FIRST ROAD TRIP

California bound! We left on a Saturday morning (pic most likely taken while Devin was in the gas station). We stopped in Lehi, UT to let the kids play at Thanksgiving Point Natural Curiosity Museum for an hour and get lunch before making the trek to St George to stay the weekend with our friends, Mitchell and Farrah Stoker.

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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Trekking home

 We ended up leaving our hotel at 3am, transferred the kids to the van and drove with sleeping kids for the next 3.5 hrs. I REALLY wanted to stop at the Seven Magic Mountains since we didn't get to on the way down and I was afraid we'd get there too early to wake the kids up but the sun just happened to be rising shortly before we got there and the kids were starting to wake. It was the perfect stop at the perfect timing! 

It's an incredible sight! I'm so thankful for whoever decided to do this :) Made a fun way for my kids to wake up and made leaving California a little less sad. Owen was amazed to see a sign that said to watch for venomous snakes in the area...we stayed on the trails for the most part. There was also a sketchy photo shoot going on behind the rock that the girls were standing in front of. Something to do with a scandalous buzz light year outfit...we stayed on our side of the rock and they stayed on theirs, thankfully. 

It wouldn't be a family vacation without Owen getting sick :/ His cough started a little bit on Tuesday night and we only noticed it in the evenings throughout the week but he slept fine. It wasn't until that last night at the hotel (Friday) that it had him coughing through the night. It was at 3 am that I decided to try giving him his inhaler and that's when I realized there were no more puffs left. I woke up Devin to tell him that there were no more puffs left and that's when we decided to just go ahead and leave. We already had the car packed because we were planning on leaving around 5 or 6 to beat traffic but I'm so glad we got many hours of driving in with the kids asleep. 

The cough continued on Saturday and I was able to get his inhaler transferred to the pharmacy in St George. Still, Owen had trouble breathing most of Saturday night so I took him to urgent care Sunday morning certain that he had an ear infection because he was starting to have a runny nose too. His ears ended up being fine...just decided that he had allergies that started in California either due to the air or possible pet dander or mold in the hotel room we stayed at. The allergies caused drainage down the back of his throat that were causing the cough and we were prescribed an antibiotic to keep it from turning into an ear infection or pneumonia. Poor boy can't catch a break but he adapts and deals with it so well. 

It was so nice to enjoy a final day in St George. The kids loved running around the nice park downtown, we got yummy sandwiches at One Hot Grill where Devin "broke" their ice machine, haha. Mitchell and Farrah also had a really fun park near their house where the kids had a blast - all the kids there had motorized cars and scooters that they ride there from their houses and Lucy got to ride in a fancy princess carriage :) We also got to go to dinner with Mitchell and Farrah again at Icebox by Snow Canyon, sat at their favorite table and had so many good laughs. 

We left at the perfect time for Lucy to nap on our way up to Spanish Fork, where Devin's Uncle Steven and Aunt Alexandria welcomed us for dinner and fun conversation. Our kids loved their basement where all the toys were for the grandkids. We feel so lucky to have nice friends and family welcome us into their homes - it seriously helped us so much with our first road trip! 

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