road trip!

We decided at the last minute to take a road trip to St. George to visit Danny's grandparents.

We loaded up the car with what looked like enough stuff for a month away and started what should be about a four and half hour ride. It took us six. We had to make multiple stops to eat, feed Kate, go potty, get gas, etc. I was questioning our decision to go at all about three hours in but I can say now that I'm really glad we went.

By far the highlight of the trip for Ella was our visit to Fiesta Fun which is a little play center in St. George. Danny went with his Dad to watch a PGA tournament so me and the girls went one afternoon.

 Ella tried the go-karts. I was dying laughing because they weren't on a track so let's just say she's not the best driver. At all. But she had a great time and was so proud of herself for driving a "real" car.

 The highlight of our trip was the day we spent at Zions National Park. Again it was a series of unfortunate events getting there. We had to stop on the side of the road for an emergency potty break, we got there on the most crowded day ever so there was no parking, everyone was hungry before we even started the hike so we ate at the shuttle stop so we didn't actually start our hike until we'd already been in the park for over an hour. That's one thing we've learned with our family, we don't do things on a schedule or in a hurry. It's all part of the experience.

 We decided to do the Emerald Pools hike. It's a short easy one that we knew Ella could handle.

And she did great! There was one point near the end that she suddenly stopped and sat down in the middle of the trail because she was "so tired" but she got up and kept going. I'm so proud of my girl!

Here we are in front of the falls at the top of our hike.

 Me and my girls. Have I mentioned I love them?

 Our family. Unfortunately we asked a random person to take this and he only took one shot and Danny and Kate's eyes are shut. Oh well.

On the way up we saw a tarantula on our way up and Ella was both fascinated and horrified by it. On the way down she really wanted to see it again but it had scurried off. She sat on Danny's shoulders the whole way down singing at the top of her lungs to her own tune "where are you spider, why won't you come out, come out of your home so we can see you again, spider stop hiding so we can see you..." She even had her arms outstretched for dramatic effect for her song.

While we were in St. George we also enjoyed spending time with Danny's grandparents and they really loved seeing the girls. It's been a while since they've seen Ella and this was their first time meeting Kate.