Quickest, spur of the moment road trip!

There is a girl in our ward, Vanessa, who is an exchange student from Germany.  She goes home next Monday, and she hadn't been down to see any of our beautiful National Parks yet.  After taking her up to see the Kennicot Copper Mine on Saturday morning, Adam and I started making plans to do a quick Utah road trip so that she could see our beauties.

We called up Vanessa and made sure that she would be able to take a quick trip.  We went and picked up Vanessa and Cassie at 6:00 pm.  We made it down to Cedar City.  My sister, Teresa, let us stay at her house for the night while she was up here visiting family. (It was a terrible night with Brody... he screamed and cried for hours.  I think it was just the difference it atmosphere that was hard for him).  We headed out the next morning for Zion's National Park.  It didn't take too long to get there.  We decided that we had enough time to do the scenic drive on the shuttle bus.  It had been years since I had gone.  It was so beautiful!  We were all in complete and utter awe.

We left after enjoying the beautiful scenery.  We headed North planning on just going to the hotel in Salina for the night.  On the way, we pulled up a map and realized that we could take a short detour off SR89 and go see Bryce Canyon and still make it to the hotel with some time left for relaxing before bed.  We were SOOO glad we took that detour.  I had never been to Bryce Canyon before and it was absolutely incredible!!

I can't believe that I had never been to Bryce Canyon before (at least, I don't remember going there before).  It was absolutely amazing!

We headed to our hotel for the night.  We got there and checked in.  I went back to the lobby to find out if we could get a roll away bed... and I heard people speaking Italian.  There was a couple from Italy doing a cross-country trip on a motorcycle.  It was fun to talk to them.  The night was a lot better, but with some difficulties still.

We woke up early Monday morning to get to Moab early.  We got there and got some breakfast and then headed into Arches National Park.  We drove in to Delicate Arch, but saw some pretty cool things on the way.  We hiked up to Delicate Arch with Mason on my back and Adam helping Brody.  It was an easy hike, but still a little more difficult than normal, because we had extra weight. Then we saw a few more arches close to the road and headed out.  We drove by way of Manti, so Vanessa could see the temple.  We stopped for dinner with Adam's parents and headed home.  Needless to say we were all tired from our quick whirlwind trip.

 

Our new ride...

We have been talking about getting a bigger family car for awhile.  We LOVE our Mazda 3, but it is slightly too compact for having car seats.  I had to pull my seat almost all the way forward to get Mason's car seat into the back seat. 

We thought a lot about different 7/8 seater SUV's.  Most of all we love the Chevy Traverse.  We finally went to test drive one.  It was a way nice car.  Very basic, but had the look and feel that we liked.  Then, we found out it would be more than $30k!!  We changed our minds...

We started searching on KSL for different used, but still fairly new cars. (less work to keep them running) I decided to widen the search to include something other than just SUV's... MINIVANS!!  And, yup, we found our match!

We drove up to Ogden to test drive it, and instantly fell in love!  It has all the kit and kaboodles that you would ever need in a car: built in navigaion, 6 disc CD/DVD changer, hookups for video/sound input (for ipods, videogames, etc), entertainment screen with wireless headphones for the rear passengers (or just run the sound through the whole car), remote start, store n' go seating/storage areas, remote opener for the sliding and back doors, leather seats, heated seats, gas/mileage info, etc., etc.  The best part is that it was WELL within our budget.  We actually have a car payment that is $6 more than our Mazda 3 payment, and we even swallowed up the rest of that loan into this new loan.  We LOVE our new car minivan!  It is something I never thought I would have, but I am SO glad we got it!!!

We love our new car!!!

Mason's new love...

We borrowed this from Jed and Ashley and I think it is inevitable that we need to buy one for ourselves, because Mason LOVES it!!



Weekend away...

Ever since receiving my new call in the Young Women's, I haven't wanted to leave the girls... but this last weekend we went down to my in-laws' for the weekend.  It was wonderful to just get away for a couple of days... not to mention all of the things we were able to do.

We headed down Friday night.  It was both our ward's and Adam's parents' ward's "Father and son campout".  So we went down for them to have a 3-generation father and son campout.  I took Adam and Brody over to the campground, and Mason and I headed to the Dowland's house.  While the boys were having a good time camping, we had a ladies + Mason night.  We watched American Idol results and Bones... and then we played Ticket to Ride.  It was a lot of fun.

Went to bed, planning on going running in the morning before the boys got home.  Mason slept great, so I slept in until about 8:30.  When I finally did wake up, I opened the door, and Adam was back already.  So, he let me go do my run without the kiddos and then we cleaned up after I got back.

Nicole was so good to us this last weekend!!  She watched the boys for us so we could go to lunch and then to the temple.  It was SOOO good to be back at the temple!  It had been since I was pregnant... so it was VERY NEEDED!  We got back and a mere hour later left again for a "romantic dinner" that the Youth in their ward put on as a fundraiser.  We had our own little private table, rose as a centerpiece (that I got to take home afterward), and yummy food!  It was a nice little "date".  Honestly, the best part was that Adam suggested we walk back to their house after (a mere 1 1/2 mile walk).  It was so nice to just hold hands and get to talk about everything and nothing at the same time.  I love my husband.  He is so good for me.  He is so good to me!  He knows how to make my heart pitter-patter like a little girl again.

We got back to their house and decided to do a bonfire in their back yard.  They have some trees that were ruined by the weight of the snow this winter... so they have been trimming them all back and we had a good pile of branches to burn up.

Janet had received a bag of HUGE marshmallows from Nichelle for Mother's day and it gave us an opportunity to have some pretty intense s'mores.

We got up and went to church with them and just had a relaxing sabbath day.  It was a great weekend!

We did a first while down there... bathed the boys together!!