Bryce Canyon/ Capitol Reef National Parks- Memorial Day 2010

We took our second excursion to southern Utah to visit two more of the National Parks: Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Park. We of course waiting until getting back from Australia to book the trip, so Gregg worked his magic and found us places to stay and a great route as, even though I love camping (hahaha... sorry), I wasn't quite ready to try it with Kaylen just yet. So, we took off to Bryce Canyon. We were lucky and had beautiful weather the entire trip! Kaylen did great the whole ride down!

We bought a kid leash so that Kaylen couldn't take off and fall down any one of the 100 cliffs! We used it toward the beginning and it was great! Many of the stops at Bryce are pretty crowded because they're trying to cut down on pollution and traffic, so they run major shuttles to most of the main stops. We always managed to find good pictures though to admire all the beauty.

These places really are so amazing. And we've said many times, pictures do not do them justice. They are definitely awe inspiring. We realized pretty quickly that this trip would not be like the couple other trips we took to Arches National Park a couple years ago. We were given a great kid back pack deal, which was great, but this wouldn't be as much of a hiking trip as just admiring the scenery.

Kaylen did great on the couple hikes took her on. We took this beautiful hike called the Navajo Loop. Gregg did such a great job on our hikes with Kaylen on his back! She did great too! She did want to stop every 2 minutes though for "wah wah"...which really meant the ice floating around IN the water! :-)

The family on the Navajo Loop

The hike up to the waterfall and the mossy cave hike

We stopped over night in a tiny "town" called Boulder between Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef, although it wasn't much of a town. We went to the Anasazi Indian State Park. It was a little smaller than we figured, but it had great ruins we could walk through behind the museum of the Anasazi or ancestral puebloan people that once lived there.

Gregg and Kaylen in front of a pit house

Gregg booked us a room at this really nice hotel called Boulder Mountain Lodge. It was beautiful! We had an end room so we could park right outside our door. The room had vaulted ceilings and a huge bathroom. The hotel didn't have a pool, but it did have a hot tub. It was a bit too hot for Kaylen, so she just ran around it for a while until we were all ready to head back to the room.

One of the other super great features of this room/ hotel was that we had a door on the side and another in the back that lead to this great patch of grass that Kaylen could play on. There was a great double Adirondack chair, a gorgeous day, and the grass for Kaylen. Pretty perfect.

Even though the tiny town of Boulder is hardly on the map, their restaurant Hells Backbone Grill (named after a nearby hike) is award winning. Gregg being the awesome planner he is, got reservations early and for being a pretty deserted town, that restaurant filled up!! It was pretty fancy and unfortunately, Kaylen was not in the mood for dinner, much less a fancy dinner! But we enjoyed our dinner and headed back to the room for bed! It was a great pit stop between two beautiful parks!

Next up... Capitol Reef! It is one of the less traveled parks, maybe because it's not quite as large, but as soon as we drove in... it was hard to understand why! It's beautiful! There is a great scenic drive tour and due to it being our last day, also the day we were heading home, it was a great way to see much of the park!

Our scenic drive explained all of the different layers of the earth's crust. The most defining for Capitol Reef is called the Waterpocket Fold (I had to re-look it up! :-) ) It was beautiful, that's all I really know. So many very different layers and different colors.

We finished off our scenic drive with a great hike... again, Kaylen did great! We were able to see what is called the pioneer register where some of the early pioneers wrote their names on the walls and some early petroglyphs! (Seen below)

Our family on our hike!

These pools of water were called "the tanks" or waterpockets.

Our little rock hoarder

We definitely had a wonderful trip! Kaylen did so incredibly well considering the 4 hours drives, the irregular schedules and having everything be so unfamiliar! It took us just a bit to realize that these trips as a family will be different, but honestly, it's great to share the experiences with Kaylen and we love all the great time with her!

There are 5 National Parks in Utah and now we've done 4 (not mentioned above was also the Canyonlands found near Arches). So, the one we still need to make time to do is Zion National Park! It would also be great to see the Grand Canyon while we live so close.

Thank you to my wonderful husband and daughter who are always so darn wonderful and help make such fantabulous memories! Love you!

Our Growing Girl!

Our sweet baby girl turned 15 months on September 4th!! I know I've said it 100 times, but it all goes so fast!! We she is definitely speedy these days! She can almost run and occassionally still falls. She's still a bit cautious of un-even surfaces or bigger steps up or down (which we're okay with!). She says mama, dada, hi, woof woof for puppy dogs, wa wa for water, ba for ball, and ba-na-na. She's really good at asking for more with sign language. She will wave hello and goodbye like no tomorrow and she LOVES to blow kisses!

At her 15 month appointment, which we had to do a few days early thanks to pink eye... she was 22 lbs (25th %), 31 inches (75th %) and still has a tiny little head! She doesn't weigh a whole lot but her perfectly kissable cheeks and her tummy are proof that we feed her and she will eat most anything in sight!

The only things we still have to work on are taking the binky away from her entirely and taking out all of her bottles and replacing them with only sippy cups. The night time bottle is the only one we have going now... but she's still pretty mad about it being taken away in the morning so she pouts and refuses to drink milk in the morning right now.

She makes THE cutest squinty face (we'll have to work on getting a picture of it)! She squints up her eyes real tight and shows off all her teeth by making this growl-y mouth! It's super cute! Now if Gregg or I do it, she'll usually do it back.

UGH! How CUTE is this girl!!??

Kaylen's favorite teacher, Miss Becca, who became a friend to us as well had to move back to Idaho to finish up her bachelor's degree. It was due to some major confusion at her school which also gave her very short notice to make it back to school. Mommy was devastated!! Mostly because I knew that Kaylen had no idea that it would be her last day with Miss Becca. But the good news is, we adore Becca as well and will keep in touch via Facebook and hopefully when she makes it back to Salt Lake City, we will get the chance to see her again. It definitely made us start thinking about what things will be like when we eventually head off to medical school! We have made some really wonderful friends here and are pretty close to Gregg's family. So, it will definitely be a hard move to make... we try not to think too much about it and will have to cross that bridge when we get there. We just know that we don't want to permanently reside in Utah, so we know there will be an end to this chapter. But it definitely is making us really think about the things we still want to do while we're here. So, stay tuned for soon-to-come pictures of our trip to Southern Utah!

Australia- Sydney

SUCH a long time coming! When you have ONE Amazing trip to AUSTRALIA plus 1300 pictures... it's a little daunting to sit down at a computer and try to face the blog! BUT I'm here and am finally getting it recorded! We went to Australia... yep, WE, the whole fam, July 30- August 14! When we first started planning our trip, it was going to be without Kaylen, but after she was born... we just couldn't go without her! SO, originally, it was going to be Gregg, myself, Kaylen and Leslie, but Cherie, Katie and Ian jumped in along the way. Warren wasn't able to make it due to leave from work, etc. We had quite the crew! And it's impossible to go into too much detail, but with Australia and all the amazing things we had the chance to do... it's hard not to! Pretty much all of Cherie's family still lives there, so we were able to stay with family the entire time which not only allowed us a ton of extra time with them but saved us money along the way!



Our flight out of Los Angeles was close to midnight, so we all (including Kaylen) flew well there. We all tried to get some sleep. The service on that flight wasn't so great so the 14 hour flight definitely felt like 14 hours! But we made it to Sydney and were happy to have arrived! We stayed with Gregg's cousin, Aaron, and his wife Dina while in Sydney and they were there to pick us up!

It's hard to explain just how amazing the family was both in Sydney and is Brisbane were to us. Everyone was so welcoming and hospitable. We are so grateful for all the time, energy and money that went into having us there. Aaron and Dina live in Kogarah, a suburb of Sydney. Below is a picture we took at the train station that was just a 4 block walk from their house.

The below picture of "kanga bangas" is out of order for whatever reason, but one of the nights we were in Sydney, Aaron and Dina bbq'd us a FEAST! They bought kanga bangas and kangaroo fillets for us to try. Try we did... but I don't know that I would try them again! But like I said, they made a feast, so not only did we have the kangaroo in our options, but they made delicious steaks, chicken AND shrimp, so we were plump full by the end of the meal!

The first day we arrived in Sydney, we headed down to Cronulla Beach and had fish and chips. The beach there is BEAUTIFUL and there were a TON of people out enjoying the beautiful day! I had many favorite days, but this was one of them! It was just so beautiful and relaxing! After getting fish and chips at this amazing fresh fish shop, we took our food down to the beach.

The beach was beautiful, the scenery was beautiful... everything was perfect! Just off the coastline, there were these rock pools. They basically formed little pools off the shoreline to break the waves so that people could swim. Our whole trip was during Australia's winter, so it wasn't warm enough for people to be enjoying the water, but it definitely looked like a lot of fun!

Below is a picture of the fish and chips we got that first day... by far the BEST fish and chips we had the entire time we were there!

Cronulla

Aaron, Dina, and Kaylen at Cronulla

This was the feast as mentioned above

Aaron and Dina's house in Kogarah

One of the great things about where they lived was the super easy access to the public transportation! This is the train station.

We only spent two days in Sydney, so the 2nd day, we did downtown Sydney. We were able to see Sydney Harbour, the Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, and take a ferry ride.

There were two aboriginal groups that day playing didgeridoos. This group invited people to come take pictures with them as well!

Group picture

It was great to get up close to the Sydney Opera House!

My two loves in one amazing city

One CUTE rump!

Another didgeridoo player. This guy played to music though, which was pretty cool to hear.

This was in a little area close to the Harbour called The Rocks.

We soon found out that some of the best pictures of the Sydney Opera House were from the other side of the water! This was one of our favorite pictures!

Us with Dina

The Harbour Bridge

A GREAT picture from our ferry ride!

We took a great ferry ride in the Harbour to Darling Harbour. It was so great to see everything from the ferry! It gave us a whole other view! It was beautiful! There was the Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbour that we were originally going to do, but we must have had such a good time that by the time we got there, we had just kind of run out of time!

The next day, both Aaron and Dina had to work, so we ventured to Bondi Beach by ourselves. Cherie and Katie actually stayed home with Kaylen as the weather wasn't so great at the start of the day (but cleared up later!) and Kaylen really needed a nap! So, it was just Gregg, myself, Jay and Ian! And we handled the public transportation like rock stars!

Jay and Ian at Bondi

Aww... US at Bondi

Rugby is HUGE in Australia. And Aaron, being the gent that he is... renewed his membership at the St. George (Grandma's favorite team!) Leagues Club so Gregg could see all the memorabilia and we could have a yummy dinner!

Aaron and Dina at the St. George Leagues Club

Aaron and Dina have cute, TINY pet turtles! I got to hold this one!

I have no idea how to sum up our time in Sydney other than... it was AMAZING and wish so much that we could've spent more time there and had more time with Aaron and Dina. Just before we took our trip to Australia, they took this incredible world-tour trip and one of their stops was to visit Gregg's family in Star Valley. We got to see them very briefly that time, but neither time was long enough! We missed them the day we left and still do today! THANK YOU to such a wonderful time!!