When my mom got their vacation home in St. George, the seed was planted to maybe take the kids there this summer. Kacee and her girls were going to have a week in June that her husband and boys were gone, so kind of last minute we decided to meet in Salt Lake and drive to St. George for the week! It took my kids and I about 9-10 hours to get there (yikes). But we had such a fun week! It was SO hot while we were there, like 110 degrees hot. So honestly we couldn't be outside too much. There was a little park right by the house that the kids would hit up first thing in the morning before it got too hot. But it was hot by 9:00 AM!
But we found the Washington Rec Center that had this awesome indoor/outdoor swimming pool and waterslide. The kids loved it! They also had some fun rock climbing walls. Aubrey was a climbing champ! I love when she gets determined and pushes herself to accomplish a goal. She made it to the top of two different walls!
We also hit up Nielson's Frozen Custard twice while we were there. I didn't partake this trip, but it is quite delicious! We shopped and saw a movie one day. We also got tickets to Shrek the Musical at Tuacahn. Wow! I had never been to Tuacahn before, but it is quite the venue....such a cool stage set right against the huge red rocks. The show was really funny and everyone loved it! The kids have been singing the songs ever since!
We had dinner one night over at Grandma Andersen's with Susan, Jerry, and Gray. Always so fun to catch up with them! Grandma gave the girls a bunch of make-up to play with. And they ran around the golf course in the backyard. They all just played so well that us adults got to sit around and chat for hours! And can I just say, these kids are seriously so awesome. The whole trip, they just played together, had slumber parties, came up with games and fun things to do, watched shows, and they all got along, and they just let us run them ragged! A couple of the nights we didn't get home until midnight! Such good kids and fun cousins!!
Our biggest outing was the last day, we went to Zion's National Park. We all went there together several years ago and did a couple of the hikes. So this time we decided to try The Narrows. We drove the hour to Zion, waited an hour for the shuttle, took the 45 minute shuttle ride to the base of the hike. Then we started hiking! The Narrows is a huge slot canyon with water running through the whole thing. We weren't exactly sure what to expect, but it was crazy! We had opted against spending the money to rent special socks and shoes and walking sticks. So we showed up in our Nikes and rompers with our Vera Bradley back packs and a gaggle of small children. It was a lot more intense than we expected! The water was freezing (which mostly felt good), but the rocky terrain under the water was so hard to walk through! You couldn't see where you were stepping and had nothing to hold onto. Those walking sticks would have really come in handy! Although, I'm not sure I could have used it since I was holding Charlotte's hand the whole time. I can't believe no one got injured! And the water also got really deep in spots....several times it was up to Charlotte's armpits! But the views!! Oh my, it really is breathtaking. We took a ton of pictures. We ended up hiking for about 6 hours (up and back). At one point we almost turned around because the kids were getting really tired. But we talked to a family that had been up further to what they call "Wall Street" and said we had to push on and get there! So we tricked the kids into thinking it was only "about another 20 minutes or so" and we made it to Wall Street! We had a couple melt downs, a couple falls, and poor Charlotte chafed her little legs on her romper and could hardly walk by the end. But we did it!! It was so incredible, exhausting, fun, memorable, and just so cool. We all slept well that night.
It really was such a fun week! A definite highlight of the summer. And as a bonus, we got to see Mary and brand new baby Ivy on our way back home!!
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