Isn't Life Grand?

We were only a few hours away from Grand Canyon, so we figured we would get our money's worth (we bought the Annual Interagency Pass for National Parks and such) so many of us from the group went to there when our time at Zion was done.  A little history would be enlightening--my mom worked at Grand Canyon cleaning cabins during the summers of her college years. It was her favorite vacation when she was a kid, and it continues to be one of her favorite spots. She is always trying to talk someone into going to Grand Canyon with her. We were glad that it worked out this time, and she knew of some great lookout points and simple hikes to go on.

We had to get the obligatory photo underneath the Grand Canyon Lodge sign.

I love Sophia's expression in the photo above!

We drove and hiked and looked and oohed and aah-ed and took lots of photos. The sun was bright so our expressions were kind of goofy in most of the photos, but we had a good time. We drank lots of water too. It was hot.

Our last stop was an old Native American Granary. It was a 1/2 mile hike (or so?) and we wanted to hurry, so we half-way ran down and back up the trail. I learned again where I get my "we need to hurry!" from (my mom was hurrying us all along) and Coleman and Olivia kept asking me why we needed to run. Poor kids.

We saw variations of this view on our way out of the park as we drove to Jacob Lake (which actually doesn't have much of a lake, did you know?).  It was late and we were tired and hungry and Sophia was cranky, so we kept telling the kids to give her snacks (Teddy Grahams, cereal, pretzels, etc. from the best trail mix ever that Lauren made). The road was so curvy and windy and Sophia didn't feel so well. About 30 minutes away from Jacob Lake Liv told us she thought Sophia was going to be sick. Sure enough, there was vomiting. A lot of it. Yucky and smelly. We pulled off to the side of the road and waved as all of the other cars in our group passed us. My mom said she was sure we had stopped to photograph the beautiful sunset :). Lindsey was kind enough to stop and check on us, but there wasn't much we could do. We cleaned her up the best that we could and made our way to Jacob Lake where we promptly bathed Sophia and all of the parts of her car seat. Good times on the family vacation!

We decided that Grand Canyon is amazing... and it is good to visit there every 10 or 15 years or so. We might be tempted to get to the South Rim sometime soon though (we need to make good use of our interagency pass!).

**What's your favorite national park?
**We aren't the only ones with throw-up stories while on vacation, are we? What's yours?

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Zion Ponderosa Ranch had so many fun things to do... the best thing was hanging out together in the great house. When we weren't running to a national park we had a great time at the ranch.

We swam (that's my awesome mom on the slide!)...

We ate... and ate... (we made Cafe Rio salads with Brazilian Lemonade when it was our night to cook)...

Sophia went to sleep in the corner while we played games (Ticket to Ride and Trivial Pursuit).

We played on the swings...

...and Sophia was SO cute... she was happy to keep swinging while we...

waited and waited in line for Liv to go on the bungee trampoline...

...and when it was finally her turn, the power on the machine didn't work! She was so disappointed, but she got another ticket to do another activity.

Coleman miniature golfed! He even got a hole-in-one.

We braved family photos! Ryan was so great, I don't think he loves taking family photos, but he was willing to do it for us. We had some challenges with the sun and shadows, so there is a big hole in the top left corner, but it was just too bright there. Looking at it now, it looks like a perfect spot for Matt and his family. We missed them so much! We should photoshop them in (wink, wink).

Look for the above family photo on the blog header soon...

... and these are all of the Cole kids and grandkids.  Again, missing Matt and Ashley and their boys, and always missing Chance.

Above are the Cole siblings (minus Matt)... David, Heather, me, Lauren, Erin, Lindsey, and Megan.

We zip-lined! We had to climb 3 huge flights of stairs to get to the top... and the first time we climbed it we didn't know that we had to check in and get our gear... by the time we got to the top and realized that, Olivia decided it was way too high. After she couldn't do the trampoline, she decided to do the zip line. It was fun! Did I mention that my mom is cool? She did the zip line too! That is her in the bottom right corner.

Our "special" boys found any wild-life they could, including this blue-bellied lizard! There is a Blue-Belly Grill  at the ranch, and when they found this guy we figured out where they got the name.

The kids blew bubbles and played on the stairs (scary!) and we had pow-wows in the closet (which was as big as most of our bedrooms) where Grace and Sophia had their matching jams on.

We really appreciated my mom and Mike for making the arrangements for us to stay at such a fun place!

Zippin' Through Zion

We spent one of our days in Zion National Park and had  a great time. My mom and Mike gave us cool Zion's t-shirts for Christmas last year, so our family sported them for the day.

You aren't allowed to drive into the park very far any more, but they have a handy shuttle bus that takes you anywhere you need to go... and luckily wasn't that crowded. Lindsey and her boys got there the same time we did, so we got to spend the morning with them.

We hiked to the Emerald Pools and had a great time! Sophia did NOT want to keep her hat on her head (but she DID want to keep her finger in her nose). Ryan had Soph in the pack for our hikes and she did pretty well. I was trying to help Lindsey with her boys a little bit... they were great, but were wanting to hop and run ahead, so I was trying to keep track of Jonah (four years old) since Lindsey was with Jaxton.  Lindsey overheard a woman telling her hiking companions what a horrible parent I was for bringing such a young boy on a trail like this.  She said something to the effect of "Now that's just bad parenting right there!" Lovely. If I had seen her again I would have given her a list of all the ways that I am a bad parent, but certainly hiking on a fairly easy trail with plenty of water and sunscreen isn't one of them.

We finally found a way to keep Sophia's hat on her head... she just needed to fall asleep!

After the Emerald Pools hike we met up with the rest of the group near the lodge for a picnic lunch.

Sophia stayed asleep for a few minutes like this!

After she woke up from her nap, Soph was in a funny, funny mood.

She kept picking the grass and throwing it on Grandpa.  Ryan got the cutest video of her (notice, no hat!):



After our lunch and a little break we loaded onto the shuttle bus again and hiked to Weeping Rock. It is such a short hike with a fun ending... the kids loved the dripping water and the cool shadow of the overhang.

We loved being at Zion with our family!

Mammoth Cave

The next day we tried to go on a hike, but were informed that most of the trailheads required a four-wheel drive vehicle to get to. We drove along a windy road for a long, long time and still couldn't find the trail we were looking for, so we finally gave up and headed back to the house, where we met up with a couple of my sisters and their families who were going to go to Mammoth Cave. It looked like a relatively short drive and an exciting thing, so we decided to go along.

It turned out to be about an hour and half away! So much for a quick trip. With a name like Mammoth Cave, we figured it would be gigantic and huge... and it was really a hole in the ground that went on for a long, long time. It was pretty cool though.

There were a few entrances and several different passage ways. We took flashlights and head lamps with us because it got dark really, really fast.

Aren't we cute? (my sister Erin and me)

The ceiling got lower and lower... there were some spots that I had to crawl on all fours, but it was the perfect height for Sophia! She cruised right along. In the photo above are Andrew, Nathan, Coleman, Josh, Tayden, Olivia, Emma, and Sophia.

The Loutzenhiser boys

Erin and Tayden

Overall, it was fun... just a lot of driving to get there! (We were glad it was free!)

Bryce Canyon and a Birthday

At the end of June we headed out on an adventurous reunion for the Cole/Stover family reunion. We met up with part of the group at Bryce Canyon on our way to Zion.

Megan with Coleman and Liv...

Our little family at one of the many lookouts...

Liv, Emma, Soph, Katty, me, David Joseph, David, and Megan...

Olivia!

Coleman!

Bryce is beautiful, no?

I loved this view of Ryan and Coleman looking at the beautiful scenery.

Heather, my mom, me, David, Lauren, and Claire

Ryan and the kiddos at "one more lookout" before we got back in the car to drive to Zion.

My mom and Mike arranged for us to stay in a couple of great houses and cabins at Zion Ponderosa Ranch, which is just outside of Zion National Park. The first night we had a little pow-wow to establish some rules and guidelines (and of course sign the liability release form!).  Mike put together some fun bags for each of the grandkids with some snacks and a water bottle and some little prizes. They thought that was SO neat!

Our "camp directors"

That day happened to be my 37th birthday and my sisters brought cake! It was fun to spend my birthday with so many people from my family... out of 12 kids, 11 were there... from Idaho, Nevada, California, Utah, and Georgia. We greatly missed Matt and his family who weren't able to come at the last minute. We had close to 50 people there! Our family has grown up in a lot of ways. It was so fun to spend time together and see some beautiful sites.

Twelve Years!

 Yesterday we celebrated being married for twelve years!

We spent a lovely evening at the Salt Lake Temple doing sealings and then ate some yummy dinner together.

A few weeks ago Olivia summed it all up for us. She looked at us both and said, "Mom, I'm so glad Dad married you!"

I was feeling pretty good that she recognized what a blessing I was to Ryan... and I started to agree when she spoke again after a brief pause....

"If he hadn't you would be sad and weeping somewhere because you'd be all alone."

Thanks, Ry, for preventing me from being sad and weepy all by myself. I love being married to you! We make a great team.

Dad Stays Home Part Two

Wednesday
We started off Wednesday by forgetting Activity Days for Olivia! We were making cupcakes for Lisa to take up to camp the next day for a birthday and totally forgot. We were lucky that one of her friends called to ask her to walk. After finishing the cupcakes we did dishes... again... they really never end, do they?!

I did have a chance to teach a life lesson to Coleman today. While we were putting clothes away Coleman was helping out in the closet. He was putting shoes away and made the remark "Mom should give away some of her shoes." We talked about how there are some things you don't say to women :).

We finished up the morning by playing Settlers of Catan, a favorite of Coleman's, and he won. When Sophia woke up from her nap (which gave me a minute to write the previous blog entry) we took off for Airborne Trampoline Arena in Sandy. Earlier this week, Living Social had a deal, and it sounded like fun! They had a good time.

Sophia got to jump around in the kiddie area, and she loved it. I love her jump!

They also had a really cool foam pit with a trampoline at the bottom that the kids could jump into.





I will admit, sometimes I wanted to throttle the other kids in the kiddie area. As you can see there are six large trampolines. One of the kids (who I'm sure loved being around Sophia) would jump right next to Sophia (which would knock her down). All of the other trampolines were completely unused, yet she continued jumping next to Sophia.

They also had trampolines on the walls.

Sophia finally found a little Sesame Street coin-operated truck to sit in, and let's be honest, it was probably her favorite thing (even without the coins).

They also had an awesome dodgeball arena setup that would be a lot of fun. After an hour of jumping they were exhausted. Coleman was dripping with sweat. Both kiddos got a great workout--one hour was totally enough time.

When we got home we made Spicy Chicken Pasta for Dinner. We do substitute half and half for the heavy cream and it's still awesome.

Surprisingly, Sophia liked the spicy chicken and the red/green peppers!


Thursday

We had a very full Thursday. I had a lot I wanted to get done on this last day. First we enjoyed the weekly summer movie at the Cinemark, Madagascar 2. The kids apparently have a tradition of making "trail mix" for the movie. The ingredient list changes with whatever we have in the pantry that Lisa allows them to use. That day, their trail mix consisted of marshmallows, pretzels, cereal, graham cracker pieces, and my all time favorite... croutons. That's right, nice buttery, crunchy, salty croutons. Of course I didn't see them add the croutons to their mixes, it was when I was in the dark theater eating from my prepared bag of trail mix (and sharing with Sophia) that I was treated to a nice crunchy, buttery delight.

After our movie we went to Radio Shack to pickup some materials for our next activity. Ever since I watched this TED talk about Squishy Circuits I've been excited to try this with the kids. The video is only four minutes long. Watch it.

If you didn't watch it, the basic idea is you get a battery pack and a couple of LED's (about $10 at Radio Shack), mix up two different types of play dough using two different recipes. One is conductive play dough and the other works as your insulating dough. We were able to talk about electrical circuits, and what a short is, how electricity travels, and showing the differences between a serial and parallel circuit. 

Oddly enough our insulating dough didn't turn out quite right, I didn't follow the directions very well :D. We did end up with something workable near the end though (f it's too sticky... keep adding flour).

Recipes for the dough and helpful documents found here

We invited some friends up to try it out with us (their mom was also at Girls' Camp). Here they are showing our first contraption using the conductive play dough (that we colored purple) and the insulating play dough which we left white. 

Coleman was experimenting with what happens if the circuit is in a loop

And this was our final creation. I really have no idea what it was. They started wanting to make a giraffe, but merged into some stunted neck spider with an awesome looking tail.

We finished up the day with 6 holes of disc golf at the course in American Fork, 2 hours of soccer practice, and kids meals at Applebee's. We had planned on a simple Pasta-Roni meal of White Shells and Cheddar (Coleman's favorite), but he indulged us and let us use Olivia's free meal cert and our $10 off coupon. I just didn't feel like making dinner.

I had a lot of fun over those few days, and fully realize that there's no way I could keep up that pace every day of every week! I had a lot I wanted to do in those short 2 1/2 days and kiddos that pitched in when necessary to get things done made it so that we could have some good play time. I really couldn't have had it any better. At least I have another year to plan for next Girls' Camp :).

**What's the funniest thing you've had in "trail mix"?
**Want to play with some play dough?
**Are you going to try Spicy Chicken Pasta?