. He did it without breaking off any of the prints and decided to risk it once again. This time however he wasn’t successful and our dream of giving a great gift went down the drain. We considered trying to glue it back together but the cement was over 6 inches thick and decided against it.