St. George

Earlier this month we took a much needed vacation to St. George. Jeff's company offers their employees a chance to sign up for a condo there and we signed up. Since it is a huge condo, seriously it was larger than our first floor of our house it had 2 master bedrooms with master baths in each and than 2 more bedrooms where one had 1 set of bunkbeds and the other one had 2, we invited my sister and her family to come with us. We only spent a week there and 2 of those days we were traveling so we had 3 days in St. George.

The day we arrived we spent the rest of the day in the condo and towards the end of the day we had a visit from some very cute and furry animals. It turns out that a huge family of bunnies was living in the empty land behind our condo. They would come up in the morning and the evening to eat the grass and the plants that were around our condo. They would disapear when anyone would go outside buy all of the kids still had fun looing at them through the windows.

Here is the picture of the bunny:

The next day we all packed up and went on a hike in Snow Canyon State Park. We chose the Petrified dunes hike. It started out as a normal hike where there was a clear trail and then all of a sudden we came upon some of the dunes and we started hiking up the dunes and there was no more trail. It turns out that the kids absolutely loved it. They love climbing rocks when they are normal height and when they were able to climb ones that were the height of a small hill they were elated.

Here is a picture that I took when I was at the middle of one of the hills with Debra (my sister) and Gavin (her youngest) while Jeff, Dallin, Isaac, Austin, and Andrew were at the top. It was fun climbing all over the dunes. We had so much fun we didn't feel the workout that we were getting. We all felt the pain when we got back to the condo.

While climbing the dunes we came across the rocks that are in the picture blow. You might not be able to tell, but in real life the rocks looked like pieces of poo. Everyone said and I think the kids even said to not walk on them because they were poo

We took Wednesday off from doing anything away from the condo. We had an early lunch and then we went to the pool. I took my camera to the pool, but I spent too much time in the pool that I didn't get any photos. It was Kaden's first time in a huge pool and I thought that he would have fun because he has so much fun while taking a bath. But I guess he was too tired, because he sat there and cried for awhile. Luckily Jeff took him so I could play with Dallin and Isaac, who both had a lot of fun in the water. Kaden did finally calm down and we put him in his little saucer and pushed him around the pool and he had some fun. I hope that he has a lot of fun in the pool that we will put up in our backyard this year.

Thursday we decided to venture out into St. George again and we decided that since all the kids love dinosaur train that we would take them to the dinosaur track museum that is there. They had a little video about how the museum came to be, but the kids had more fun drawing pictures than watching. (In the picture below you can see the picture that Isaac made) We then went to the education room where they had a replica of a dinosaur that was found in England. It was really interresting and you can see the replica in the back of the picture below.

 Next was to walking amoung some of the rocks that had the tracks on them. You were not allowed to touch most of them, but they did have a couple that you could touch and feel and we had Isaac put his foot put to see the difference between sizes of feet.

 Dallin was pretty bored throughout the whole visit inside the museum, which isn't that big and for kids probably not that entertaining, but after the trip to the gift shop we went outside so the kids could play in the sand box. Dallin went to town, we told him that they might have things hidden in the sand and he started digging and he discovered this. He didn't really know what to do after he uncovered it. So I got in the sand and started brushing the sand out of the print and then he took over and went to work. He had a lot of fun and he discovered another print behind this one before we left. All of the kids had fun in the sand box and it gave the parents a little break to talk about what we have done and the rest of the trip.



I had to add this picture because Kaden is too cute. We had him facing forward while we were walking around the dunes, but when we got to the top of one of the hills, we took him out to feed him, but he was too tired to eat, so we turned him around and within minutes he was out and he slept all the way down the hill.

It was a fun trip and we were glad that we could take the time to get away as a family and to have Debra and Andrew and there boys. We all had fun and it was a little rainy at the beginning of the week, but we got up to the 80s by the time we left. So the weather was even nice.

Summer Vacation to Colorado

Last year Jeff and I wanted to go camping with his brother James and his family so we said it would be sometime this summer. So a couple of months ago we planned our trip for last week. I probably would have had a lot more fun if I wasn't pregnant, but I still had a blast. We were there for a whole week, but we only went camping at Rocky Mtn National Park from monday to wednesday. It was really nice for me that I wasn't there for a whole week. But I was living the high life by sleeping on two foam pads that James and Carol were nice enough to supply me with.

We went on a total of three hikes while we were there. We went on the first one monday night and we just walked around Bear Lake, and yes I have now been to two different lakes named Bear Lake. The kids had fun running up the trail to find the next bear foot marker. It was really pretty there with the sun just barely setting behind the mountains.

The next day we went on the Alberta Falls hike. This was by far my most ambious hike of the vacation. It is only about a mile up and back, but it is a little steep in some spots. I was extremely proud of myself when I made it to the falls. I didn't go up to the top of the falls like Jeff and the boys did, but I still got some really cool pictures of the falls

After lunch we decided to try and get the kids to take a little nap so we went on a drive to the Alpine visitor center located up at the top of the mountains on the Alpine Tundra. We had to drive a long time to get there and Dallin was determined to not sleep and complain the entire time, but eventually he gave up and slept for a couple of minutes. When we got up to the top of the mountains it turns out that they were fixing the roads so there was one way road for a little bit and around a 30 minute wait for your turn. They say that the weather on the tundra can change with a drop of a pin and we found out how true that is. While we were waiting for our turn on the road we had high winds (it was shaking our van), rain (because of the wind came in vertically), sun and clouds.

The visitor center is at 11,796 ft above sea level, but you actually will get to over 12,000 ft while driving to and from the visitor center. There is also very little that can survive on the tundra, but we were able to catch a glimpse of a few elk staying cool on the snow across the mountain from the visitor center.

The last hike we did after we had packed up camp and it was again walking around a lake. This lake is used a lot by people who like to fish and there were several in the water trying to catch something. The hike was pretty flat, but after all I had done the previous day I was exhausted so I didn't have as much fun. The lake did have one of the things that my boys loved to do during the whole stay and that is climb really huge rocks. I have several pictures of them on top of the rocks, but I will only share one.

The rest of the week we spent mostly relaxing in James and Carol's air conditioned home. It was nice. We did go and cheer on Michael at his baseball game and we went swimming where my kids again had a wonderful time. The rest of the time we spent playing board games or the wii. It was a nice trip for all of us. We all had a wonderful time getting to know our cousins and the beautiful place where they live. Now I guess I can't put off getting ready for the baby any longer

Final Summer Vacation

Well one of the best things that Jeff's work gives its employees is that they have two condoes that we can schedule for awhile. This year we decided to go to St. George last week. I know we went during the hardest time, but we still had fun. We invited my family to come down with us and they came for a couple of days. We also took a day and drove down to Las Vegas and went to a couple of places there.

Here are a couple of pictures:

This is a picture of the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay in Vegas. It was really cool to see all of the different sharks and other sea animals. The really cool thing was that they had a tour system where you had a handheld speaker and you typed in a number and then it would give you facts about the certain area. The picture above you can see a couple of people using them.

We arrived on Monday and we had around an hour to kill for our condo to be cleaned so we drove to the temple and walked around the grounds in the hot weather.

Here is a picture of the a sphinx outside the Luxor hotel. Dallin thought it was fun to see all of the buildings that were different things.

Here is a picture of the New York Casino and the roller coaster that is there. We thought that we might take a little time to go on the coaster, but we didn't have enough time.

I didn't take any pictures, but the first couple of spots that we went to was M&M World and Everything Coca-cola. I had been to Vegas about 12 years ago and we went there so I wanted to go back to those. For those that don't know M&M World is filled with 4 floors of everything M&M. You can get M&Ms in colors that are not sold in stores and also a whole bunch of stuff with M&Ms on it. (Pencils, towels, poker chips, etc)

Everything coca-cola is next door to M&M World and when I went 12 years ago there was a tour that you could take and at the top there were fountain drinks where you could sample any coca-cola product that it made around the world. Unfortunately, that got rid of the area and instead just offer a sample of 16 drinks of products from around the world that are only available in those countries. The kids had fun drinking the pop and most tasted pretty good, but there were a couple that hardly got drank.

Going to Virginia

Well tomorrow is the day that I travel up to Logan to drop off my children at my parent's house so that Jeff and I can go to Virginia for a week. Jeff and I haven't been away together for awhile. We have had my parents take the kids for a week here and there when we needed a break, but we never went farther than Salt Lake. The last time we took a trip just the two of us was when we went to Anaheim in November of 2004.

We leave Friday morning and we will arrive in Richmond, VA at around 4:30. We will then drive to our hotel in Williamsburg, thanks to Jeff's mom getting us a really good deal. On Saturday we will go to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg and ride some fast rollarcoasters. Then on Sunday we will make the drive up to Jeff's brother who lives in Pennsylvania. We will spend Sunday up there visiting them. We haven't seen them since they moved a couple of years ago so that will be nice. On Monday, on our way back from Pennsylvania we will be stopping in Washington DC and visiting at least a couple of the smithsonian museums at the National Mall. I am not sure how much we will be doing because it is suppose to rain.

The rest of our week we will be spending in Williamsburg going to Colonial Williamsburg and just relaxing as Jeff likes to do when he goes on vacation. We will come home on Friday at around noon. Then on Saturday we will go and pick up our kids from my parents in Logan.

I am excited to be going on this adventure with Jeff in a couple of days and also the much needed vacation.