Nauvoo Trip, the Conclusion

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I bet you all think I've fallen off the face of the earth.

Don't worry, I'm still here.

This is just a super busy time of year for me.

I'll blog about all we've been up to in the next few days, but before we get to that I bet you're all dying to hear about the rest of our trip.

Sorry for yet another slide show, but there are just too many pictures and I have a hard time cutting any out.

So after we loaded up from the Young Living Farm we drove another hour to Cove Fart, I mean Fort.

Cove Fort has a special memory for Mr Bird and I and Lisa's family. Suffice it to say we call it Cove Fart for short.

Ask me about it sometime, I just might tell that story another day.

We saw all the old pioneer artifacts and heard cool stories of President Hinkley's father and grandfather.

We played pioneer games and most importantly we all had a nice long potty break.

When we got back in the car it was time to book it to St George before the sun went down. We just made it.

We had enough time to unpack the cars into our condos and tuck the kids in for the night before the moon came out.

My Sister-in-Law, Joanne got us a great deal on the most awesome condos ever.

The bathroom in the master suite was so nice, not to mention all the walk in closets and washer and dryer and full kitchen.

The best part of all?

The Pool, Baby!

We swam every single day we were there. The weather was gorgeous and we could not keep the kids out of the water.

We also had fun climbing the Dixie rocks, shopping at the outlet malls, going on early morning walks (9am!!) and going to the temple in St George.

We ate good food and enjoyed good company.

I really love our family, they are the best. I married into the best family on the planet.

I am so glad we all get along and can do such fun things together.

That's not to say there was no drama, but we all get over it and go on loving each other.

We left for home Thursday afternoon and stopped in Cedar City to drop off my nephew, Josh and his pregnant wife Tiffany, who live there. While we were there we stopped at Discovery park and ate watermelon and flew kites and rested under the trees.

We finally made it home around 8pm, just in time for bed time.

We had such a fun week, start to finish.

Thanks for the good times, guys!

Nauvoo Trip part 2

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I know it seems really silly to keep calling it the Nauvoo trip even though we made it no where near Nauvoo, but it has become such a joke that we can't bear to call our family adventures anything else.

Sunday evening we all decided to pack our bags for a fun trip through our beautiful state of Utah. We decided our final destination would be St George.

Along the way there were several sights we wanted to see. We decided our first stop would be the Young Living Farm in Mona, UT. This dinky town is located between Spanish Fork and Lehi.

I did not even know this place existed until this week.

The farm grows lavender and extracts the lavender oil for many homeopathic uses, such as insomnia, headaches, insect bites, rashes, sunburns (which I actually used some for this week), and many, many more. They have other farms around the world, one in Paris, France and one in South America. Their land was gorgeous. I could not stop taking pictures.

Sorry about all the slide shows, but there are just too many pictures, and this is less than half of the ones I took.

We got to take a tour of the farm and the process the lavender goes through to extract the oils. It really was cool.

After the farm they let us wonder the grounds.

They have an old western theme with an old water wheel and hand crank merry-go-round.

They also had the coolest swing I have ever seen, I really think Mr Bird needs to make one for our house. We fit 5 people in it at once, without even trying too hard.

They had an old western town which had cool stores and offices to look at. They also do jousting a few times a year. It was fun to see the huge jousting arena.

In the summer when they get lots of visitors they even give free wagon rides.

We need to go back, we really could have spent all day there.

We took our picnic lunch and ate in the beautiful Bowery next to their pond.

Then we loaded up into the cars and headed further South still.

Tomorrow I will post about our next stop.

TTFN!

(Ta Ta For Now)

Nauvoo or Bust

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We never made it Nauvoo.

Lots of things happened to prevent our trip from happening.

We knew our Mormon Assault Vehicle would be in the shop for much needed repairs. We could not drive it East the way it was and it would not be done in time to take it. She we figured we'd take the car and let one of the heathens ride with Grandpa or Aunt Lisa or Uncle Steve, all of whom were planning on caravanning with us.

Then, Lisa's vehicle was having problems. They were panning on buying a new car in the near future and decided to go ahead and do it before the trip. That fell through at the last minute and they were also without a reliable ride. Still, we decided to push and shove in different vehicles. We were determined to make this trip happen.

Then, the straw that broke the camel's back. The day before we were to leave Steve's water line to his house broke.

We all determined we just were not meant to go on this trip. So we bagged it.

But not totally.

All the guys had taken a week off work and we did not want to waste all that glorious time off. We decided that instead of going to Nauvoo we would spend Saturday fixing Steve's water line, then we would go on a fun horse ride in the evening. After the horse ride we all came back to our house for pizza and games. We has so much fun just being together. Sunday we all went to church for Mother's day, then we met at our house to plan the rest of the week.

This slide show is of our "Nauvoo Trip" Day 1

I'll post day 2 a little later. We did end up going out of town, more details on that in the next edition of...

Nauvoo or BUST!

I Saved the Best for Last

Before I begin I need to make a confession. I am a horrible mother.

I admit it.

I am not proud of it.

I try every day to be better, I really do.

But when things like this happen I just can't help myself.

Just don't judge me.

OK, I can start my story now.

While we were at Disneyland we took the kids on a ride called Honey I Shrunk the Audience.

This is one of those rides where you sit in a big auditorium and the chairs are on hydraulics and it is in 3D. It starts out really cool with things flying around the screen. Somewhere near the middle a cat face shows up on the screen and slowly morphs into a lion's head and a big set of claws seem to swoop out of the screen right at the audience. Our kids flipped out. They had never seen anything in 3D before and it was too much to take. Beano closed his eyes and was in the fetal position in his chair with his head between his legs crying for his life. Dubs was transfixed and could not stop watching even though he was screaming in sheer terror for the remainder of the show. Doodle was on daddy's lap clinging to him as if her life depended on it. Baby Cakes was freaked out by their reactions and was just as horrified. Soon that part was over and we got them all under control except Dubs, he never did stop crying. A little later in the show a huge snake appears in 3D and opens it's mouth wide and seems to strike at the audience.

That was it.

Our kids were done for.

All four of them were literally hysterical.

Their little lives were over, they thought they were goners.

They would not calm down until the show was over and we were out of the theatre.

It took a while for them to gain our trust again. They did not want to ride anymore rides because they were afraid it was going to be too scary.
Here is where the bad parenting comes in. As my poor babies are scared out of their gourdes for their very lives Mr Bird and I sat in our chairs laughing hysterically.

A good mother would take her frightened child out of that scary place. She would stroke their heads lovingly telling them in soft words that it would all be OK. She would apologize profusely for taking them there in the first place. She would buy them an ice cream cone to make every thing all better.

But not me, All I could do was laugh, hard and long and loud.

Our only worry was laughing so loud we might disturb the people near us.

Terrible, I know.

Just don't judge me.

I couldn't help myself.

Road Trip, Part 3

You guessed it, we went to DISNEYLAND!!!

Brace yourself, there are a lot of pictures.

So how did we go from nowhere land to Disneyland, you ask?

It's a funny story, really. We really were planning on coming home and getting things done.

We had places to go, people to see and family parties to attend.

As we were driving north toward home, I noticed a sign that said

Welcome to California.

It was such a pretty sign, blue with California golden poppies on it. We knew our trip home would venture into Southern California a little way and then head North East and home.

Mr Bird turned to me and said, "How far are we from Anaheim?"

I pulled out the trusty atlas, measured the highways and guessed about 3 hours. We looked at each other and said, "Should we?"

No, we had too much going on. No, no, Disneyland is one of those things you plan for months and months and anticipate and dream about. No, you have to shop around online for weeks to find the best deal on a hotel and tickets. No, you have to spend a week minimum there to see it all and do it all.
No, we better just head home.

So we came to the junction where we could turn to head home or keep going on to Disneyland. We pulled over and sat there for a good 5 minutes trying to decide. Mr Bird did not have to be back to work until Monday morning.
We could drive there that day and have all day Friday to play and come home Saturday and be back for church on Sunday so I could teach my Relief Society lesson.

We decided we better not and headed down the road marked "Home".

About 2 miles down the road Mr Bird looks at me with that gleam in his eye.

"Should we?", He says

"Yes!", I say

He flipped that car around so fast I think I got whip lash.

And did we have the time of our lives!

We pulled out the laptop and found a hotel and got there late Thursday afternoon.

We rested and played in the room and found a pizza joint and a grocery store. We stocked up on snacks for Friday and sandwich stuff for lunch. We went to bed early and dreamed about Disneyland all night long.

Have you ever seen Disney land decorated for Christmas?

Beano was so excited to see Buzz. We had to go on the Buzz ride like 4 times. Here is Buzz stepping on a kid. Buzz had just come out and was walking very quickly to somewhere. Out of nowhere a kid jumps out and grabs onto his leg. Buzz just keeps on going, leaving his 'helper' to fix the problem. You can kind of see the poor kid on the ground behind him. Too funny.

The lines were not too long. The longest we waited was like 30 min, but most of them were less than 15 min.

*sigh*

Mary Poppins

*sigh*

She heard Beano cough and came over and had a conversation with him. She asked him if he was falling ill and if he needed some medicine for that cough. She is soooo pretty. I was so distracted by her beauty that I forgot to take a picture until she was half way down the walk.

DUH

Good entertainment.

Here is the rest of the fam on the Mater horn. They loved the abominable snow man.

I love Disneyland because I could even take Baby Cakes on a lot of the rides. We had such a good time.

When we saw Woodie Beano asks, "How does he keep his eyes open so long without blinking?"

Gotta love the innocence.

The tea cups were another favorite. Mr Bird could not spin as fast as he wanted to with Baby and I on board, so he kicked us out on this go round.

The carousel is always my favorite. I love the Disney carousel music. I love the pretty shiny horses. Baby Cakes loved it too! I think we rode it about 5 times.

"AAAAAAA, don't eat me."

More tea cups

Just look what we had for dinner. Gross, I hate hot dogs. I guess that's what I get when I send Mr Bird for dinner and tell him to just get me whatever he's having. You think I would have learned by now that he will always pick something with a hot dog in it.

The thing is bigger than his head.

Dubs ate the whole thing. None of the others could finish theirs. He just looks greasy top to bottom, in and out. I was really praying he would not puke that up sometime during the course of the night. Thankfully they all kept it down.

As we waited for the fireworks to start they all fell asleep on the ground. They were worn out!

They ended up cancelling the fireworks due to winds at higher elevations.

*sad, cry*

I really did want to cry. But I did not. We decided to just pack up and call it a night. When we got to our room we had the kids going potty. Mr Bird and I were helping Beano and Doodle and looked around to help Dubs go potty too. We could not find him anywhere. We panicked. Then we saw him passed out on the couch.

We had literally been in our room less than 2 minutes when we took this picture. What a fun, fun time. I would not change anything about our trip, it was perfect. The kids were so good and they all travel really well, even Baby Cakes did so good all the way home the next day. I, on the other hand had the biggest headache of my life. I guess I had a fun hangover!

Road Trip, Part 2

We had finally made it to Bouse, Arizona.

Land of the snow birds.

Bouse is one of those dinky towns along the high way in the middle of nowhere. It's one of those towns that you might miss if you blink. It's one of those towns that has no grocery store and one gas station, if you're lucky. One of those towns that has one, count em, one local diner, fast food is miles away. One of those towns you have to travel 40 miles away from to get groceries, so you better not forget anything on the list. One of those towns where you wonder how anyone can live so far from civilization and you wonder what people who live there actually do. What they do from day to day as well as what they do for a living, since there is no commerce.
Well, this week we found out.

I'll tell you what happens there.
Old people go there to get out of the snow and enjoy a mock summer all winter long.
Mr Bird's dad went for the first time last winter after his beloved wife of over 40 years passed away. His brothers go there for the winter with their spouses and their horses. Grandpa needed to get away so he flew south with his brothers. While he was there he met and fell in love with a wonderful lady who is now his new bride.
Grandpa and Grandma DD liked it so much they decided to get a place of their own so they too could fly the coup when the winter winds start blowing.
After being there for 5 days, I don't blame them.


Mr Bird and I have decided to take a family vacation south every November. Last year we went to Moab the second week in November and it was perfect. It makes Summer/Autumn feel like it lasts just a little longer. Plus there were not many tourists cuz most people have their kids in school. The weather was in the mid 70's every day while is was storming and bitter cold back home.



So what do people do in nowhere land, you ask?
They find the hippie caves where it is rumored that hippies would come and live in during the 70's.


They look at all the cool cacti they have only ever imagined and stare in awe at them and imagine they look like crusty coral from the bottom of the ocean.



They go on lots of rides in dune buggies and four wheelers and horses.
They cart their bikes all they way down there and ride the deserted desert roads and feel the warm air rush over their sun bathed skin...in November!

They find cool old abandoned mines in the middle of the desert, and they must explore them.


They take way too many pictures of those cacti.

They take turns taking pictures of each other.

They find bat caves and try not to step in the guano.
They try really hard not to get any cactus spines in their skin.

They take yet more pictures of these strange cacti and wonder how all those nubby branches can crowd around one cactus pole.

They enjoy the piece and quiet that is nowhere land.

This one enjoyed being rocked to sleep by the dune buggies.

And he loved the 4 wheeler with grandpa. He even fell asleep on that thing too.


We enjoyed having nowhere to be in the mornings and no responsibilities. We played in the dirt and made Grandpa tell us stories of his days on submarines when he was in the Navy.

We got to know Grandma DD a little better and enjoyed her yummy cooking.

When it was time to leave we were not ready for our vacation to be over.

We headed home on Thursday, hoping to be home for some family events over the week end.

Long story short, we missed all our family events and ended up not getting home until late Saturday night. On the way up home we decided to make a little detour.

To find out about this little detour check back tomorrow, I'll give you a hint.

This is the place where all your dreams come true!

How could we miss it?

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