St. George, Part 2

As promised, here are some more pictures of the fun we had in St. George, barring any more website issues. (Don't you just love technology?:)

This picture was taken from the same vantage point as the one with just the lava tube. It should give you an idea how how big that hole in the ground really was. Jason and Isaiah aren't even at the bottom yet.

This picture is really deceiving because of how bright the flash was on my camera. It was almost pitch black inside the lava tube, except for the little l.e.d. light we brought along. I was so glad that none of my kids are afraid of the dark!

These next couple of pictures are from the sand dunes, which are also in Snow Canyon. Isaiah was convinced at first that he didn't want his pants to touch the sand, so he spent a lot of time walking around while holding them up. It took some convincing, but after a few minutes, he was rolling around in the sand like the rest of us.

Mary, on the other hand, had absolutely no concern about whether or not her clothes got dirty. She spent most of her time laying on her stomach and pretending to swim, or being some kind of animal. (I think in this picture she was being a frog.)

As you can imagine after all of that, this is what happened on the way to the hotel. That's about how I felt too, except my kids still had energy to go swimming once we all got checked in. (What I wouldn't give to have that kind of energy again.:)

We were also privelleged to go to the St. George Temple visitor's center while we were in town. It was so amazing because it had been raining fairly steadily that morning, but as soon as we were there, the sky cleared to a brilliant blue. It was so beautiful to see the temple standing out against the sky, and it made for some pretty amazing pictures as well.

I've always loved this temple. I don't know that there are many places in the world where pine trees can be right next to palm trees, but I think it's a pretty interesting phenomenon. And when you throw in the red rock in the background with that sudden blue sky, it was amazing. I'm glad I got to share it with my kids.:)

St. George Fun

Last weekend my family received a miraculous occurance: 60 degree weather!:) (That's much better than the 30 degrees it's been in northern UT all week...) We traveled to St. George, UT with my parents and my brother's family. The plan was to drive down Friday night and come home Saturday evening, but Jason was lucky enough to get the day off work so we could leave bright and early on Friday. That meant we got an extra day of playtime! We sure took advantage of it, too. We went hiking, explored lava tubes, played in the sand dunes, and went swimming, all before dinner. I'm so proud of my kids, too. Spelunking (cave exploring, or in our case, lava tubes) is not something I would expect a 6, 4, and 2 year old to do, but they LOVED it! Go figure.:)

Hiking through a lava field in the middle of Snow Canyon

This is the lava tube (cave) that we went exploring in. It is quite literally a big hole in the middle of the ground. (I stood almost directly over it while taking this picture.) The fun thing is that it goes for quite a while underground as well, and is one of many in Snow Canyon.

I have lots of other pictures I want to share, but apparently something is wrong with the Blogger website currently, so I'll have to try again later. Stay tuned!

Valentines Weekend

With Valentine's Day on a Sunday this year, we just had to party the whole weekend! Most of it was spent up at my brother and sister-in-law's house in Syracuse, UT. (It's a really cute one that was built in the 50's.) Jason and my brother Tony decided to go ice fishing up in Idaho, so the rest of us had a BLAST just hanging out. I gotta say, I was really impressed with my sister-in-law, Kristianne. There were times when I was a little tired of things or wondering if the kids wanted to watch a movie, but she was constantly having more stuff for them to do, like making cookies, building a fort, playing games, making valentines, and a whole bunch of other ideas. She's like super-mom!:) Thanks again for all the fun we had!

Making heart sugar cookies with LOTS of flour

Hanging out with cousin Max (what a cutie!:)

The absolutely fabulous fort in the basement. This was SO much fun for my kids. When I was little, forts were a couple of blankets and chairs, but this took up most of the family room downstairs. You could actually fit all of us in there!:)

Maybe we didn't exactly have the most romantic Valentine's Day in the world, but my kids sure had a good time, and that's what's most important. Besides, Jason and I still exchanged gifts Saturday night and ate Rumbi Island Grill food while watching Mythbusters. What's better than that?:)

My Valentine's Cake

Some of you may know that I like to decorate cakes. I'm still working on all of my skills with it, but I must admit I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out, so I had to share. What do you think?:)