St. George

From September 2nd to September 5th (which was Labor Day) Curt's parents invited us to go down to St. George, Utah with them and they were going to take us to see The Little Mermaid at the Tuachan Amphitheater.  We had never been down there and it sounded like a great idea.  We left Friday, the 2nd in the morning and got down there with enough time to relax a little before going to the play that night.

This is our hotel.  The room with the light on was Grandma and Grandpa Nye's and then ours is just to the left.

Here we are at the theater.  It was so pretty there.

Here are the kids with Grandma and Grandpa.

Austin liked walking on these little walls that had the waterfall running down it.

Jeff and Holly came, too.  So here are the girls with their cousin Cassidy.

Carson is very happy because he has his own refreshments.  Now he can have a good time.

What a stinker.  I was worried about him and he was kind of hard to deal with during the first half but the second half he was tired so he just sat on my lap and it was much easier.

In this picture it's hard to see but they had water coming from behind the stage down a river way and then it spilled out onto the stage.  It was so COOL!!!

Then the ship sailed out onto the stage with all the water still running on the stage.

Of course we had to do these!!!

This is King Triton.  His body was all painted brown with glitter.  Austin kept looking at him like he he was trying to decide whether to be scared or not.

Here is Ariel and the prince.  The line was WAY too long to go see them so we just took a picture.

SWIMMING

This is the pool at the hotel.  It had a little kiddie pool, a bigger pool (pictured above) with a waterfall and a hot tub.  The kids had a ton of fun.

We had this little life jacket at home that we brought for Austin and I guess when they first put him in the water with it on it pushed him face first into the water and scared him.  So he didn't really like it after that.

He did like swimming with Daddy, though.

SATURDAY

While Grandma and I stayed back at the hotel and let the kids swim Grandpa and Curt went four-wheeling up in the hills of St. George.  Here are some of the things that they saw.

SUNDAY

Sunday was the 4th, so that meant that it was also Kaylee's 10th birthday.  We decided that we would go to the 11:00 session of church down there and then come back and do her presents.  The church house was right across the street from the temple so we stopped to look around before we headed back to the hotel.

BIRTHDAY TIME!

Here is the birthday girl before we went to church in the morning.

Time to open presents!!!

She wanted a Madame Alexander Doll or one kind of like that and this is the one that she had picked out.  Look at that surprise on her face...or is just pure happiness?  I can't tell!

New clothes from Grandma and Grandpa!

New doll clothes from both Grandma and Grandpa Nye and also Grandma Moon.  She sent her present down with us.

Make a wish!

Spanking Machine!!!

Then we went to Olive Garden for lunch.  YUM!!!

Here is another cake that the people at Olive Garden brought out to her.  She had a great birthday.  In her words, "The best birthday ever!!!"  Of course she says that every year but that just tells me that we're doing a good job.  Happy birthday my sweet, 10 year old baby girl!!!

Jacob Hamblin Home
After Olive Garden we decided to go to the Jacob Hamblin Home which is close to Santa Clara.  Jacob Hamblin was a pioneer who Brigham Young sent down here to help negotiate with the Indians.  The Indians all respected him and he was a great missionary for the LDS Church.

If you look in this picture above us you can tell that the deck is slanted.  They said that they did that because it aided in the drying of corn and other vegetables.

I don't know if I would do really well in a bedroom like this.  What if I was in the far bed and had to get up to go to the bathroom?  There's no room to walk and it looks a BIT claustrophobic.

This is a stone that someone found that apparently Jacob Hambline wrote his name on after his second wife died.  He was very sad when that happened.

This is the missionary that took us through.  Also if you look towards the top of the house you can see a branding iron with the letters JH for Jacob Hamblin.

Pine Valley, Utah

After Jacob Hamblin we ended up just driving for a little while and came to this little, tiny town called Pine Valley.  It was like what you would see in a movie of what a little town looks like.  There was this amazing old, white church house built in 1867 that they still use.  It's one of the longest continuously used church houses in the Church.  Also the logs that were used to build the Salt Lake Tabernacle Organ came from Pine Valley.  We thought that was very cool.

Then they had this little reservoir that we decided to get out and take a look at.  It was very pretty up there.

Love the doll.  What a great grandpa to do that with his granddaughter!!!

Somebody was naughty so he had to have a timeout on the rock.

Cute kids!!!

 

Up there is also a National Forest that we went in to look around.  They had very nice campgrounds and trails.  Curt and I went on this trail to see if we could find the sawmill.  We gave up after a little while because the trail got kind of soggy and we were in sandals.  But on this trail we also saw a deer.  It was very close to us and just watched us watching it.  Then I think it got bored because it turned and walked away.

Such a pretty place and maybe we'll go there again someday.

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Nye for such a wonderful experience.  We are so grateful to you for everything.  You're terrific!!!