California here we come

We headed out to Santa Barbara on a Saturday afternoon and arrived very early Sunday morning. The drive went pretty well minus an incident in Las Vegas, some throwing up, and almost running out of gas somewhere around Barstow. The first day we took it easy and visited the turtles,

played at a cool park,


played in some cool trees,

and visited some very cool cousins.The next day we went up to Solvang (one of my favorite tourist stops) and hit all the highlights.

Kissing the bear,
sitting in a shoe,
buying Christmas ornaments, and eating pancakes at Paula's.
Later on in the day we went to the Santa Barbara zoo where the favorite attraction was not the otters or giraffe, but sliding down the fake grass on boxes.
We ended the day on the pier eating fish at my favorite restaurant. I just wish the family picture could have had one of us looking at the camera.

Life Goal #2, check.

This post was started by Natalie so it says that she wrote it. That is a slanderous lie. How dare you not allow me to correct this Blogger, how dare you?

I'm a little slow but this must be documented. This girl made her debut on the slopes. Didn't I just write this post about Addie? Yikes.

I don't know if you can tell from her face but she kind of liked it.

We took both girls up to Alta on the last Saturday that it was open so Lizzie could get one day in this season. If we didn't make it up that day she wouldn't have gone until she was three. That is unacceptable. Lizzie loved it as long as we were going fast. Every time we had to stop or go slow she was unhappy. When we sped up she laughed and sang. Her rendition of "Bah Bah Black Sheep" during an extended fast time brought many looks and laughs. I have to say, it really was a good version of the song.

Addie got taken off of the Racer Chaser and skied by herself on the big hill, not the rope-tow, for the first time. She was a little scared and had her share of falls but did really well considering. I did regret teaching her that falling down can slow you down if you are completely out of control. The definition of "completely out of control" is very very relative. Next lesson for Addie will include how to get up by yourself. In all honesty though she did really well and made huge steps toward being able to ski by herself.


Here is the happy family. Notice how Lizzie has one ski on and one boot without a ski. She decided to hit her skis together near the end of the lift ride. That continued until... POP, one ski was suddenly on the ground. Luckily it was right at the top of the lift so we didn't have to walk too far to get it. I don't know how many times I have heard not to do that but I have never seen anyone lose a ski. That trend is now broken.

Honestly, I don't know if many things could make me happier than pictures like these. Why didn't I go up every weekend with the girls? Mental note for next year.

And a farewell picture from the punk of the day. Life is officially good.

No monsters allowed!

This is what we have resorted to. I'll let you know how it goes.

Red Cliffs

At the end of every trip I flip into what Nick calls my "Go-mode." That means it is time to pack up and get on the road as quickly and efficiently as possible. We had accomplished this and were headed North toward home when I mentioned that I really had wanted to go to Red Cliffs. We were just coming up to the exit and Nick said, "Then let's go." To which I responded, "No." We were on our way and, in my head, the vacation was over. Yet, after a bit more discussion, the car made its way off the freeway at the Leeds exit. Weird. This is what we found...

I feel like a southwestern version of "The Hills are Alive" would be appropriate here but I am also scared of what that might sound like. Don't they seem disappointed to be running outside and not driving home?


Option a) Hearing two hours of senseless knock-knock jokes. Option b) this picture. Let's take a vote. Rachel also seemed thrilled to be in her front carrier.


I kind of think the two pictures above stand by themselves. I know I have been guilty of picture overload for the last couple of posts but honestly, really, if you had these pictures you would post them too. Don't tell me you wouldn't.

This is the waterfall that you can slide down into the pool. We did not enjoy that activity on this particular trip but trust me when I say it is worth it.

Somehow making this spontaneous trip through the desert and up to the waterfall made Lizzie some sort of a superhero. Addie also was given some superpowers but instead of flaming sunshine hair, her outward manifestation is the ability to make incredible goofy faces. The jury is still out as to which is the superior power. But I think we all can agree that, at least in this case, the ability to switch out of go-mode and back into play-mode was well worth the time. So here is to spontaneity, superpowers, and getting home after midnight.

Same Place, Different Trip

Did I mention that I am moving? Okay not really but I kind of felt like I moved for March and April. As soon as Easter was over I packed back up and headed to... St. George. It was spring break so I followed my sister down on Monday through the wind and rain with just me and the three girls. We spent a great week with my oldest sister and her kids. A little bit later in the week another one of my sisters came down and my parents as well. It was a really relaxing week where we did a little bit of everything.

We revisited Crystal Island and Addie was just as thrilled this time as the first.

We also took another dirt road from Crystal Island to a place called Little Black Mountain. There were some petroglyphs but they weren't as good as the last petroglyph hike we went on. The drive was really fun though and it was in the middle of NOWHERE. The rest of the trip was swimming, shopping, eating, and playing and it was wonderful.

On Friday Nick drove down with his sister and parents and I met up with them at the Hudson house. Nick and Sara started their vacation nice and relaxing.


This is Nick's finishing time for the 10K. It was his best yet.

Sara did her first 5K and did awesome as well.

Nick took 5th place overall and the girls were just a little bit excited to see him run fast.


The rest of trip was full of swimming,

sunning,


exploring new and exciting places (like the dump),



climbing rocks,

contemplating the impossible,


and eating really good cupcakes.

Bunny Fluffy Bunny

I am really behind right now, but I still wanted to get my pictures up. We had a great Easter and conference weekend. Saturday night we dyed Easter eggs with all the cousins. I don't have any pictures of that activity which is a shame because it is my favorite holiday tradition ever. On Sunday we:

1) Found baskets
2) Had Nick's family over for brunch

3) Wrestled with Poppy

4) Went to my families for dinner, had a big Easter egg hunt, played games, and let the kids stay up way too late.
Lizzie did pretty well at finding the eggs.

And Addie was quite proud of herself for finding the "harder" eggs. Suddenly I have "Eye of the Tiger" playing in my head. Weird.

It was a wonderful Easter. We got to spend time with a lot of our families and the girls really truly enjoyed it. They don't always enjoy the things we think they will or should so having one actually work out was definitely a bonus.

Scout Cave

The final installment of "Different Things to do in St. George" is another hike. A new one though. We decided to try out the hike to Scout Cave. It is right outside of Snow Canyon. We hike to Johnson's Canyon all the time which is the same trail head. We have always wondered what Scout Cave was and this time we found out. It was a cool hike, harder then expected, and definitely not something to do in the hotter weather as you were hiking out in the middle of the desert most of the time.

This is the extent of the cave. It is more like a big grotto (yep, I just wanted to say grotto) than a cave but it is cool. Not deep but really tall.


Lizzie does not like caves at all, as is very evident in the picture below.


As you can see in this picture, the cave is very remote. The funny thing is that you can't actually walk through the neighborhood in the background, you do a three mile hike to circumnavigate the defenses. They have fences, gates, a special forces team, and a sniper or two. The people that built that neighborhood went on to make the Green Zone in Baghdad. It totally makes sense though, you know how dangerous those hiking families can be.



And finally here are a couple pictures of cute kids in a cool cave.




I think that is all from our trip. As you can see we did a bunch of new stuff as well as a lot of the normal things. Hopefully you can tell from the last hundred posts or so though that it was a great trip. (As you can probably tell this is Nick)