St. George

The end of last year our family finished the Book of Mormon, so we told the kids we would go do something fun to celebrate. After looking into hotels in the city and finding out it would be about $200 a night for a weekend we decided to go somewhere warm if we were going to spend that much money. (Warm being relative.) Since you have to travel to find warmth around here in the middle of January, we headed south. After mentioning to my mom that we wanted to go down and since they offered to get the condo, we let them join the party. Anne Marie never wants to miss a party so she came, and since Jon never wants to miss a deal and he heard the condo was free he jumped on the bandwagon as well. John had a scout winter camping trip he was committed to on Friday night so my parents took the girls and the next morning John, Joshua and I headed down. John and I had a great time in the car where we could actually carry on a conversation without being interrupted to negotiate a fight, told to be quiet so they could hear the movie, or ask to pass back a treat.


The red rocks were so beautiful and the temperature was great for hiking. We loved being outside again.


Look at the fear. We are not high on the bravery scale. She wasn't up that high.



Thank heavens for shoulders.




We mostly went hiking and did a little swimming, although John and I somehow wiggled our way out of the swimming part, thanks Mom and Dad, Jon and Lisa. When we moved to Arizona I remember people saying it was too cold to swim when it was in the 80's and 90's. I remember thinking they were crazy, where we were moving from the 80's were as warm as it got, so if you didn't swim then, you didn't swim at all. Now I have been converted if it isn't in the 100's and the water nearing 90 I have no intention of touching the water.



Look at the air on that girl. It helps when you weigh less than 30 pounds.





These two are great little buddies.



One of the great adventures was climbing the volcano. Since Grace was cold I stayed in the car with her. We thought they were just going to walk around the base of the mountain, but they started climbing, unfortunately, they went up the face of it instead of following the trail around the back of it. It was quite the adventure, but they thought it was great.