February

For the second straight year Shawn had a conference down in Palm Springs the week of Valentine’s Day and our Anniversary. This year, Janell flew down a day early we could spend our 6th Anniversary together. While in California we went down to San Diego and visited the Temple and then Friday night we saw Wicked on Broadway in LA. Janell saw it last year in Denver, but this was Shawn’s first time and it was awesome. Shawn was surprised when he returned to work the following Monday and was fired from Infopia. It was completely out of the blue and no real explanation was given, but it forced Shawn to get out of a bad situation and find something better.

The day before Janell was supposed to fly down to California to meet Shawn there was a really bad snow storm in Utah. After working 24 hours the past two days Janell left the office a bit early to get ready for the trip. It was raining lightly at the office, but closer to home there was a full-on blizzard. Two hours after leaving the office she was stopped in traffic just 1 mile from our house and not making any progress. She came to find out that the road from the freeway to our neighborhood (the 92) was closed because the storm was so bad. She was only 2 blocks away from our neighborhood at that point, but they would not let her get through. There was no telling how long the storm would last and how soon the road would reopen, but she decided it best to just play it safe. So, she turned around and drove a block in the other direction and got a room at a Hampton Inn and ended up being very glad she did.

The storm continued all night and the 2 hotels in the area sold out early. There were dozens of people who spent the night in the hotel lobby or at the Maverick gas station next door. The road stayed closed until almost noon the next day and Janell just barely got home in time to pack and rush to the airport for her flight. Just to give you an idea how much snow we got this year, here are some pictures of the drifts in our front yard: