St. George!

Paul and Charlie cuddling.

 Me and my silly boys.

 At the zoo. Charlie wanted a picture with every statue.

 Baby Charlie riding backwards on a lazy harp seal. (Parry Gripp reference)

Paul all ready for webelos... or his senior portrait;)

Alice loves that Grandma Terisa taught her how to wrap her hair in a towel after she showers.

On Friday, we drove 4.5 hours to St. George and got there around 7. We went straight to the temple visitors center, where Mom was working the front desk. 

She had us listen to the Christus statue voiceover, in both English and Tagalog,

  then she took us around the visitors center, showing us everything, including a couple of short movies. It was really fun to see her in action!

 Then we went to the annex to see Dad. He was just sitting at the desk, pushing papers like always. He showed us around the annex, which is all about the building of the St. George temple.

 As soon as another family walked in, he was off to talk to them and give them a tour, so we headed back out. The kids begged to go touch the temple, so we did that, then headed to our temple patron apartment across the street. Mom and Dad still had an hour left of their shift, so we got our kids put to bed. We were SO grateful it worked out for us to get one of these apartments at the last minute, since it would have been pretty tight and difficult at Mom/Dad's. The girls slept on the hideabed in the living room, with the boys on the floor. It took a while for them to calm down, but by the time Mom and Dad got off at 9, we felt like we could leave.

 We left the cell phone with Grace just in case and walked over to their apartment. Of course they put Paul right to work setting up the scanner onto Mom's computer, offloading pictures from Dad's phone, and teaching them to copy a text and paste it into an email.

 We visited, ate a little, and played Quiddler until we got too tired. They were both pretty tired anyway with such a late shift.

  We all slept okay, and Mom had given us cereal, milk, fruit, and bread so we could eat on our own, since they had an early shift. Dad did stop by with some little valentine treats for the kids and a map of the city.

It was nice to be staying RIGHT across the street from the temple!

 We met Mom/Dad at the Brigham Young Winter Home just after 9. Mom met us at the porch, and Dad came out to the annex to give us the first part of the tour.

 Another family joined us. Dad was so typical, pulling a folded up piece of paper out of his pocket, covered in cursive notes scribbled in pencil! It was all interesting stuff.

 Then he led us to the main house, where Mom took over.

It's a really cool house, with lots of cool artifacts and history. 

 There was one point when Dad called up the stairs, "Sister Flake, can you hurry it up? You've got more customers down here!" Ha!

 They still had a few hours left of their shift, so from there we took the kids to an AMAZING free city park called Thunder Junction (http://utahsadventurefamily.com/thunder-junction-st-george/). It was huge and awesome, with so much to do, equipment no other parks have, etc. And that was even without the splashpad or train running. Danny was a little nervous because the volcano would thunder and spew smoke every half hour, but he still had fun.

 After we'd tried everything and it started getting hot, we went to the city center to look around. A really cool carousel was closed but cool to look at, a huge guitar sculpture, a big field the kids ran in, and then we found a splash pad that the kids waded in for a long time.

  The Dixie D on the mountain behind us.

We checked out the tabernacle (under construction),

 got a picture by a sculpture of Paul's ancestor (Robert Gardner),

and went to the oldest shop in town (Judd's General Store) for some delicious breadsticks dipped in cheese.

 Mom and Dad finished their shift and met us there, then we drove to Santa Clara to the Jacob Hamblin home. It was a very interesting old pioneer house, very rustic. Mom and Dad gave us the tour even though they weren't on duty. Mom wanted me to stop asking questions because I was getting ahead of her!

 We went back to their apartment after that so the kids could rest and Dad could take a nap.

 

  Then we took everyone out to Chuck-a-rama for dinner. It worked well for kids' different tastes, people who were dieting, etc. Our girls sat by Mom/Dad and had some good talks with them.

Then to Pioneer Park to climb around the red rocks. Mom and Dad were all dressed up, so they mostly hung out at the picnic table, and Danny sat in a little hole and threw pebbles, but the rest of us climbed around for a while. 

Then I slipped and hurt my bum - Dad laughed and laughed and wouldn't stop talking about it. He also said I didn't have my youth anymore - ha! 

  Paul and our three oldest climbed really high and had a lot of fun - it was all the kids' favorite thing we did all weekend. When it got too cold, we headed back to our apartment.

Mom and Dad were so nice to watch our kids and put them to bed for us. Granted, they did tell them some pretty traumatizing bedtime stories;) Paul and I did a session at the temple. It was really beautiful and wonderful. It is so rare for us to go to the temple together anyway, and the St. George temple is so old and historical and pretty. By the time we finished, the kids were asleep, so the adults headed to Mom/Dad's for interesting gospel discussions. Cami/David came soon after for a short visit, as well as cookies from Swig. After they left, we visited more, played Quiddler, and went to bed.

 We met Dad/Mom at church in the morning. Even though they don't really belong to any ward or know anyone there, Dad can't resist the urge to "work the crowd"!

After sacrament meeting, we packed up and checked out, then had a great brunch at Mom/Dad's: bacon, eggs, toast, fruit salad, yogurt, etc. The toast may have burnt and set off the fire alarm a few times:) 

 Then we said our goodbyes and headed out so Mom/Dad could get to their next shift. It was a great trip!

We drove two hours to Cove Fort and stopped for a tour. It was pretty interesting, though cold, and the boys were wild. But we did ask about the Matilda Robison King story from our family history (singing in the Indian tongue) and were told they had no problems with Indians at all at Cove Fort, and it was even considered a miracle that they never did. But she did give us a pamphlet about another fort that used to be there on Cove Creek, called Fort Willden, and they did have a lot of trouble with Indians there, so we wonder if maybe that's where it happened. We made it home before 5:30, unpacked, did showers/baths, and sent our tired kids to bed. Paul and I read family emails and relaxed. Fun, fun trip!