On Thursday, Aug. 16 we made the 150 minute (thank you Utah-construction-everywhere) drive from the cabin to Brian and Melissa’s in South Jordan to let the cousins play for a day. They had a great time.

Carter had recently managed to catch this wild and not-so-ferocious lizard and create a home for him. Lizardee, as he’s affectionately known, is supposed to be a western fence lizard (or sceloporus occidentalis). He’s got a comfy little cage with lots of sand on the bottom, some things to crawl on and crickets to eat. We’ll see how long he lives.

Eliana was intrigued by Lizardee and especially by Carter who couldn’t keep his hands off of the reptile. No, Ellie wouldn’t touch it.

Even Luke wasn’t afraid.

The kids played upstairs and outside. Dominic and I got our hair cut and Vickey got some maintenance on the Sequoia done (we had a coupon for a free oil change at the nearby Jiffy Lube).

Later Vickey and Melissa tromped around Roberts shopping for scrapbooking stuff for the baby. Melissa was very uncomfortable and hoping that all of her walking around would instigate delivery of her fourth kid.

Sure enough, we got a phone call the next morning that Nick Codella (still not sure of the middle name) was born Friday, Aug. 17. He’s got good timing because he’s already endeared himself to the Codella grandparents who celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary on that same day.

We left South Jordan after stuffing ourselves at my favorite pizza place, Pier 49, and headed to Holladay to pick up Murriel who had spent four long days at work training the Granite School District school administrators on the computer, and all drove back up the canyon. We returned to grandpa and Tank close to 11 p.m.

It was a long day but we had Harry Potter number four on CD to keep us entertained while we drove.