St. George!

This summer my parents decided to take the family down to St. George for a few (hot) days! My mom found this cute house online that had four suites in it that she could "rent" and that we could all fit in. She also bought tickets for us to go see Tarzan. Woohoo! This would be our first time taking the girls to St. George (or on a road trip that long) so we were excited and a little anxious. Anisten was so excited though to go on "bucation."

So on July 14th at about 2:30 we began our road trip south. I made sure we were well stocked with books, movies and snacks. The girls did awesome on the ride down except that Aivree would not sleep. She got very tired and ornery, but as long as the DVD player was on she was okay. We only stopped once for a potty break and made it there in 4 1/2 hours! When we asked Ani if she wanted to stop and eat or anything she always said "No, I want to go to bacation." She just wanted to get there! We arrived around 7 pm and got settled.

The Thompson Mansion..isn't it a cute house?

The next day, most of the guys went golfing until about lunch time at Sand Hollow golf course. Here are the kids after lunch eating creamies on the front porch. So cute. Anisten absolutely loved living in the same house as her cousins. She called it our "new house" and did not want to leave when the time came.
These statue things were on the front porch to greet us. Anisten called them Grandma and Grandpa. haha Aivree is here pointing to the kitty.
After lunch we went to the Washington City Community Center and went swimming in their very nice facility. It felt so good because the weather was soo very hot.

Rob and Aivree going down the slide

Me and Aivree going down slide (as you can see Aivree was the only one "brave enough" to go down the slide; silly Ani)

Aivree walking in the shallow water. She loved it

They had these cute swings in the little kid section that they could bounce/swing on

(love this one)

Aivree loves to splash

Aivree with Grandpa

Cute Ani girl

Aivree has this thing with babies..she just loves them! Here she is pointing to Tyler saying "baby!"

For dinner the four of us went to the Mongolian BBQ. It was so yummy and fun too. The girls actually liked it.

Aivree eating a fortune cookie

They put a rubber band around the chopsticks making it much easier to eat with them and Ani loved it! She was picking up everything she could find! Here she is eating a carrot
... and a noodle

We also left with four different origami things: a swan, 2 flowers and a paper airplane :)

The next day Rob and I got up and went running. I didn't go as far as he did because he's a much better runner than I am and because I got so blasted hot. It was fun to be able to run with him though. Later that day Rob was nice enough to stay home with Aivree while she napped while the rest of us went and saw Despicable Me (Aivree is not much fun to take to movies right now anyway). The movie was in 3D

I love how they make the glasses enormous for these little kid shows. Ani kept saying that they were hurting her so she didn't watch any of it in 3D. It was such a cute show though! We loved it.

July 16th is Kina's birthday so we got to spend the day with her. Mom bought her this big cheesecake that for some reason we had a hard time finding time to eat (there was so much to do there!) Happy Birthday Kina!

I just felt like I should mention this memorable moment of the trip. We all went and ate at Red Robin that night as a big family for dinner and unfortunately my girls were horrible. We don't go out to eat much and it shows. Aivree was very ornery because she only slept an hour the whole day and Ani had a stomachache for some reason. So we were the distracting people in the corner with the screaming kids. We hightailed it out of there really fast while fighting back tears (all of us, except for maybe Rob). Sorry about that everyone. I'm not sure what it is with my kids sometimes...they sure do like to test me.

That night my parents watched all the grandkids (I know, they're crazy) while the adult kids got to go see Tarzan at Tuacahn. It was soo good! We bought a fan/mister thing that I really appreciated having (and so did the people behind us!) :) Even at night in St. George it was 100 degrees!

We got home late that night and went right to bed. For the most part the girls slept really well while we were there. Anisten had a hard time winding down a couple nights and woke up once from a bad dream and Aivree woke up a little bit the first night, but besides that they did great! You never know how they're going to do in a new place like that, but I think we were all able to get some pretty good sleep while we were there.

On Saturday we woke up and cleaned up the place to get ready to go home. :( I stayed with Aivree while she napped and the rest of the crew went to the Brigham Young winter home tour which was right across the street from us! After that, we headed out.

We stopped a couple times on the way home to get some food and change Aivree's diaper (she leaked out on the way down, oops). Here is Rob eating a taco bell wrapper (his food was gone by the time I wanted to take a picture) :)

And here is the way the car ride home looked:

and finally this...she actually fell asleep! Victory! The girls did really well on the way home too.

We had such a blast on this trip and are so glad my parents put it together. I have memories of going to St. George growing up and I still love going there. I'd love to live there someday. Thank you Mom and Dad! We love you!