Busy with Family!

Who knew there was so much to do in Cedar City?!  Not me. On Monday, we went to the museum.  Way fun!

 All the cousins, ready to have a good time.

This train was pretty elaborate and very cool.  The girls loved watching the train go around and around.

How the pioneers did laundry.  The girls though ti was super fun.

 Yep, there was actual water in the tubs and the girls had a good time scrubbing the laundry.

 And off to hang it to dry.

The school house was fun to tour.  I LOVE Marian's expression here.  It is so fun when they ham it up for me! 

Rylee really wanted to play this board game.  Sadly, we didn't know how to do that.

Fun with an outhouse!

Have I mentioned how much fun it is when the kids ham it up for me?!  I love them!

Even though there were a lot of awesome things, i think this was the favorite.  Panning for gold!  The best part for the kids is that there was actual (Fool's) gold to be found.

 You can see how much fun Rylee was having.

On Tuesday, Marian was throwing up, so I got to stay home with her.  Aunt Star was awesome and took Joshua, Callie and Delaney to the fun pool and to the cool park.  She even took pictures for me!

Delaney had a good time.  She was so pleased to wear a floatation device and "swim" all over.

 Oh yes, she had a very good time!

Joshua and cousin Kaitlin.

He had fun.

Joshua even went off the diving board.... several times!

They thought the park was the best place ever.  It was a lot of fun with their cousins.

 Kaitlin, Callie and Ashley.

No, that's not posed at all!

These 2 are only 2 months apart in age.  Joshua is quite disgusted that she is taller than he is. 

And we had more adventures, but there are already too many pictures here today.  I'll spare you a little longer!

Fun with Grandparents

We have been having a good time in Utah with my in-laws. The kids are enjoying the visit immensely.  On Saturday, we got a tour of Southern Utah University, where Grandma and Grandpa went to school.  It was a neat campus.

There were these great statues that the kids enjoyed mugging with.

They were disappointed I wouldn't let them do less respectful poses. They were impressive.

I very much enjoyed this Monument to the men who sacrificed to make the University a reality.  I might have gotten a little teary reading the story.

I love these girls.  So cute!

We had a picnic at the park afterwards.  It was a gorgeous day!

We brought little wooden boats and the children had SO much fun with them.  Rylee would throw her boat in and race down the stream after it.

 I wasn't sure she could get the boat back, but she always managed to get it out.  And she never fell in!

This child got quite wet, but oh, the fun she had!

I love to see the girls playing nicely together.

 Joshua started off the day wearing his long pants and shoes and socks.  He ended up with no shoes or socks and very wet pants. 

The kids played for hours.  I think we were there for 3 hours and no one wanted to leave when it was time to go.  It was a great day!

The very best thing about visiting Utah is the mountains.  We have gone out to climb the mountains in the evenings and it apparently never gets old for them.

Isn't Joshua a great brother?!

I don't know if you can see the tall peak there in the very back, but we climbed that!  Yes, yes we did!

 Joshua on top of the peak, and me below.  Looks high, doesn't it?!

We're on top of the little peak, and look!  There are more and more mountains!  We'll leave those for tomorrow.

4 Days, 5 kids, 1 Van, 1600 miles

So far we have survived!  We were in Oklahoma Tuesday, stopped in Kansas Wednesday, spent Thursday night in Colorado, and on Friday, we arrived at our (temporary) destination.  Whew!  The kids were awesome, by the way.  I had gotten an awesome audiobook for them to listen to: Gregor the Overlander, and they were enthralled.  After every stop they would get back in the car and start chanting, "Gregor!  Gregor!!"  We finished the first 2 books, but I wanted to save the rest for the drive home when my dad would be able to listen.  So we switched over to Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid.  That has been pretty good listening, and it is really long.  Score!

Since we were driving through Denver, I swung by the Temple. It was a lovely place to take a break from the van.

It took me a bit to realize it was closed because it was the 4th of July!

It was a good thing i got my serenity on before we left Denver, because we spent the next 2 hours in bumper to bumper traffic.  It was dreadful.  Not for the kids, I guess, they were pleased as punch to sit and listen to the story.

The delay added 2 hours to the drive time. I was really glad we had a pool at the hotel. The kids were pinging off the walls when we checked in.

They got their wiggles out in the pool and played and played for over an hour.

Dan is the one who usually takes them to the pool at hotels, and I was ready to go before the kids.  They could have played all night, I think. This was one of the times I especially missed having Dan on the journey.

 We stayed till it was well past dinner time and I was hungry! We had a late dinner and late bedtime.

We drove through a bit of this.  It was exciting to see the mountains, and to have them get closer and closer, till we were driving through them!

 We made it to Utah!  This was the best rest stop ever, by the way.  I loved that they had this sign that we could pose with.  And then.... 

 There was this awesome little mountain to hike up!  The kids were in love and dashed right up. 

Well, except for Delaney, who walked up with me.

On top of the World!

Falling off the world!

Yeah, Joshua thinks he is pretty funny, but this was a good pose.

Its me, on top of the world.  It really was great to get the kids out and hiking a mountain for a bit.  

And off we went, into the hot, brown mountains.  Then we got to Grandma and Grandpa's and I was so happy there will  be no more driving for a week.  I was SO tired.  Hmmmmm... I still am!

Westward Ho!

 Okay, the title is a bit misleading.  We DID start our trek west, but the pictures are not really of that.  We left on Monday and drove to Miranda's in Oklahoma.  It was a 5 hour drive and it went well.  I like Miranda and her family, so we stayed all day Tuesday and had a marvelous time!  We went to her local splash park and the kids enjoyed themselves immensely.  I took 500 photos to document that we did, indeed have a good time on our travels.  If you make it to the bottom, you'll see the not-so-fun.

 Delaney cracks me up.  I love this little jump!

Hopping through the rainbow.

Getting rained on.

 Queen of the hill!  That's cousin Ethan in front of Callie.

 These water shooters were quite popular.

Rylee really wanted to climb on it, but she was too little.

Waiting for the bucket to tip.

The water was COLD!  Rylee was turning blue and I had her lie in the sun to warm up.

 Spinning the water shooter.

I love this shot of Marian.

Joshua was about the oldest kid out there, but I think he had the most fun, stayed in the longest and made the most new friends.

Yep, he had a good time.

 Did I mention how popular this particular item was?!

 Rylee loved this thing. When it stopped spraying, she would go right up to it and try to drink out of it.  Ick.  But also quite funny, since the water would suddenly shoot out and spray her in the face.

She's a cutie!

Wednesday we were back on the road.  8 hours to Goodland, KS.  the kids were awesome.  The van.... not so much.  The stupid engine light is on again and it had acceleration issues twice.  When that happened, I had to pull the car over, turn it completely off, and then restart it.  The light stayed on, but the problems stopped.

 To make life even more fun, the one sliding door thinks the gas flap is open all the time and I have to manually push the patch down that will allow the door to open.  I'm not happy.  Did I mention we're driving to Washington state and back?  (I hope!)

On the plus side, the drive is lovely and the kids have been amazing. We made it almost across Colorado today.  And now, I must go to bed, in another hotel, in another bed that isn't mine.