Tiny Vacation to Utah

To our family of homebodies a second vacation in a month is pretty crazy! But I think after the Colorado experience our kids were more used to things being not normal, vacation-style, no-schedule. This Utah trip went really surprisingly well! We did ensure a couple of things happened for the trip to be smooth: non-stop flight Austin-Salt Lake City, and staying with friends who have kids/grandkids, who's houses are child-proof and full of toys/entertainment. On our flight there, our booked three seats turned into four when a lady next to us moved up a row. It was nice for everyone to have a spot and to not be crammed. The kids are small enough to fit into one seat, but the constant quarreling and fighting about things gets annoying really quickly in a small airplane. Ophelia was pretty easy occupied with watching something and coloring/doodling, but Emerson as usual is hard to please. The fingerplays, songs, and bouncing him on my knees worked best to make the time pass, oh, and food, of course. He also enjoyed patting a sleeping gentleman in front of us on the head and standing on the armrest flirting with ladies sitting behind us...

At first we stayed with our wonderful old friends, the Clark family. They have three beautiful very active children, so needless to say our kids had lot of fun there! We took the kids to Temple Square:

Ophelia was working on her picture-taking skills:

I'm not going to post the dozen pictures of the sidewalk that she took, but here are a few of the flowers that were pretty good:

She came up to a random couple sitting by the sidewalk and asked to take a their picture with our camera!!!! And they said "Sure!". She didn't push the button hard enough, so the picture was never actually taken, but good grief...that girl is not shy! And people just can't say no to her!

The beautiful temple:

Ten years ago it was just the two of us on this pedestal taking our wedding pictures, but look at us now, definitely multiplied:

The kids really liked the Christus statue. Emerson enjoyed the acoustics in this room and kept yelling "ECHO!!" at the top of his lungs, so we had to leave pretty quickly to avoid being escorted out:

In the visitor's center Ophelia enjoying pushing all the different buttons and watching all these beautiful videos:

Before we left, we let the kids splash around in these fountains. Emerson got soaked! He loved it until the one straight shot into his face :) I have a great video of that, but I submitted it to America's Funniest Home Videos, so I had to take it down from any "public" websites.

With the crazy vacation schedule, our whole nap routine was out the door, so the kids slept in the rental car a lot. And with all these places to see and things to do, they were wiped out a lot. Also, late bedtime added to them being extra tired during the day. The Clarks live out in Eagle Mountain, so we had a usual drive of one hour one-way if we wanted to go anywhere. PJ and I appreciated quiet car rides though!

Our friend Mash came out to EM with her hubby James and their kids for a bit. Here is their sweet little baby:

Here is the blue-eyed team of our kids and the Clark kids:
                                          

Good times! It was so fun to spend time with those guys! Olya took our family pictures while we were there too. She is an amazing photographer, so I can't wait to see the results!

We went to visit Provo one of the days. This is a the playgroup at Wymount where we used to live the last 2 years of our BYU career. The place looked the same, beautiful and clean, but the playgrounds seemed awfully small! I guess when we had not kids we really couldn't judge that and had nothing to compare to. So many wonderful memories of Provo and our first married years flowed into my head as we were driving around. Ahhh, nostalgie!

Beautiful temple, gorgeous mountains:

Can you spot the Y in the back?

This is where PJ first laid his eye on me! Jamba Juice!

And this is the bench where PJ proposed to me :) The kids weren't as excited about it as we were:

Saturday was the big event for which we made our family trek out to Utah: Aaron and Ada's wedding. It was a beautiful small ceremony at the International Peace Gardens and the reception followed at a nearby park. It was so perfect to have the reception by the playground, and the sandpit. We look like a family of little people compared to the newlyweds over here:

Emerson was just finished eating a batch of sand, so that's why he is shirtless...I was trying to clean his sandy face up!

After the wedding, we headed to our second stop, the Hegji's home, or, as Ophelia kept calling them, the Hedgehogs. So wonderful to have had our kids meet my other set of parents! They are wonderful and so loving. We had an awesome visit with them!

Ophelia knew for a while that her actual birthday will be spent in Salt Lake City, so we kept telling her that we won't have any big parties then, but that we'd celebrate the following weekend. But in reality it turned out that we celebrated a lot that day. In the morning Aaron's Mom put a candle in a doughnut and everyone sang her a happy birthday. (We were in Orem for Aaron's sister's baby blessing.)

To continue her birth day, the Hegji's got Ophelia a beautiful princess cake, which she was most excited to eat, ever since she saw it the night before.

She sure enjoyed that pink frosting:

Our trip to Utah was only five days long, but seemed much linger because we did so many things, saw so many people, visited so many places. While in Orem is stopped to see my good friend from freshman year, Angie and her cute family. It was a short visit, but was so good to see how wonderfully they are doing. Ah, just not enough time for all of our Utah friends... Oh, well...till next time!

Rocky Mountain High, Colorado!

I've heard this song from PJ so many times during our Colorado vacation I had to ask him to stop! I think it was every time he looked at the mountains that reminded him of that song, and the mountains were surrounding us EVERYWHERE. It was the most beautiful thing, for someone who lives in the hill country. 

We decided to drive overnight this time... We did have some peaceful moments and things that worked well, but for the most part in was a torture! On the way there, for the first two hours of our trip, while the kids were awake, we were confident that we're glad we weren't driving during the day. The bag of travel toys that I prepared for them did not keep their attention for longer than 1 minute per toy, and then each one wanted the other one's toy the whole time. It was a mess! Our only saving grace was the DVD player. At least it kept Ophelia very occupied. Emerson seemed uncomfortable in his carseat the whole trip. He woke up about every 45 minutes to an hour and would wake up Ophelia at times. We made lots of stops, in the middle of the night, both kids awake, full of energy, at 1 am, at 2:30 am, at 5 am. I'm sure the people at gas stations were wondering why in the world we were keeping our kids awake this hour of the night...while I was wondering what in the world is keeping our kids awake? If it was me in the backseat, I'd sleep the whole night and not even care that my head was bobbing all over the place. PJ and I stayed awake the whole night, trying to keep each other awake. And towards the end I was not sure if it was a good idea to drive through the night any more. By morning time though, we did make it to Colorado. When the sun started to rise, we started to see the amazing mountains surrounding us.

Later on our vacation, we made a four hour trip during the day when it was supposed to be nap time. We were all miserable...each child slept for a total of 20 minutes, and at different times of the trip, not together... There was a lot of whining, drama, crying, screaming... So, I would say, the trip was the hardest part of our vacation, and the part that I didn't like the most. I don't know if our kids are high maintenance or what, but they do not travel well, at least Emerson. On the way back, Ophelia slept really well, only woke up once, but Emerson was up and down the whole night again!

Here is the sunrise over Colorado mountains:

Yay, we made it!

We stayed at a place called the Chinook Lodge in South Fork, in a cabin. Mark and Camille and Winstie stayed in another cabin, and Grandma and Grandpa were in their camper. Emerson has started calling Winstie "Tee-tee", so Winston decided to call Emerson "Tee-tee" as well. It was so funny every morning when they saw each other from afar, they'd start running toward each other and both scream "Tee-tee!!", and give big hugs.

Both boys were super early risers the whole time in Colorado. As in 5 am early risers... I think part of it has to do with a little cold, stuffy noses, and drainage they had. Part of it was the one hour time difference with Texas. Part of it was not being at home, in their rooms and cribs. Emerson napped great though! Most days for three hours straight!

The weather was wonderful there! In the 50s at night, sometimes colder, 60s and 70s during the day. It was a nice break from Texas heat!

One of the first days, we went up to Creede, a small mountain touristy town. Mark and PJ are carrying the boys on their backs:

With Grandpa, resting on rocks. Ophelia has a bag of Cheetos in hand, a special treat that Grandma sent along.

This was the kids very first time in Colorado. I think their little bodies adjusted to the altitude pretty quickly, because I did not notice them ever getting out of breath. Emerson wanted to explore everything on foot all the time, but he does not walk or hike in a straight line - he wants to stop, pick up rocks, put rocks in his mouth, putz in the dirt, touch/smell flowers, climb rocks. We did not get far with him on foot, so we would put him on PJ's and my back, for the majority of time.

Here's our first little hike:

I could go on forever talking about the breathtaking scenery of Colorado. It's just amazing! And indescribably beautiful!

 In between hikes and exploratory trips, we snacked a lot. Ophelia spent a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa in the camper. It was the smallest dwelling out of all three of our camps, but ultimately we'd all hang out in the camper. It's just cozy in there, plus lots of yummy food :) Ophelia would usually fall asleep in our cabin, and then we'd transfer her to the camper. She loved waking up her Grandparents and spending the early morning in there. She also would wake up around 6 am.

Here's us with our campground behind us. PJ and I got to go on a little date one afternoon, while Mark and Camille took the kids. It was a nice break for sure!

This was a little morning hike that we did, but without Ophelia:

The road was winding up and up pretty steep right to the top of the mountain. We never reached the top, but we got high! Rocky Mountain High :)

The nice pictures with blurry background were taken by Camille. They turned out really cute! Look at my handsome boys :)

The kids had lots of fun playing together, as they always do! They explored the campground all over the place. I can only image that it will be more fun each year the kids grow older!

Just the four of us took a little hike to the river:

Ophelia picked all sorts of flowers for Grandma anywhere we went:

This waterfall is located by the Million Reservoir. It was a lake in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, with green forest surrounding it. We ended up going there twice, once with everyone, once just us four. So pretty!

The kids are checking out an earthworm that popped up after a rain. It did rain pretty much every day while we were there, but usually around the time that we weren't hiking anyway, so it didn't spoil our plans at all.

My favorite family shot:

All the walking around the lake made Emerson super sleepy:

We hiked to the Treasure Falls one morning. We have rented two kid packs, which made the hike heavier, but more enjoyable, because we didn't have to worry about the kids tripping, falling, running away, or touching what they weren't supposed to.

A beautiful smile from Ophelia on this one...

Since the name of this place was "treasure falls", Ophelia kept waiting for a time when we'd see or find some treasures...she was a bit disappointed until we took out a bag of popped corn for a snack, then everyone was happy!

The second hike around the reservoir. The first time we never made it all the way, but this time we did. It took us about 2 hours, but we did stop for a snack, and also to pick wild strawberries, raspberries, and mushrooms! Reminded me of Latvia!!! We also saw lots of chipmunks, Emerson called them "ma-mak".

Ophelia took a picture of us three. It's funny to think that that is her viewpoint from where she is :)

We saw some elk crossing the street on one of our trips:

You always see those signs along the road "Elk crossing", but this was the first time that we actually saw them do it! Gorgeous!

After our stay in South Fork, and on the way to Denver, we stopped for a dip in the Sand Dune Hot springs. It felt like a mini water park/pool, but without the chlorine. The water was so nice and warm. There was one pool with 108 F temp, it was hot, but I did boil myself it there for a while. Auntie Cami got some cute shots of the kids there:

After our loooooongest four hour car trip to Denver, we finally made it to our friends' the Mojicas home. So good to stay and catch up with wonderful old friends. We had a great time with them! Emerson had a blast chasing or dodging the dog around the house, and playing with so many new for him toys.

Ophelia loved playing with the girls. She also slept in their room at night, so it was like a huge two night sleep over, which she enjoyed a lot!

Emerson had the worst fall of all our vacation at the Mojicas new house. He fell off the concrete front steps, face first and scratched up his whole face:

But he quickly got over it! We also took the kids to see the beautiful Denver temple. This is the first time in their lives that our kids have seen a live temple!

The youngest of the Mojica's is a thumb sucker too! Precious!

Two families portrait! It was right before we took off on our trip back, around 8 pm, that's why our kids are wearing pajamas.

Love these guys!

We left around 8 pm and after another all night drive, we finally made it home by noon the next day. Wheew! We all crashed for a nap right away and it was soooo nice! That's when you really learn to appreciate your bed, pillow, and own room!

I'm hoping that we had so many hard times with our kids on this trip because they are still so small. Mainly, it's the sleeping...or NOT sleeping that was hard: both kids having a hard time falling asleep and waking up early. This was the fun part of our trip, singing songs together. Even Emerson learned when to chime in:

We thought it was super funny that he would say "duck" at the appropriate place! But no other animals :) Emerson also loved "Popcorn popping!" church song, we sure sang it a lot on our trip!

The Colorado vacation is in the plans for next summer too. Let's hope the kids will be mature enough to handle a road trip then!