First Stop - St. George

We headed out for a family trip yesterday. We are going to Newport, but made a stop in St. George last night. We invited Iveth and Diego to come with us. Before we left, we went to church. Well I went to church with 8 little kids...

...and Corey and Iveth and Diego and Mel and Abi all went to music and the spoken word. (I'll try to get Corey's pics of that) The boys had gone to Snowbird to do the sacrament up there. Peter looked so cute today!

 

After church, we came back here for a quick lunch, then loaded up and left. Corey stayed for a meeting, so it was me driving our van with Iveth and Diego following me and Corey was going to come later and the older kids were driving with his parents. Corey insisted we should go see Zion's National Park, but we ended up not making it there cause I've never been (pathetic I know) and so I didn't know what to do or see and plus I was exhausted mentally and had a van full of kids who didn't care and a baby who was hungry to nurse, so we bailed on that and just went straight to the St. George. Cute Daniel in the car - love that little face

Watching a church movie.

We had a potato bar for dinner and the kids were able to talk with Corey's parents, that was nice to have time to visit.

And then they all played some simple games before going to bed.

We played outside too until someone yelled from their window telling us to be quiet, oops!

The Highlight of St. George for me was taking a little walk this morning with Iveth and Diego to Owen's Loop.

I like these two. They are good friends even though we've barely known each other for 2 months!

It was a beautiful morning hike. You could see all of St. George.

We saw the sun rise -

It ended well, but it also was a reminder to me of how Zion's might have gone for us if we had gone yesterday on our own and without going with someone with first hand knowledge, cause we had a learning curve even trying to go on this little walk. We went to the place that google maps told us, but it was not the trailhead. We tried to climb it for a few minutes until we were positive it was not the right way to the trail, then we googled some more and found the trailhead, but there wasn't a place to park, so we drove further until we found a place and then we had to trek up the hill to the trail. I had left Peter with Mel, and he was freaking out, I felt bad. I missed her calls for help until it was too late - she had already suffered with him screaming and he finally gave up on me returning. But we still ran back to the car and back to the room. And she sent me this pic once we were driving telling me that he finally quieted down.

After the hike, they had to head back to Salt Lake cause Diego had work at 1. We headed to Newport and we survived the drive - cute picture of these 3, sleepy kids, it was a long drive. I was glad we broke it up with the stop in St. George.

We are stopping in Las Vegas for two nights on the way home. It was a rush of activity when we got here to Newport. We were a little late getting in and they had to hurry out - it was with a groupon thing Corey got last week, they are whale watching today and renting boogie boards and a small boat tomorrow. The kids are all out whale watching with Corey and his Dad right now, it was a rush of activity as soon as we got here. Beach time is in the plans too, no Disneyland this year. I'm with Corey's mom and Daniel and Peter and we're biding our time until they get back. Daniel loved this homemade Skee Ball game!

We spent most of our evening there.

The Newport Coast Villas are nice. Each year there seems to be a little something they add or change to make it a little more fun.