Family Vacation

So we left for the west coast about 2 1/2 weeks ago. We had a wonderful time seeing some family members and cruising from Vegas to Salt Lake City. The girls didn't exactly enjoy the ride out there, infact we discovered Emily needs Dramine before flying, yikes! We arrived late at night, rented a a mini van, and headed to the Benfields. The next afternoon we hung out at the park with Katrina and the kiddos. Ethan had a hard time with the water fountain-he tried getting a drink by licking water off his finger.

From Vegas we headed to St. George to hang out with Glen, Tammy, Brittney, Tyia, Natasha, Ryan, Ellen, Zach and Becky. Driving through the mountains was amazing. I took lots of shots of the mountains and rocks. Never having spent much time out west before, I was really amazed by what I saw. So many rocks and dirt, and funny cacti! The girls absolutely loved the giant green slide at Glen's house-I was a little worried about going down it without flip flops, and Sydney would not go down without riding on a lap or climbing up just a few steps and going down from there! Zach and Emily had no fear. Karl even managed to take out one of the chairs while going down with sydney on his lap, but she was ok!

We also got to teach Emily how to ride a scooter-usually Tyia's. I was amazed at how quickly she gained her balance and was zipping around in the wonderful backyard. She even made a few baskets in the backyard hoop.

After enjoying the beautiful weather in St. George we headed into a few dust storms on our way to Provo/Salt Lake. I saw my very first tumbleweed too! It was crazy looking out over the flat roads and seeing clouds of dust off in the distance. It was almost anticlimactic when we got to them though, I expected to hear the dust hitting the car. Luckily they weren't too bad and we were able to drive straight through.

After a dinner at another "Church of Mamma" aka Tyia's word for Chuck-o-Rama. We handed off the kiddos and headed out to Karl's missionary reunion. What we didn't know was that Karl's mom would get a nasty hour in traffic with a sick Sydney. Too much chocolate milk at dinner :( We bought a booster seat that night! Grandmothers should not have to do that! And many thanks to her roomate and friendly neighbor who helped her get Sydney and the car seat out of her car.

We got to attend 2-3 sessions of conference while we were in town. It was both of our first times at Live Conference, so that was really special. SLC was a little colder and wetter than we expected but after a quick stop in Tyia's closet, and DI we were ready for cold & wet! Let's hear it for the weather channel. They were so wrong!!!

My cousin Greg was able to borrow a car and come down to go with Karl in the evening. Who knew BYU wasn't in Salt Lake?? Not me! That was a surprise!! We also got to play a few rounds of killer Phase 10. Another interesting highlight was learning that the you can actually chose to skip whomever you want not just the person sitting immediately next to you! Lizzie and I unfortunately missed the object of fewest points possible and headed for the high roller points club instead!!! On Sunday evening, we got to see some of Karl's cousins he had not seen in years for dinner. We'll have to make sure we don't go so long next time.

On Monday we went back to Provo, met up with Greg and Cami for lunch at the BYU Creamery, then headed up to Squaw Peak for a beautiful view of the valley. Tha't where we got some great shots of the mountains, and of all of us. We kep on going through to St. George. Karl got to hang out with Glen & Rynn at work and go on a few jobs with them.
Wednesday we headed back to Las Vegas, but in order to get there we took a small detour through some serious back roads trying to get to the highway, after driving for a few miles in the mountains on dirt roads, we finally ended up going under the highway. oops! Then we ended up in a construction site where a very kind construction worker lead us out of the dusty mess. I should have gotten a shot of the car. It was absolutely filthy!

We ended up in a different time zone at Katrina's house. The kids all had a fun time playing together, but we had lots of rocks on Astroturf with 4 kids in a backyard with bulldozers and dump trucks. Back to the Benfields for the night, then a wonderful outing to the Las Vegas Strip. Lions, and tigers and bears, oh my! The kids Loved the Lion exhibit. We got there right as it opened, and the lions came out. The trainers had some toys and giant rawhide bones for them. When we were on our way back to the car at the end of our voyage we got to see the trainer curled up with his favorite lion sleeping. The lion had her her head on his arm, legs were intertwined and everything! So crazy. The trainer woke up first and decided to wake the other 3 up. He tickled them, grabbed their faces blew on them. Then he licked one of them right on the mouth! Yum. Lion breath! I also can't imagine kissing something that could bite your face off is she was annoyed with you!

We also went to M&M world, and walked up out of around there. Then we tired to hit a show before lunch, but failed. The show was cancelled for the day. We had lunch at my favorite Western invenetion! In-N-Out Burger. Yummy yummy yummy I got food in my tummy! Chocolate milkshakes and fry sauce! Then we hit an Old Nevada Mining town which we could not decide-was it run down deliberately, or was it just a run down place! The petting zoo was fun. We saw some really unusual animals, and a lot of animals wondering free. Since Karl has such a great history with llamas, when we saw one out for a walk, we had to get at least one picture of Karl petting the llama. That was a huge dust cloud coming off of it! Sydney also kept finding little goat pies or whatever critter, and then wiping her hands on her shoes to get it off, so nasty! After that Emily caught some sort of bug, and ran a fever, we had a fun little get together with all the Las Vegas folks, ate cake for Karl's birthday and then hung out with whoever was still up. I learned Madeline can lift her legs in all kinds of ways that you just don't normally see people do. Her goal is to be able to get both legs behind her head at the same time. just thinking of that makes mine hurt! I also learned about the many wonderful uses for a scroll saw. Wendy, I finished painting the Halloween ones! So cute!

We prepped the kids for the flight with Dramine and snacks for the flight home. We got off to a good start, but still managed to be at the gate with one a few minutes to spare. How that works I just don't know. We have a gift. Emily was still running a fever, so waiting in line was a little rough. We got on the plane, then Emily fell asleep. Sydney had a much harder time getting used to the plane but conked out on me for at least 75% of the flight home. It was a much better ride than the way out, but I think I'd like to hold off on flying with kids for a little while.

We are thrilled to have made the trip, and we definitely want to make sure we get out there much sooner than before.

On another note, we killed off our fish, again! The pond almost dried up and I added more water, and poof, they were dead the next day. So do we get more? We can clean out the pond and start over from scratch or just fill it in and add more lawn to the area, or build a sandbox.

For pictures of the trip go to my flickr page and click on the Family vacation block. If anyone wants more, email me and I will send you full size pics.