Who says you can't go home?

Picture this: sitting in a car for 10 hours in weather that is getting hotter and hotter as you go when finally, you reach your destination. You come peaking over the Tehachapi mountains and down into the valley as a faint smell of acid rain drifts in through the air vents. As you head further into the depths of this town, oil rigs pierce the horizon through the brownish haze we like to call smog. And then, you drive past Weedpatch Highway...
...and you know...
...that you are HOME.

Yes, I had a lovely trip to California with my mom. It was one last girl's trip before my mission so my dad wasn't allowed to come. We spent a couple of days in Bakersfield, which of course included visits to Dewar's and Monica Ward. Then we headed down to Thousand Oaks, where we picked up my grandma and took her out to Santa Barbara/Solvang for several days. We stopped for a night at my aunt's house in Palmdale on the way home. It was just really nice to be able to reconnect with my mom because we haven't really spent much time together since I started at college. Sure I live at home right now, but I'm always working or out with friends and the same with her so this was nice.
I love my mom so much. She has been there for me through all of my worst nightmares, even when I may have thought I didn't want her there. She exemplifies everything I want to be in a mother - caring, intelligent, driven, forgiving, faithful, patient, and more. I tease her a lot that we are complete opposites, and in many things we are, but being able to spend the week with her taught me just how much I want to be like her. I am going to miss her above anybody else on my mission but I know that our relationship will just grow stronger as the years go on.