Strong Family Reunion

Tuesday we drove to Brianhead, UT for the Strong Family Reunion.  We stayed in a cabin with Dallin's parents and all of Dallin's siblings and their families.  There were 16 adults and 24 kids and it was a great time!  Each family took a turn cooking a meal and we had games and crafts for the kids to do.  The cousins loved spending time together, especially our kids since they only get to see their cousins once a year.  The kids ages range from a few weeks old to 13.  Jacob has a boy cousin his age, Zach has 2 boy cousins his age, and Savannah has 2 boy cousins her age.  There are tons of little girls now too that are all younger than Savannah, and she likes to "be in charge of them all."  

The first night was pretty rough because a ton of people had elevation sickness.  The kids from multiple families were spread out all over the cabin (with 4 separate staircases) so it was a long night with trying to find parents of sick kids.  But luckily that got a little better over time and we were able to kick back and relax.

Landon has 2 boy cousins that are just 4 months older than him, and they all have some shade of red hair.  They're going to be quite the trio when they get older.

 

 

 

 This little niece is just a few weeks old.  Savannah loved all of the babies and had fun entertaining them too.

  

I hope these 3 boys will be good buddies someday.  This made me laugh when I saw all 3 of them kicking back watching a show and eating their snacks.  I'm glad they got a little downtime with all of the running around they did.

 Many forts were also built.  I'll bet you can't guess who named this one...

 

 Big boy loft (and fort)

 Savannah is my game girl and played games with the cousins as well as the adults.

 Dallin's sister made a video collage of tons of pictures from over the years.  The kids love it and have watched it many times already.

 Grandpa & Grandma put on a nice little program too.  We appreciate so much all they did to make this reunion happen.

 Grandma & Grandpa Strong

 The little kids' loft

 Dallin shooting some pool with his brother, niece, and nephew

 Zach had a hard time the first night with all of the noise from the sickness and just cousins being silly.  He's used to a quiet room with Jacob, and we were already pretty tired by the time we got to Utah.  So he and Jacob camped out alone in the ping pong room for the last two nights and loved it.  It is a closed in garage so it was really cold, but they said it was like camping.

 This picture is really blurry, but the only decent one I got of the adults playing games.  We stayed up really late most nights taking advantage of the time together.

 On the last day when we were packing up we heard Landon and his cousin singing at the top of their lungs in the shower.  They loved the echo and it kept them occupied for at least half an hour.

 The cabin was identical on both sides and then joined up in the great room down in the basement.  Our family only ventured outside a couple of times because it was actually a little cold and rainy most of the time we were there.  But I'll take that any day over the Texas heat and humidity.

 I realized that I did not have one picture of myself from the week so I had Dallin take this one of Savannah and I at Cedar Breaks, which was just a few minutes from the cabin on our drive home.

I have more pictures from this reunion, but they will come in different posts.

Glen Canyon Dam

Tuesday morning we had some time to kill in Page, AZ before leaving for Utah.  We were all stuck in one hotel room so Dallin took the four oldest to the Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell while I packed up and tried to keep Landon quiet.  They took a tour of the dam and got back just in time to check out of the hotel.  Dallin is awesome like that.  I don't know what most of these pictures are of, but I know that the kids took some of them so I'm posting them for their journals.

 

 

 

 I do know that this is Connor's closed-eye picture face in front of the dam at the bottom.

 

 

Grand Canyon

On Monday we drove from Flagstaff to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon...again.  We went last summer but got rained out after a little while.  This year Dallin also wanted to take Jacob on a little hike, so we went back for more.  Anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE the Grand Canyon.  My dad started taking me backpacking there when I was 12 or 13 and that became a special thing that we did together.  When we got married Dallin had never even seen the canyon, so I took him hiking down to the bottom a few years ago.  Hopefully we can do it with our kids someday when they're a little older.

So we split up when we got there.  Dallin and Jacob went to go hike the South Kaibab Trail down to Cedar Ridge and back.  I took the rest of the kids to a couple of the viewpoints we missed last summer.  Landon was strapped to a stroller for just about the entire time and hated every minute of that.  But that was much better than the alternative of him running down a cliff.

 I got many stares from people, especially foreigners, who saw me trying to wrangle 4 sort of small kids by myself at the Grand Canyon.  I don't blame them though since we were kind of a little circus, with Connor spouting facts about animals and Landon screaming to get out of the stroller.

 We spent a while in the geology museum that has some great views.  Connor loved the binoculars.  If you click on this picture you can see a little triangle of the brown river just above and a little left of Connor's forehead.  Phantom Ranch is the green trees in the gorge to the right and up a little from Connor's head.

 Zach loves geology and like learning about all the different kinds of rocks in the canyon and how they were made.

 This was one of the few moments I let Landon out of the stroller...when he was safely behind glass.

 The kids loved riding the shuttle bus too, that takes you to the different lookout points.  The last couple of drivers we had though made me hold Landon on my lap.  I'll let you guess how much he loved that, and how much the entire shuttle loved hearing him kick and scream for 10 minutes.

 We made our way over to the South Kaibab Trailhead and arrived in perfect time to see Dallin & Jacob hiking the last switchback of the trail.

 We decided we were done when we saw the rainclouds (and had to restrain an exhausted Landon yet again on the shuttle back to the car).  We made it to the car just in time, but I stopped to take a couple of pictures because the storm looked so pretty over the canyon.  Shortly after these pictures we drove through a torrential downpour with hail and everything.  My mom called freaked out because she had heard a tornado warning right where she knew we'd be driving, but luckily we had driven past and missed it by half an hour.  We were happy to arrive safe and sound in Page, AZ for the night.

 

 These are some of the pictures that Dallin took on his hike with Jacob.  These first two are from "Ooh-Aah Point."

 

 The red, flat area on this ridge is where they hiked to, Cedar Ridge.  You can see where the trail continues on after it.  I have hiked this trail many, many times and it brings back good memories to see it.

 

 While resting at Cedar Ridge Jacob made friends with a squirrel.

 It even posed for some pictures.  Jacob had a great time with Dallin and I'm glad it didn't rain so they are able to have that memory together.

Family Vacation 2012

We  had a great family vacation this summer!  We were able to see lots of family and some neat places along the way.  We left on Saturday, July 14 and drove to Albuquerque, NM.  We stayed in five different hotels on this trip, which gets a little old after a while.  But the kids LOVE staying in hotels, especially when the hotel has cable TV and Cartoon Network.  We were lucky this trip to have two adjoining rooms at 4 of the 5 hotels.  That made a huge difference in how we all slept and just having more space to spread out.  Seven people with all their stuff in a small hotel room just doesn't work too well.

In Albuquerque I wanted to go out to eat at somewhere that wasn't completely fast food.  But we have Landon (enough said), so we opted for IHOP.  I quickly remembered why we don't take all of our kids out to eat...ever.  It was a good reminder and we won't be doing that anytime soon.

 Sunday we drove along Route 66 and were driving through my brother Justin's town anyway (Holbrook, AZ), so we stopped there for lunch.  The kids loved playing with their bird, Fiona.  It was a fun pit stop and even nicer to know we'd be seeing a lot more of them soon.

 

 Being Sunday we decided that a stop at the Snowflake Temple would be appropriate.  It rained almost the whole half hour from Justin's house, but cleared up just before we got there.  The kids especially liked all of the little waterfalls on the grounds.

 

 Connor always stops to smell the flowers wherever we go, even the artificial flowers on the craft aisle in Walmart.  He was happy that these flowers actually smelled nice.

 

 Connor & Savannah entertained themselves quite well in the hotels.  We'd fill up the bucket of ice and they thought it was the best "toy" ever.  They sucked on it, chewed it, and watched it melt in the sink.

 Landon loved the hotel in Flagstaff because we were right next to the train tracks.  Trains went by very frequently and he got just as excited every single time.

 The kids also liked eating dinner in our hotel rooms.  We tried to bring meals along with us because it was cheaper and easier.