Goblin Valley 2012

Our vacation this year was down to Southern Utah (again) to Goblin Valley and Capital Reef.  We left on April 29th and returned on May 3rd.  So we had a lot to see and do in just those few days.

I love how much we can cram in our car.  It makes for a completely comfortable ride to wherever we're going...hahahaha!

We went through Price and made a stop at the Dinosaur Quarry.  Carson loves dinosaurs so this was fun for him.

Here's our campsite in Goblin Valley.  It was very beautiful.  But I have to say, I definitely didn't expect how windy it would be.  Maybe it was just during the time we were there but we had sand and dirt blowing into our tent and collapsing the sides while we were sleeping.  I was afraid it was going to smother Austin who was right by the side.  Needless to say, I didn't sleep well while we were here.  Also when we packed up the tent there was a scorpion under it.  I've never seen a live scorpion in my life and was kind of shocked and awed at the same time.  It was whitish-clear.  I thought they were only brown and black.  Hmm, go figure!  We left it alone and it left us alone.

The "goblins" were so much fun to play on.  You can see faces and creatures in the rocks (that's what makes it Goblin Valley).  It's fun to see what you can see.  The kids loved running and climbing and playing all over!  Tell me if you see what we saw in the faces of the rocks.

Moon River!!!  Never will you see this side of me again!

Kaylee thought this looked like a swan or a bird.

We saw a pirate in this one.

Now this one is just obvious!!!

This was a gorilla!

Pretty obvious too...an alien!

I thought this looked like a sheep's head

Okay, so we thought the first formation on the left looked like a pawn from a chess set, then the monkey that bangs the symbols together is in the middle and then best one ever is the last and that's Chester Cheetah!

This is the Little Wild Horse trail.

Love Kaylee's face on this one!

This was our third day.

Caramel Canyon by the Goblins.  Austin fell asleep so I stayed with him in the car.  Curt and the other kids explored this one.

This was my favorite hike.  It's Crack Canyon.  We had perfect weather.  It had become overcast and a the clouds had turned a little dark with just a few sprinkles.  We were a little worried at first since you're not supposed to hike slot canyons if it's bad weather but it turned out perfect and was so much fun!

Can you see the snake?

We did it!

Self-explanatory!

Hard to imagine so many people could live in this tiny house!

We hiked to Hickman Bridge.  It was a fun hike, too!

So cute!

Warming by the fire...yeah, right!

The school house!

We hiked to the Tanks but we saw the other things on our way there.  The pioneer names were cool.  We had a hard time finding them.  They were SO HIGH up on the canyon wall that we missed them on our way there.  We  only saw them on our way back.  We can only speculate how they got their names up that high!

Can you see us down there?

These are the Tanks!

I love the colors of this picture!

Here are the names!

I love the colors of this picture, too.

And of course...our hotel!  Finally a bed...and a pool for the kids!

On our way home we stopped at the Fremont Indian State Park.  There we saw TONS of petroglyphs and rock art.  It was amazing how much there was all in one small area.  The kids had fun climbing around especially in the little huts they have to look at.

I love the colors of the flowers.

 Our last stop was at Cove Fort, an LDS fort made of volcanic rock in 1867.   

It was neat to see all the furniture that they used back then.

I LOVE old stoves.  They are my favorite!

They weaved their own rugs

This was where the guns went to protect the fort and those inside.

Look at how green the grass is.  I love it!!!

I loved this because of the baby cradle.

On top where the sentries would patrol and look out over the walls of the fort.  Of course this is looking down into the fort.

This was a fun vacation full of lots of fun and activities.  Of course we were a little burned and a lot tired but we made lots of memories.

More Various Pictures of Austin

This was on a day that Bryce, Austin's best friend, came over to play.  I went downstairs to clean up their mess from down there and came up to this.  You leave 3 year olds alone for 10 minutes and this is what you get!  Who knew? 

This was at the mall with my brother, Jeff and his family.  Austin went around to all of them asking for quarters so he could ride the rides.  He got them, too.  So he must be cute in order to get such charity!

Austin and his cousin Tre at Grandma Nye's house while I was down in bed sick with the flu.  Thanks Grandma Nye and Grandma Moon for taking turns watching him while I attempted to get better.  It took me a whole week to get there.  We appreciate all you did!!!

Austin on his little electric four-wheeler.  He loves this thing and is getting more and more brave every day.  Not so sure that's a good thing since he's run into trees, over bumps and whatever else you can think of.  He thinks he's Evel Knievel...we're just hoping he doesn't turn into Super Dave Osborne!  This might be too old for some of you to understand but look it up and you'll get it!!!

Shelby's Election posters

So like last year Shelby ran for office this year.  She ran for Student Body Office but didn't make it.  Then we decided to make these Twilight posters (with a LOT of help from Uncle Brian) for 9th grade office.  Unfortunately she didn't make it but we LOVED how the posters turned out.  She did make STudent Body Historian.  She was VERY excited about that...and we were excited for her.  It's going to be a fun year for her next year! 

Thanks Bubba!!!

Easter 2012

On April 7th, 2012 was the Saturday before Easter.  So of course we went to the Easter Egg Hunt as is tradition.  We've kind of made it a tradition now to go to the West Point egg hunt with cousins, plus it's not as crowded.  This year was a little different though.  Curt was sick (turns out he had the flu...and eventually I got it) and Shelby was now ineligible since she was older than 12.  So it was just me, Kaylee, Carson and Austin.  We still had fun though.

Then that night we decorated eggs.  The kids were so excited!  Can you tell by Austin's face?  Too bad that Curt had to miss it but they kids still had fun.  They did miss Dad's funny eggs that he always makes!  We forgot to take pictures of the baskets that they got mainly because they had already gotten into them by the time I got up. 

Happy Easter!

Spring Break 2012

For Spring Break this year we really didn't have anything planned since our vacation will come later this year but we did decide to go four-wheeling one day.  We went out to the Knolls because it is so much fun for the kids to ride around and not have to worry about them getting lost since it's very wide open especially on the dried lake bed.  But to our surprise we found this "monument" or whatever you want to call it that we TOTALLY missed the last time we were there.  It looks like it's been there for a long time so I was wondering, "How could we possibly have not seen this last time we were here," but then I started looking around and things really tend to blend into the horizon line and I couldn't see the things that we saw last time we were there.  It's amazing how it works on your eyes.

Last time we never saw this sign until we got to the fence line warning us of the military bombing zone!  This was long before the fence line so we turned back instead of going that far again.

Here's the "monument".  It looks like a missile but Curt thinks it's a fuel tank from a jet painted all funky.  Then the wooden sign.  It's has things nailed, hung glued and whatever else to it.  Some of the things were really funny...especially to our kids like the giant pair of underwear and a bra!

Yes, that's a wheelchair at the top of the missile.

This is the wooden sign.  Right behind Shelby's head is the pair of underwear!  It was a lot of fun!  Carson also learned a very important lesson about following too close when he went over a bump and caught some serious air but thankfully landed but then if that wasn't enough he later ran into the back of Kaylee's four-wheeler because he was didn't want anybody to cut in front of him!  After that (and getting "sternly talked to" he eased up but we will have to see if it took effect next time we go out.