Grand Staircase National Monument, Misc

Saturday

September 25th

Just for fun: a picture of our cat, Jingles, snoozing away in our bookshelves.

We decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and take the kids metal-detecting. Benji wanted to hit park after park, town after town. Our first stop was in Tropic, @ 30 minutes South East of Panguitch.

Benji, Jordyn, & Koby looking for coins

There were these cute goats next to the park, and once the kids saw them, they were in heaven! They started pulling off leaves from the willow tree in the park and feeding them to the goats. At one point, Jordyn was swinging like Tarzan on the willow branches, when all of the sudden a HUGE limb snapped off the tree, hitting poor Brittany's head on the way down. Brittany was okay, and next thing we did was pull the huge limb full of leaves over to the goats so they could gobble up the evidence. Lol.

After Benji found $1.60 in coins under the swings, he tried the grassy area next to the pavillion. He has this tool which is used for slicing out holes in a golf course, and it works awesome when you're metal-detecting!

A dime!

Koby LOVES to metal-detect with dad!! He was so excited.

Next, we stopped in Henrieville. I didn't get a picture, but the park wasn't too grand anyway. We passed out brownies and played fetch with a sweet stray dog. We only spent 15 minutes there when we got on the road again. This is when we started seeing the gorgeous sights of the Grand Staircase National Monument, which borders the highway we were travelling. We drove up to Escalante, hoping to find a park there, but it's actually not very fun, and their park was being used for the Arts Festival. Lol. No park, so ... we kept driving! By this time, the kids were totally whining. Especially Koby. He wanted to go home. We decided to go home... the "long" way. :) These are views on the way to Boulder.

We stopped along the highway at one point and found a beautiful photo op!

I made the kids get out and stretch their legs, and had them sit in this fun rock cave thing.

Cuteness.

It helped Koby cheer up a bit, lol.

Then we were on our way again. On our way to Grover & Torrey, we passed a whole lot of gorgeous forest areas thick with Aspen trees. The leaves were yellow and orange, but all the pics I took (as we were driving) turned out blurry. :p We made it to the summit, which was probably @ 15 degrees cooler than Tropic.

I couldn't resist taking loads of pics of the scenery. You look out and it goes on FOREVER!

Once in Torrey, the scenery started to look more like what you would see in St. George

We FINALLY found a small park in Bicknell, so we stopped and let the (thoroughly annoyed, ready-to-be-home) kids out to play!

Benji tried his luck at this park, but only came away with a couple of bobby pins and a few pennies.

The bathrooms were locked, but the water fountain was on!

We saw chickens in the park! They had snuck underneath the fence where they lived and were roaming on the lawn

There were even cows on the other side of the fence

Once Ryan saw this cute white chicken...

he just HAD to chase it to see if he could catch it! He couldn't. Lol.

Then the boys thought it would be fun to run through the sprinklers!

We told them not to get wet because we were going to hit Pizza Hut on the way home, but did they listen? Lol!

Jordyn & Brittany having fun

Once we got them into the Tahoe, their clothes were SOAKED! So I had this brilliant idea to stick them outside the window so it could "air dry" on the way to Richfield.

It worked! 1/2 hour later when we drove into Glenwood & on into Richfield, their clothes were totally dry. It was even better seeing all the looks we got from passing cars. Lol.

The kids were (yet again) whining that they wanted to go home. The only thing they thought was pretty cool was when I told them we had travelled through FOUR different counties! Garfield, Wayne, Sevier, & Piute! We then headed to Pizza Hut and ate dinner. When we were finished, it was almost 8:30pm and it was dark outside. The kids begged us to let them play at the park for a bit, so we drove over to a newer park in town and let them loose for 1/2 hour before heading home. We got home to Panguitch at about 10 pm or so. Benji & I LOVED the drive. It makes me look forward to the days where it will be just him and I, so we can take these types of trips all the time!

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In other news:

Ryan has finally learned to ride a bike without training wheels! Yes, I realize he's 6 1/2 yrs old. And that most kids learn at age 3 or so. Lol. But I'm proud of him anyway!

Sister took him out into the back yard at first...

Then tried his luck on pavement!

WooHoo! Way to go, Ry Ry!! :)

Looking Better!

Here's Ryan with his 4 stitches in... and yesterday we were able to get them removed! He still has to wear a piece of tape to hold it together for 3 more days, but then it should be all good... unless he falls and splits it open again! In which case, they won't be able to stitch it back together. Yikes!

***New Fad***

So. I saw these in Walmart a while back, but in my naivety, I thought, "That's kinda dumb... what's the point in making shaped rubber-bands if when you put it in your hair, you won't be able to tell what the shapes are?" Well, just goes to show I don't know anything. Jordyn came home yesterday with a handful of these cute rubber bands...

Apparently.... you wear them as bracelets, and they're "all the rage". Oh...kay... cool!  Who am *I* to question the styles these days? LOL! When I was her age, it was hyper color T-shirts, scrunchy socks, dangly earrings, hair scrunchies, and leg warmers!

Well, that's a pretty good update for today. Keep checking back!