The start of our new adventure: Part 1-Utah

Warning:  this is going to be a pretty long post.  I'm finally getting to post pictures of our adventure.  I'm just now getting everything to where it feels like normal and so I thought I would update the blog for family, friends, and for me.  Nice to have things like this documented.  The night before we left on our behemoth of a trip across the country we had dinner with family, both sides since everyone was there for the wedding.

The picture of my Dad  was sneaky on my part, he is rarely captured in pictures despite being a photographer.  Glad I got this one.  (heehee)! Amber, and Stacey you are in the background and my cousin Tara is in the front, I only half snapped her into this pic.

Cousins and Aunt Holly.  We LOVED seeing everyone!  After an emotional evening for me we left with Matt and Stacey's family.  The plan was to spend a couple of days with them before heading east and spending time with more family after that. We had a fairly easy drive despite our trailer which wasn't designed for driving such long distances at all much less going over 70mph.  So we went about 65 the whole way which prolonged the agony inside the car.  The kids did well though and there was minimal fighting/whining/complaining because we swapped kids.  Alyssa went with her cousin Brynn and we had Talmage with us.  Movies, books, coloring and FOOD kept everyone occupied for the most part.

We got to Utah and spent 2 or 3 days with them and did stuff like this:

And this:

Poor Brynn was so excited to have Alyssa with her that she wasn't watching where she was going and when she started running to the next fun thing a metal rail was in the way.....we left after we got everything taken care of and everyone was calmed down.

Alyssa watched over her dutifully while we tried to get everyone loaded into the cars.  By the time the day was done they had enjoyed popsicles, water parks, and jumping on the trampoline.  They also got to do something else which caused my children great joy:

 This of course is a trampoline.  They got to SLEEP on it!!  They LOVED it and slept on it every night but one when one of my kids came in because it got cold.  They had so much fun and Matt and Stacey were such good sports to have us stay with them and entertain us so well!

Something else we did was to go to the Bean Museum.  A funny name for such a great museum!  All the animals are stuffed.  My kids and Alyssa in particular LOVED this place.  Afterwards we went to Bridal Vale Falls.  It was really pretty and green and the kids loved that as well, climbing on rocks, playing in ice cold water.....well maybe not the ice cold so much but they really didn't seem to mind after a few minutes of acclimating.  Here are some pics of the museum:

This museum had EVERYTHING. As you can tell Ethan was Loving it, although a few things scared him like the bears.  They are life-size so they were huge and very intimidating for a small boy.  I mostly tried to keep an eye on Brynn and Alyssa so that is who is mostly in these pictures.  I tracked Natalie and Talmage down several times but this is all they did:

Ok, that's not ALL they did.  But those two have a penchant for electronics.  They both love to read, play on the computer, watch tv...this was a learning center/tv room they had at the museum.  As you can see, ALL the kids liked it!  After the museum we went to Bridal Vale Falls.  Super pretty and lots of fun.  Here are some pics from that part of our fun:

Like I said, super fun and really pretty.  Stacey, aka super mom got in there with Miles which is pretty great since that water was so cold!  This might be the only picture I got of Miles because he was in the stroller most of the time.  Conner and Elly pretty much became best buds during this trip and he was always wanting to play with her and do what she did. This is what it looked like.  It was really cute.

Ethan wasn't interested in going in to the water.  It was WAY too cold for him.

Afterwards we went back to the house and did some more Popsicle eating and dinner.  We did go to one other water park.  It was just as fun as the first.  There was a little girl there who was trying to start a water fight.  Fine by me, the kids were at a water park.  As I watched though she was trying to get Talmage to fight against his cousin, Natalie, and he said no.  She wouldn't let up and kept pestering him, all the while picking on Natalie.  Everytime she tried to move and go somewhere out of the girls range she would hose her down even more. Sometimes in the back sometimes in the face.  I watched a few minutes as Natalie asked her to stop and Talmage said he wouldn't help her and she needed to stop because it was his cousin. She wouldn't so I stepped in.  There was a fountain behind her the just shot upward.  So I went over and put my hand over the fountain so that the water was shooting directly at her.  I got wet in the process but it was worth it when she said, "quit getting me wet!!!"  Turned to look back and saw me and ran out of the play area.....I might have laughed really hard....I know, not one of my finer moments but I wasn't gonna let her pick on our kids....We stayed in Utah at Matt and Stacey's for 2 or 3 days.  We were able to see Dan and Jessa, Preston, and Bethany as well.  We LOVED spending time with them were really sad when we had to go.

One thing Conner HAD to do before we left though:

 If you know my boys, they LOVE mowing the lawn, weedwacking, blowing, etc.  They love it and have their own weedwackers, blowers etc.  Conner mowed Matt and Stacey's front yard all my himself, AND started the weedwacker ALL BY HIMSELF!!  He was very proud of himself and I am proud of him too.  so much like his Dad and a joy to have in our family!

I should add here that we were supposed to go see my sister in Idaho.  The trailer we were hauling had some problems and technical difficulties and we didn't end up getting to do that, so hopefully they will be able to come and see us one day!!  Posting the rest of our trip in another post.  This one is too long already.