“I’ve got your back!”  It’s what friends do.  

I’d loaded four of the grandkids in the car and stacked food, clothing, games and whatever else we thought we needed for our three-day adventure in Beaver, Utah.  We were going to see the eclipse.  Spirits were high.  Volume was high.  It was high time we were on our way.  We just had to stop in Brigham to pick Grandpa Brent up from the temple and meet Brad, Jess and Mo.  

We rolled into the temple basement parking lot right on time, but Grandpa hadn’t come out yet.  Elle needed her iPad and of course it was packed somewhere in the back…probably under everything.  I pulled out of the underground area and into a spot on the street and went to the back of the car in search of the iPad.  I found it, pushed everything back in the car, lowered the back door, jumped in, and pulled out.  We decided to go around the block once to give Grandpa some extra time.  We were about halfway around when I got a call from friend Elaine Mills.  Seems her Cindy was in Brigham, had seen me pull out of the temple and noticed my back door was half-way up.  Well, we pulled over immediately and sure enough, the door had only partially closed.  I took a quick inventory, and it looked like all we had lost was our Party-sized Potato Chips.  I closed the door and made sure it was really closed this time and commenced circling the block to get back to find Grandpa.

Losing a Party-sized bag of chips is serious business, so we all decided we had to circle the block again and find them.  We passed Grandpa in the street by the temple, indicated we would be right back (he was a little confused), turned the corner in search of our snacks and BAM! there they were right in the middle of the road.  Hadley darted out of the car, retrieved the bag and was back inside to the cheers of her cousins in under ten seconds.  Mission accomplished!  You would have thought we were Navy Seals.  We completed the circle, picked up Grandpa.  Brad, Jess and Mo had arrived from Logan while we were out saving the chips.  We split up the cousins in different cars and headed to Beaver.

The eclipse was good…not as dramatic as the total eclipse in 2017.  Ice cream at the Creamery was delicious.  Staying in an old pioneer Airbnb was an adventure. But the event that kept surfacing was the saving of the chips.  Life is Good when you come from a hometown where someone always has your back!  Thanks Cindy and Elaine.