Utah Adventures

Last Wednesday, Paul and the kids and I came over to Utah for his annual West Family Reunion (really, Grandma West's birthday celebration. She's 97 this year.) We spent some time with my sister Jennifer's Family first.  My kids always like hanging with their cousins. Then we did the family reunion thing on Saturday. In the afternoon, we drove up to Rexburg to see Rachel and the BYUI campus.  They've done so much work there and finished a lot of things that were in the works when we left five years ago (wow!). The new I-Center is really impressive, and the campus looks beautiful. And of course, it was great to see Rachel.  We crashed on her floor since it's between semesters and all of her roommates are at home or elsewhere. It's always good to see Rachel. I really miss her!

I miss this girl!

We drove back down to Logan Sunday morning, and Paul hitched a ride back to Reno with the Stamps family, and I went back down to Jen's house for the day and one more night. Monday morning, I gathered up my stuff and my kids and went down to Cedar City to hang with Melissa for awhile.

And we've had quite an adventurous week! Monday, we mostly just hung out and kept life simple.  Tuesday, we took the kids to the reservoir and let them play in the sand and swim and have fun. And they did. They surprisingly didn't even want to leave. Very unusual for the little ones. Then we came home, cleaned kids, prepared dinner, and headed up Cedar Canyon to Cedar Breaks. It's kind of hidden back there. You wouldn't really stumble on it.

It was cooler outside than I expected it to be, and raining (sprinkling really), which the kids really didn't like, so we didn't stay very long unfortunately. I would've really enjoyed exploring the area, but we had to get back for a reasonable dinner time anyway. 

Wednesday we met up with some of Melissa's friends from her ward, and drove up to Navajo Lake. The kids had a great time playing in the water there, and I had fun skipping rocks. :)  I even got a few 9- and 10-skippers! It was a very serene lake.

Between us and Melissa's friends, we counted 18 kids from the six families, and all were seven and under I'm pretty sure. It was quite a group!

This is another area I would love to explore on foot or kayak/canoe. It goes back quite a ways there.

One of her friends, Heather, did Alexa's hair "Tangled" style. She, of course, really liked it.

I lowered many a child down into this ice cave. Like I said, they were a young group. One poor little boy got stuck in the mud down there and I had to rescue him. His crocs had almost completely disappeared beneath the mud, yuck. So, of course, he shared some with me when I picked him up on my legs and hands.

Nate took the day off on Thursday so we could all go up to Zion National Park, the one request I had when I came down here since I've never been and have always wanted to see the red rocks. At some point, I would love to come back and do The Narrows Trail. We went up Kolob Canyon, which had amazing views, then continued on to the main area of Zion. It was gorgeous in there. A place I would love to go back to over and over to explore all the different areas. So much to see!

Melissa is the queen of the photobomb. 

The kids were troopers! Kolob Canyon was about a mile hike round trip, and then we hiked the lower Emerald Pool hike which was a mile and a half from start to finish, and they all did great. I carried each of the twins for very short periods, but they walked all the rest of it, and the three bigger kids didn't even complain at all about being tired or wanting to go home. It's always more fun with cousins, right?

Silly faces!

  

Whole group photo. Everyone's looking!

It's been a really fun week! I'm not looking forward to the really long drive home tomorrow on The Loneliest Highway in America, but it will be good to be home too. I miss Paul and I'm ready to get back to regular life and normal schedules. But, I'm so glad we got a chance to make these memories.