Summer 2012 - Part 3

We spent a few days up at my Mom's cabin in Mt. Pleasant, Utah. Scott and Holly were able to come up with their families and it is always so fun to be together with cousins at the cabin. 

 My mom with 7 of her 9 grandchildren.

 Ava, Max and Cael with their leaf impressions

 My brother Scott was teaching the kids how to rope a calf.

 Best Buddies, Cael (9) and Max (7)

 The girls Mallory (3), Elle (1), and Ava (6)

 The kids love to play piano with Grandma

 Clay and Max watching TV on grandmas bed

 Picnic in the park


After spending two weeks in Utah and being gone from dad for a month we decided to head to Houston and my mom was willing to help me drive and entertain the kiddos. We took our time getting down there and were able to stop and a few fun places to make the trip more memorable.

We stopped by the visitor center at Arches National Park.  We chose not to actually go into the park and see the formations since we had such a long trip ahead of us and you could spend a whole day at Arches.  I am sure we will be back one day when the kids are older and we have much more time.

 Max had been marking off all of the license plates we had seen on the road since we left Indiana and we found this car parked at a rest stop that was made up entirely of license plates.  We were able to check off all of the far away ones like Hawaii and Alaska but I thought is was cheating to check off all of them so we left a few.

We spent the night in Moniticello, Utah and then headed out the next morning into Colorado. We stopped at Mesa Verde National Park to see the old ruins from the ancestoral Pueblo Indians from the year 1190. Only Max and I were able to make it on the hike.  The stroller and the kids would not have enjoyed it and since my mom had done it before she stayed with Mallory and Clay in the visitors center. 

 We climbed down a steep ladder into one of their ceremonial chambers called Kivas. We were both a  little apprehensive to make the climb down into a dark hole but once you are down there your eyes adjust and you can see a round room where they would hold meetings.  We were both proud of ourselves.

We also stayed the night in Albequerque, New Mexico and Sweetwater, Texas before arriving at our summer home in Houston, Texas.