Park City

For the 3rd (or 4th) year in a row we went to Park City with Stewart's family. We stay in a condo and swim and play and shop. Vacations are the BEST!

Richfield

We had a great time in Richfield. We visited the Fremont Indian State Park, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Cove Fort. I was missing Stewart a lot last week but being in Richfield made the week go by REALLY fast so I've got another week under my belt and I feel pretty great right now.

Thanks to my wonderful aunt and cousin for taking care of Eli and me!

Without further ado, Eli's favorite part of the trip:

Baby Asher! (I know, poor little guy looks all freaked out!)

Capitol Reef

We went to Capitol Reef as a last trip before Stewart's deployment. We went with Stewart's family and everyone was able to go except Laurie's family. We had such a good time.

We hiked, golfed off a cliff, flew kites swam, and had a wonderful vacation.

Eli was a great little hiker. He HAD to be the leader which mean I had to struggle to keep up with him! It was like he had all his winter energy stored up for this vacation.

We are HUGE fans of Capitol Reef and it didn't disappoint us this time.

Arizona-The End

We are home again. We actually got home Monday evening but we hit the ground running so I'm finally getting around to blogging. The rest of the trip to Arizona went so well. It was so good I was not ready to come home. I missed Eli a lot but it was SO fun to be with Stewart and hang out with other adults for days at a time. The whole time that we were in Kentucky Stewart and I never went on a date alone together. It is so much fun to be together and remember that we are a couple and not just parents.

So we went to a ghost town that wasn't really a ghost town. It was Jerome, AZ. I take full responsibility for the junkyard that we attended! Anyway here are the highlights:

Steve in some old car. He barely fit in it because the "cab" was so short. Good thing Steve didn't live in the "olden days."
The next picture is my FAVORITE. It's Stewart with his old ball and chain. Haa haa love it!
The next picture is really freaky. It was some old mannequin prostitute! Freaky. Seriously.


Here is Stewart at the old mine opening, and me with a donkey. OK the last picture is of Stewart's great aunt and uncle. His uncle Bud had a birthday so Stewart used his smooth espaniol to set up a birthday song. The guy in the background tried to feed Bud some ice cream and missed the mark.

The only thing missing from the trip was that we didn't get to visit Bahama Bucks. I was pretty sad but I guess if that's the only thing to go wrong we didn't do too bad.

The End

Arizona-First Update

On Thursday, Stewart and I left Salt Lake City for the sunny skies of ARIZONA. We arrived with Stewart's parents and have met up with a bunch of Stewart's family for his cousins wedding in Prescott. We are going to be here until Monday.

The first stop of the trip was over to the Mesa Temple for a private tour with the temple president. Have YOU ever had one of those kind of tours? No? Oh that's too bad because it's really neat. Stewart's great-grandfather is LeConte Stewart. He painted some murals for the Mesa temple so we were able to go and see them and got a tour of the whole temple. After that we picked some holy citrus fruit from the temple grounds. It was my first time picking grapefruits from a tree and you know they tasted better because they were grown on holy ground.

Friday we went and wandered downtown Prescott. It was so fun and I LOVE Prescott! It seems like a fun town to live in. We went to a rehearsal dinner even though we had nothing to do with the wedding so it was just yummy food for us.

Today we have just had crazy fun. We shopped, learned more about the Calvary, went to the wedding, danced, ate, shopped, and went to a movie. Stewart twisted and twirled me as usual and I was so kind as so loan him out to some other gals so they could have fun too. I know, I know I'm so wonderfully selfless...and humble.

After the wedding we went to a movie. We saw Taken. SO GOOD! It was mine and Stewart's second time seeing it and it was just as good as the first time. We were a little nervous that no one else would like it since we were seeing it based on our recommendation. It made us happy when during a car chase a bad guy runs his car into a bulldozer scoop and gets killed and Stewart's mom leaned over and said, "he deserved that."

So as you can see we are having fun and are glad that we have 2 more days away from responsibility. We are going to church tomorrow and then to go see a ghost town! spooky! Don't worry about Eli either. When I called him today I was in the middle of a sentence and he said "bye" and hung up on me. He was too busy having fun with cousins.

Sea World

Here is the conclusion to our wonderful trip! I know, I'm as sad as you that it came to an end. :)

On Friday we went to Sea World. It was really really fun. We did all the usual Sea World stuff. Eli is into sea creatures lately so he enjoyed himself. He really liked the Atlantis ride because he could wear his poncho and not get wet and there was not a line so we went about 5 times in a row.

In the picture below I gave the boys bunny ears. And the one where Eli is shrinking in fear is because he was a little too nervous to turn his back on the flamingos.

We had such a great time. I don't think that I would change anything! Well except for getting soaked on the cars ride.

I'm hoping that these fun memories will help Eli and me when we are missing Stewart. Boo hoo.

Disneyland 3

Today was even more fun than yesterday! Here is how our day started:

The Jedi teacher at the end says, "your style is unorthodox but effective. Well done." It was so funny. Eli seriously spent the first half of the "training" facing the opposite way of the other kids. It reminded me of the dance videos of me when I was a child. But it seriously was the cutest thing to see Eli's padawan training. I was so happy they chose him to participate.



Today we just went on all our favorite things again and did a few new rides. We got to see the Mad Hatter which was one character that Eli REALLY wanted to see. We ended our day with the Fantasmic show. It was a great ending to our Disneyland trip. Our next stop is San Diego!

Eli's favorite rides are:
Splash Mountain. If you think Eli looks like a ghost in the splash mountain picture above it's because he covered his face with the poncho so not 1 drop of water got on him. He stayed so dry he insisted we go again! :)
Indiana Jones. He kept his eyes open today and decided that it was cool.
Pirates of the Caribbean. It's pirates! No explanation necessary
Buzz Lightyear. It's like a big video game so, again, no explanation necessary.

Disneyland 2

Day Two of Disneyland was a smashing success. Eli didn't deem any of the rides as disasters that I can remember so right there you know you are on to something. He didn't like Alice in Wonderland though but I never heard the words "that was a disaster."

We started the day off in California Adventure. I thought we would be there for the whole day but we ended up only staying there for a few hours. The first four pictures are of us at C.A.

The fifth picture is of Eli with his Mickey ears. They are so cute on him. He almost got a really generic baseball cap because it had the plastic size adjuster in the back. You know the cheap ones that no one wears anymore. When I told him that you can get your name on the Mickey ears though he changed his mind. Yes I AM that kind of parent.

We loved the CAVALRY sign in the next picture because Stewart is a cavalry officer.

Tigger was our favorite character because he was so silly with Eli. There's a cute picture of Eli hugging Tigger too but I liked how Tigger was teasing Eli with his Mickey ears.

The last picture is of Eli on the bus back to the hotel. We had been on the bus for about 5 minutes. Do you think that we wore him out?!

Our only problem that we had today was Eli telling us that he could go swimming without us now because he's "a really good swimmer." This prompted major discussions by us of course! Now I'll probably have nightmares of Eli drowning. I will for sure be signing him up for swim lessons as soon as we get back.


Side note: Eli no longer wants to name our next baby "Chloe." He now wants to name it "Sprinkles." It doesn't matter if it's a boy or girl because "Sprinkles is a really cute name." After Eli met Chloe (Stacy's baby, come on keep up) he became a little obsessed and even asked Stacy who was her favorite kid. When Stacy said she loves all her kids the same Eli said that his favorite was Chloe.