We got to St George around 4:30pm with enough time to get situated and let the kids enjoy some SUN before we left them to go out to dinner. It was SO nice of Jaida (their oldest) to watch all the kids! We feel so lucky to have had a place to break up the drive and spend quality, uninterrupted time with our friends...we always laugh so much when we're together - Mitchell is Devin's best friend from high school.
After church on Sunday they took us to the glitter mountain, which is a pit of shiny, translucent crystal in the mountain side. The wind almost blew us over while we were there! My kids were being daredevils climbing on all the rocks - Ava jumped from a ledge and slid on loose dirt when she landed and scraped her knee so she wasn't very happy for picture taking :(
Next, they took us to Pioneer Park which has red rock hiking/climbing. This narrow passageway called Slot Canyon got so thin at one point I felt like I only had an inch in front of my nose while hiking sideways! The views at the top were incredible though, St George is a beautiful place!
Owen was a trooper being the only boy with everyone, except Mason who is 1.5 haha, but Ava and their girls were almost always off together somewhere scootering or dancing to music in the garage or facetiming each other on their ipads that I don't even have a picture of them! Mitchell was nice to give Owen attention and show him his magic tricks and do "challenges" with him :)
One morning Mitchell was talking to Owen about St George and asking if he liked being at their house and Owen said yeah, and Mitchell told Owen he thinks there will be lots of people at Disneyland and Owen said yeah, because Disneyland is more fun than your house! Oh geez, haha.
We left St George Monday morning and drove all the way to Baker, California to stop and get lunch at Del Taco. The plan was also to run around outside a bit but the wind there was INSANE! Our kids honestly did so well in the car. I got the idea from Homegrown Traditions to pack a "book bag", that had a bunch of books from either the library or our bookshelves that they haven't seen recently so they felt new. I also had an art bag with coloring books and stickers and new markers and the magic markers that only color on special paper. I also had a game bag with dry erase doodle/mazes/dot to dot and brain quest games and word puzzles and stuff. Between movies in the car, rotating through these bags for an hour at a time, and listening to music/audiobooks they did great!
Nothing hit us more than the lovely, fragrance of Southern California as we got out of the car at our hotel that afternoon. Next, the warmth of a perfect 70 degrees. Turns out, the hotel pool was outside and not heated, haha, but that didn't stop our kids. They hopped from the hot tub to the pool a million times. Once they got their fill of swimming we got dressed and headed to the pier at Huntington Beach.
So Cal happened to be experiencing the Santa Ana winds when we got there so we're glad we brought jackets/coats! We walked all the way to the end of the pier and got to see the sun set but then we quickly turned around to walk back and Ava couldn't believe we walked all the way to the end in the wind "for nothing" haha.
It was so hard to see the sand and the beach and not play in it so I took Owen and Lucy down to play in the sand for a bit while Devin took Ava to some stores up above since she didn't have a coat. Owen was in heaven and we were so excited to come back the next day. We had talked about doing Disneyland on Tuesday and Wednesday but after getting there on Monday and being near the beach we knew we needed a day to relax and enjoy the beach first. I'll post about the beach days after my Disney posts :)
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Oh my goodness! I want to go on a roadtrip with you! All of those bags sound so fun! I bet the kids LOVED that.
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