Play Time

When I started researching things to do in St. George with kids, I came across a link in Pinterest for Glitter Mountain.  It looked like a fun thing to do, so I printed of their hand-drawn map and told Lennard that we should attempt to find it!  Since we've only been to St. George once (and only for a few hours at that), we had to search a bit to figure out where to go.

We got to the Utah/Arizona border with no issues.

Then we ran into a bit of an issue when it said 'keep to the left as you go around mountain' and 'Glitter mountain will be on your right'. 

 We couldn't find anything... so we backtracked and tried a 'road' that seemed to go around the mountain a bit more.  We quickly discovered that it wasn't really a road as we rocked back and forth through huge potholes.  As we started down a particularly steep slope with very little clearance, I got out of the truck to go check out the surrounding and figured out that we were totally in the wrong spot.  I wish I'd taken a picture at this point... the truck was tilted sideways and down a steep slope! I told Lennard to back out and with a little gas and a bit of encouragement we were able to get out of that situation!  Whew!

After backtracking down the road we'd been on, we headed back the way we came and managed to find Glitter Mountain!  It was so neat!  The kids were intrigued with getting to chip away at the rock (it's an old gypsum mine).

I love that these two were matching today!

Emma loved the glitter... but not the work to get the rocks!

We gathered quite a bit of rocks and the kids would have gathered more... but how much gypsum do we really need?!  ha! ha!  It was really hot down in that basin with the sun beating down on us!

The view from where we were parked at Glitter Mountain

When we left the mountain, we had more time that we thought we would have had before lunch, so we decided to head over to Thunder Junction - an all abilities playground.  As soon as we pulled up the kids were ready to jump out and run.  It's a free park that any child can play at - whether they have special needs or not.  It was a fabulous park and they loved every minute of it!

We hadn't planned on going to the park until after lunch, so we didn't have any towels or swimsuits with us... but the kids jumped in anyways!  Ben only got a few splashes, but Emma was completely soaked!

The kids finally started to get hungry, so we headed back to the trailer for some lunch.  Then Lennard got to pick the next stop... so we went to Camping World to get a few things for the trailer!  The kids did pretty good - although looking at trailer stuff can only keep them entertained for so long!  lol

The only thing they wanted to do was go back to the park... so we did!  We tried out the train ride this time.  It's the only thing in the park that costs money - $1/person.  They loved it!

It was a great day just playing together and enjoying the area.

Easter Sunday

It was a 'bit' of a rough night last night.  Emma was up four different times for various reasons... so three of us were tired in the morning!  The kids got a burst of energy though when they discovered that the Easter bunny had come!  They found chocolate eggs all over the trailer!

 The best part was that they got a chess set!  They immediately had to start playing a game!

 We had a nice relaxed morning and then we all got ready to go to church.  We attended Sacrament meeting at 11:00 in a chapel near the campground and then, after we'd eaten lunch, we headed down to walk around the temple and go through the Visitor's Center.

 I absolutely loved getting to see flowers out and green grass!  It was so nice and hot!

 The kids loved climbing the steps on the temple and posed for multiple pictures... they even ask for certain pictures to be taken now!

 It was such a perfect way to spend Easter Sunday.

 The Visitor's Center had a couple touch screens with different activities that the kids loved to play with.  They would have spent all afternoon playing on them!  Emma even learned how to e-mail the picture of the temple that she'd colored to me!

 While we were in the Visitor's Center, we had a sister missionary take our picture for us.

 As we were walking around, I also ran in to Linda Jacobs from Mountain View!  She called me 'Shauna' until Lennard corrected her, but it was nice to sit and visit with her.  She had a bunch of family down that were watching one of the movies.

After the Visitor's Center, we decided to go do the tour of Brigham Young's Winter home.  We were in a tour of 10 people and the missionaries did a good job, but the kids were pretty done by then. They were still extremely well behaved, but as the tour went on, they got a little antsy.  They were extremely glad to get back to the trailer.

We let them change into their play clothes while we made dinner.  We had steaks on the barbeque!  Yum!  We played Dutch Blitz for a while (although the kids didn't like it as much as UNO or Skip-Bo).  It has been really hot today... 29°C. It's been a big adjustment being that warm after our colder temperatures up North!

Long Driving Day

We had a long day of driving today and I didn't take many pictures, but we got in to way better weather!  We were on the road by 7:30ish and finally stopped at a gas station about 1:00 to get some lunch.  The kids had fun exploring and convinced Lennard that he needed to climb the 'hill' to see what they could see.

 It's always good when they can get out and run and stretch, and we had the perfect spot to let them play.  We were away from all the other big trucks and it didn't get busy until we headed out.

 We arrived in St. George about 5:00pm and got set up at our campground.

It is definitely NOT a great campground...although we were told we had the 'best' site, so we had a tree for shade and a bit of grass for the kids to play on (which the other sites definitely didn't have). The benefit to the campsite is that it's in a super convenient location for everything we are going to be doing this week.

Once everything was set up, we raced over to Costco before it closed to get a small table for our trailer and then we hit Albertson's to get some groceries.  We had dinner after we got back to the trailer, although our meal plan went out the window when Lennard and Emma saw someone cooking ribs outside Albertson's!  Guess what they had for dinner!  Ben just wanted mac & cheese.  lol

Vacation Time!

We have been looking forward to getting away for a while now.  It has been a rough seven months since Lennard broke his wrist, work worries, family ups and downs... we just needed a break.  We got everyone ready and in the truck by 7:30am and were on our way to St. George, Utah!  To say that the kids were excited would be an understatement... especially when they discovered our new DVD players hidden in our headrests.  

We managed to make them wait until after the border crossing before we let them watch a movie.  Im sure they thought the border would never come! lol The nice thing with these DVD players is that they can either watch a movie together, or choose to watch two different movies - which is what they did!

 We ended up running into a bit of crazy weather.  If it had just stayed snow it would have been okay, but we had some weird squalls and some ridiculously strong wind that completely sucked the gas tank dry.

 We were extremely grateful to pull in to the Wal-Mart parking lot in Idaho Falls where we stayed the night.  It was so windy and cold!  Thank goodness for a heated trailer!

Easter Surprises

Ben was SO excited to show me his Easter basket and Easter egg that he'd made at school.  I think he walked home at half-speed, just to make sure it got here without breaking!

 He was also pretty excited to open the Kinder Surprise that the teachers had given him!

Then, later today when we were getting dinner ready, there was a knock on the door, and Emma's Primary teachers (Woodruff's) came to deliver an Easter treat for her!  She was so excited to get rice krispy 'eggs' and lots of chocolate treats, but I love that she went straight for the picture of the Savior and put it in her room immediately.

I feel so blessed to live where we do.  We have fabulous neighbors, a wonderful ward and amazing friends.

New Cast

When Lennard got the cast put on (on the 3rd), he was not happy about it... not just that he had to have a cast, but that it was so poorly put on!  The gal definitely didn't know what she was doing... after as many casts as Lennard has had, he knows what's right and what's not.  There were so many sharp edges on it that it was cutting into his hand.  He'd taken to breaking off pieces to try to make it better.  They ended up having to do an outage at work yesterday and his cast got filthy.  There was no way he was going to have a cut up, dirty cast on for another month, so he called Dr. White and left a message.  They called back this morning and said that if he could be in Calgary by 11:00 they would get him a new cast!  He raced home, got the van and was on his way within minutes.  Thankfully, he made it in time and they got him a new properly fitted/padded cast.  Emma has been begging him to have a pink cast, so this time... he got half and half - just for her!  She was SO excited when she saw it that she started screaming and jumping up and down.  She's definitely got her daddy wrapped around her little finger!  Hopefully this will be the very last cast!

Trampoline

We hadn't told the kids about the trampoline, but when they saw the box in the garage yesterday they were SO excited!  We had to wait for the snow to melt, but the second Lennard walked in the door from work this afternoon they were hounding him to start putting the trampoline together!  I had leave to photocopy/laminate FHE kits for our upcoming RS activity, so by the time I got back, he'd got the main frame, mat and pad put together.  The kids were thrilled!

After dinner, I went out with him and we got the surround put together and installed.  It is so much better than our last trampoline that was literally falling apart every time the kids jumped on it.  We'd talked about trying to get the mat resewn, but this new trampoline was only slightly more expensive than resewing the mat and it came with the padding and surround.  We feel a lot better with the kids jumping on this one!