This summer our family took an 11 day vacation!!! The crazy part was that 4 of those days were spent driving in the car. Ohhhhh....the quality time we had together on those long drives. :) Our trip started out on July 18th when we drove from our HOT home in Chandler to the McKinley's home in Austin, Texas. We were very excited to finally arrive at their house around 8pm that evening. The next morning our Texas adventures began...
Our first adventure was driving to San Antonio. Here we are outside the riverwalk. Each kid, including Brent, picked somewhere to pose for the picture.
We strolled along the river walk looking for someplace to eat lunch. We never found a place that we wanted to eat at but we had fun talking to the ducks, watching boats go by and playing on the bridges.
Toni and I are enjoying our break from supervising our herd of kiddos!
Brittney and Mitchell begged us to take their picture as we were walking down the street.
The main part of our San Antonio visit was to check out the Alamo. Its great to force history on an unsuspecting youthful
audience. Toni and I are so sneaky :)
That evening we joined Toni and Craig and some of their friends for an evening at the Oasis. This is a restaurant that looks out over Lake Travis. The big attraction of the restaurant is to have a seat where you can watch the sun set over the lake. I must admit we had excellent seats.
The next day our adventure was to canoe down the Austin River. We split up in teams of three; however, EVERYONE wanted to be in Mitchell's canoe. So poor Brittney and Grant were stuck with Brent. They found out later what a blessing that was since Brent is a SUPERSTAR
canoer.
Jessica and William were the lucky winners of the Mitchell Canoe. Mitchell had to do most of the paddling work on this team. He did a pretty good job.
Toni, Matthew and I had the third canoe. We always seemed to be in last place as we paddled down the river. We did more
zig-
zagging than straight
canoeing. But we were successful at going the full distance to Congress Bridge and back without tipping it over.
That evening we all went to the County Line restaurant for some Texan bar-b-
cue. Yummy! The extra cool thing about this restaurant is that it is right on the river. If we owned a boat, we could dock it at the restaurant and come in from that location. The kids could have cared less about that luxury. They were thrilled that there were hungry turtles lurking in the water by the dock. Grant was the first out of the group to snatch one out of the water.
Can you see the two dozen turtles in the water behind us? This is what we would call "Grant Paradise."
The next adventure was to Hamilton Pools. Brent did a great job watching our stuff on the small beach.
We love coming to this picturesque swimming hole. Not only is it beautiful but the waterfall gives great back massages. All of the kids would swim across the pool to climb on the big rock where the waterfall came pounding down. Then they would jump back into the pool.
Oh look
at Muscular Mitchell.
Toni and Matthew made it across the lake to check out the waterfall.
Grant loves to get his waterfall massage.
Jessica was another champion at making across the lake to the coveted waterfall rock.
When the kids weren't playing underneath the waterfall, they explored the rest of the grotto. Here William, Jessica and Brent are looking for huge spiders.
We were VERY sad to leave the
McKinleys and Texas. We spent the next two days driving to Utah. On the second long day of driving we stopped at a spot outside of
Moab, UT, to check out Wilson Arch. What an incredible work of art nature made!
This is another type of an arch down the road called Looking Glass. You should see two bumps on a rock at the bottom of the arch. Those bumps are Grant and
Brent's head peering over the side. The arch is HUGE!
Next we went to Arches National Park where we saw quite a few arches. Brent and I are standing in front of a very large arch. If you look closely to the left of the picture, you will see Mitchell standing in the arch. Pretty cool! He looks so tiny!
Here the boys and I are are standing in front of the "North and South Windows." They don't look so big from this vantage point. However, the arch on the right is the same arch in the picture above where Mitchell looks like an ant standing in it. We saw many more amazing works of art there in the park. If you ever decide to go there, plan on bringing lots of water and plan on spending the whole day. There is lots to see.
On Saturday, July 24
th, we went on our next adventure. Brent's sister, Barb, suggested that we take the kids to Lagoon. Lagoon is a roller coaster park. We stayed at this park for nearly 12 hours. It was a great place to go! It had a variety of roller coasters from sissy style, to an old wooden one to the ultimate scary of scary roller coasters. Here Mitchell and Grant are getting ready to go on "Blast Off." This ride shoots you into the air as if you were on a rocket then you fall back down.
Grant was so excited to be at the roller coaster theme park that he couldn't stop hugging on me and thanking me for coming. I was the recipient of lots of love that day.
Here Mitchell is getting strapped into a ride that spins you around in a circle and then spins you upside down. Although he went on this ride a few times, his favorite ride was Wicked. This ride starts out shooting you up the roller coaster track 110 feet and then you drop back down and race through many turns, twists and twirls. CRAZY!!!! Once was enough for me.
Grant and I had fun going on an old-fashioned swing ride. However, Grant's favorite ride was the
Colossus. This is your typical roller coaster with two loops in it. Grant went on this ride 15 times. Once was enough for me! By the time we drug the kids out of the park at 10pm, Grant said it was the BEST day of his LIFE.
The last adventure of our trip was to hike Mount
Timpanogus up to Emerald Lake. This is a 5.5 mile hike one way up the rocky mountain trail to the lake. Grant is pointing to the peak that we would have to climb over before we get to the beautiful lake.
Grant whined the ENTIRE way up the mountain. Right from the beginning of the hike he complained that his legs were too tired and that he felt sick and that he couldn't do it and that how could any lake be worth a 5.5 mile hike???? It was
soooooooo annoying to listen to his constant complaining. This is a picture of Brent and Grant holding hands. No they aren't skipping with glee. Brent is dragging Grant up the
mountain. By the way, Grant didn't complain the whole 5.5 miles back down the mountain.
Along the trail there were many waterfalls to hike by, get cooled off by and to admire. This is the waterfall Mitchell fell at and put a gash in his hand and banged up his leg. This is also where Grant slipped on a rock and got one of his shoes wet. Too bad this waterfall is only at the 1 mile mark of hiking up the mountain.
All along the trail were streams and many varieties of wild flowers. I took several pictures of all of the beautiful flowers along the lush trail.
We made it to Emerald Lake! We feasted on peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, grapes, and granola bars. It was great to take a break from the difficult hike.
The lake is created by glacier melt. You can see the snow at the water's edge. Grant had a great time skipping rocks across the lake. I think he finally forgot how much he hated the hike up the mountain.
The next day we drove all the way back home. It was great vacation with so many different exciting activities to do as a family. But we were all glad to be HOME.
Mitchell started taking off light switch covers, outlet covers and cleared out his entire room Saturday morning.
The room is empty and WHITE! Can you imagine that this room has the original paint on the walls from 1994 when the house was built? 
Mitchell and I worked on taping off the room and getting it painted. It took us a few hours to get the job done. Even though Mitchell had a head cold all day, he still worked hard at getting his project complete. I was surprised that he wanted the walls to be tan. 
When he moved his furniture back in, he rearranged everything. He has a nice set up.
Yes, that is a desk in the corner. No, that doesn't mean Mitchell studies. Actually, we picked up this desk last weekend to be the future place of a Mitchell computer. Brent is working on putting one together for him. Grant is soooooo jealous of that! Great job on the room Mitchell!
