Wednesday, November 19th was your typical Wednesday. I taught preschool, Grandma Kay came over, the kids went to school and Tom went to work. But the boys came home early from the bus and helped me with the end of my preschool class, Tom came home and we finished packing loaded up the van. By 4:00 we headed out. We dropped Grandma Kay off and pick Lily up at school (she had to stay after to learn a dance for the musical tryouts) and headed down to St. George. We hit some traffic and Sophie was asking how much longer just 20 minutes down the road, but otherwise things went well.
We Stopped in Nephi for dinner and did another stop in Beaver for some cheese curds.
By the time we showed up at the house we were staying at (we'd rented it from VRBO and booked it over a year earlier), it was about 9:30pm. That didn't stop the kids from going for a quick swim in the very warm swimming pool.
We were staying through the weekend with all of my family. 26 of us total! So with the excitement of staying at a new place, on vacation, with cousins and such, it ended up being a late night. That didn't stop my three youngest (and Grace) from getting up early. In fact, Cedric and Sophie were up at 7:30 on the dot every morning. I got them breakfast and the iPad and went back to bed. Here they are eating in the entry way on a little table, I'm standing over the balcony from the upstairs loft.
The kids enjoyed an movie that morning in the theater room.
Once it warmed up, the kids were begging to go swimming again. Why not, when you have a pool in your back yard!
The adults and teenagers visited and played games. Not a bad way to start the day.
We then headed to lunch and went to Smash Burger, one of my favorites!
When we got back, the kids got right back in the pool.
Aunt Natalie and Uncle Travis were great to be the life-guards while the kids swam. Travis even took Sophie on the water slide, but she wasn't the biggest fan.
The boys loved throwing footballs or frisbees whenever they could.
It was a fun, lazy afternoon. However, that night, the lack of sleep caught up with Sophie and by the time we made it to dinner, she was sound asleep.
Here's a picture of our whole group. We all went to Pancho and Lefties for dinner.
Sophie, Tom, Lily, Me, Travis, Adair, Candalyn, Jason, Aubree, Dad/Kent, Cedric, Matt, Suzy, Natalie, Marcus, Caleb, Jeff, Aimee, Rylee, Tyler, Grace, Karyn, Mike, John, Michael and Jessica.
We had the kids at one table and the adults at the other (except Sophie sat with us because she was still waking up). It was quite a nice meal.
Afterward, we stopped at Harmon's for Gelato.
When we got back to the house a bunch of us went swimming (Tom and Matt watched the BYU game instead).
Needless to say, the kids went right to sleep that night. Sophie and Cedric shared the bottom bunk of a large bunk bed in our room (Jeff was on the top and Tom and I had a king bed all in one large room. We had a sink and vanity in there too, then shared a bathroom with the toilet and tub with Matt and Aimee's room).
Friday morning, Dad and Suzy had to leave because they were scheduled to arrive at the Provo MTC that following Monday! We were glad to have at least a couple days with them before they had to leave for their mission.
The rest of us headed off to Snow Canyon and played in the sand dunes.
It was so fun and the weather was perfect! Our family was the last ones to leave the dunes. Everyone did their own thing for dinner. Our six couldn't all agree on one place, so we decided to go first to Wendy's, then the Swig (we made several Swig stops this trip) and then to Chick-fil-a. However, we forgot to take into account that it was UEA weekend and EVERYBODY was in St. George! The restaurants and drive-thru's were all packed. We first went to the Wendy's drive-thru, Tom was a little stressed. And then we went to Swig. While in that drive-thru line we realized they gave Sophie a cheeseburger instead of a hamburger. She refused to eat it. Then they got Jeff's Swig order wrong, so he and Tom just walked up and got that changed since we hadn't left the parking lot left. However, we didn't want to fight the traffic and crowds to go back to Wendy's so we just saved the cheeseburger and told Sophie we'd get her some nuggets at Chick-fil-a. /Tom was tired of drive-thru's so Lily and I just went into Chick-fil-a. There was a long line, but they had all their registers open and was moving the line pretty fast. When it was our turn, the guy called us to his register, then walked away? Lily and I stood there for a few minuted while people kept flowing through the other registers. When I realized the guy wasn't coming back I asked the lady at the next register if she could help us, and she did. We got in the car and as I went to hand Sophie her nuggets, I realized they'd given her the 6 pack instead of the 4. After lunch taking forever, everyone hungry and having three orders wrong at three different places, we were done. So we ate in the car as we drove back to the house.
The kids swam for a bit. Sophie was sad (she wanted Adair's floatie, not hers) so I offered to let her get in the tub and play and she was happy with that. She took a long bath, then watched a movie while I did her hair.
Lily enjoyed watching TV in Natalie and Travis' room. The boys swam and played with their cousins.
After a restful afternoon, we headed back out. This time to the Outlet malls. We first had dinner at Mongolian BBQ and practically took up the whole restaurant!
Then we went shopping. Everyone broke off into groups, Tom got stuck with the boys and Sophie and I took Lily and Aubree. We ended up spending the whole time at Rue 21, but Lily ended up getting some cute things.
We got home, put the little kids to bed and played some more games before bed. (Nice DAB, Aimee)
Jeff LOVED learning to play poker with his cousins, Uncle Matt and Jason (Candalyn's boyfriend). Don't worry, they never gambled real money.
After the younger boys were in bed, the teenagers and some of the adults watch a movie in the theater room, "Day and Knight".
Saturday we got up (we never had to get up too early, which I liked) and drove around 30 minutes to a gypsum quarry mine. Gypsum isn't worth anything, but it was fun to mine and the gypsum is very pretty.
Tom was right there with the kids, helping to get big pieces for them to gather.
We borrowed some tools from the neighbors by our rental and Cedric was excited to use a pick ax. He felt like he was on real Minecraft. Although, he didn't get to mine much and was more scaring all the adults as he'd swing the tools around. He left them mine in a sad mood.
Lily went exploring around the quarry and almost stepped on a rattle snake! Luckily, it slithered into the bushes and didn't hurt anyone (even though Jeff was throwing rocks at the bush to get it to come out).
The kids thought it was so neat to stand in two states at once, so we made a stop at the Arizona/Utah border and took some pictures.
We decided to avoid the main part of St. George for lunch after the crazy lunch the day before and went to Jack in the Box out in Washington. It was a much more pleasant meal.
Of course, the kids wanted to go swimming again. Candalyn and I were the life-guards and enjoyed relaxing in the shade while the kids swam.
We played some more games...
and Matt, Karyn and Tom tried to watch the Ute game. However, when we decided to figure out what pizza to get for dinner, it got a little loud and Karyn and Matt ended up in Mike and Karyn's room to watch the game. Tom was being a nice dad/uncle and played some games with the kids while watching the game.
Aimee, Mike and I decided on the Pizza and Candalyn and Jason went and picked it up. The kids did more swimming while we waited for the food. Side note: at one point Cedric swallowed too much salt-water from the pool when he went down the slide and it made him throw up. There was another time the kids were swimming and Jeff started getting a really bad bloody nose. Then another time, Cedric was pushed down the slide and he landed on Jeff got hurt. So the pool wasn't all fun and games.
We enjoyed our pizza meal out on the patio.
Tom and I didn't get a lot of time to just hang out together. It felt like the kids usually took our attention. That's how these types of vacations go.
Here's the house we stayed in. Aimee, Mike and I were being silly and trying to do a jump photo. The house had eight bedrooms, a theater room and a large back patio. It could've used another bathroom (only three and 1/4 for 26 of us), but otherwise, was a very accommodating place.
That night almost the whole group went swimming in the pool.
We all cleaned up and got our pajamas on. Marcus made a really fun trivia game on Kahoot.it and we all played it using our electronics. He had all sorts of fun questions about those on our trip and events that had happened.
Lily got to spend the week in the princess room with Aubree, Jessica and Rylee (Tyler's girlfriend). This room had a lot of toys that Sophie and Adair had fun with too.
Sunday was our last day. Despite Cedric and Sophie waking up at 7:30 again, Jeff stayed asleep until almost 9! Tom and I got up around 8:30 so we could start packing up and Jeff slept through all of it.
Sophie and Cedric spent the morning on the iPads in bed, which they love to do.
We had a crazy morning trying to eat all the food (the cheeseburger and extra nuggets from Friday's lunch were eaten for some of the kid's breakfast) and pack up everything. We also went to a sacrament meeting with Aimee and Matt's family before we headed out of St. George.
We held off as long as we could eating at McDonald's, but finally gave in on the drive home. We stopped in Cedar City at the Golden Arches for a quick bite.
The kids were good on the drive home and it was nice to have a vacation that was not so busy. I really enjoyed our relaxing weekend in St. George.
No comments:
Post a Comment