The Macduff Path

They probably spent an hour up there. Trevor had a bible time and the kids drew pictures in their art book. By the way some of you should be expecting post cards in the next week of so from Tsega. Which he did all by himself (as opposed to me telling him to write a post card). Awesome kid. So atleast you will get 1 out of 9 postcards even if the rest of us suck at writing letters.

Trevor and the adventurous hikers who went up to the middle falls.

Today we hiked on Cinder Cone outside snow Canyon. Here was our challenge. Trevor, Caleb, Tsega, and Maggie climbed straight up the side. The rest of us took the path around it.I think this is Tsega at the top.
Hiwot, Addis and Sam behind me
Abby trudging ahead. This is about as far as we got- 3/4 of the way. And then the path became all volcanic rock. Not so fun with a 2 year old
I couldn't handle the feathered 80's look that my hair kept doing on this vacation. So it all came off again! Tommorow we are packing up and leaving St. George and heading to Flagstaff to see the Grand Canyon. So it might be a couple of days before I blog again. Love ya all!

Again, I got all the pictures backward. This is at the very end of our hike to the falls. The kids wanted to ride horses. This is as close as they got considering that they were $40 per hour per person.Hiwot and Abby posing under the lower waterfalls.
Hiding in a rock crevice.
I think this is my favorite. I was going to have everyone pose and take a picture but Trevor refused to turn around cause he thought I was too close to the edge.
Here is Trevor and a group of kids walking under the falls.

We went to Zion yesterday (Tuesday) This is where we had our picnic lunch. It's a bit different now than 15 years ago. You have to park your car and take a tram everywhere. Zion is where Trevor and I would pack up last minute in Vegas and go camping for the weekend. So it was special to go there again. So the story about the picture below is that we are all hiking up this mountain. Trevor and the big kids are way ahead and I have Sam in a backpack with the two littles. You have never seen a woman stop so much to take pictures. I was telling the girls it was because it was so beautiful but really it was that I was 50# heavier than the last time I hiked this trail and I had a baby on the front of me and on the back. So I was plodding along thinking "I can do this, I can do this" with Sam panting very heavily in my ear (why is he panting, I'm carrying him!) when we round that corner in the picture and a White Tail Deer bounds off the mountain onto the trail about 4 feet in front of us. And being the great nature girl that I am , I squeal/scream. It was great. I (or the deer) made Hiwot cry.
Isn't Zion beautiful?
This bug caused so much CHAOS. You never would think one little beetle could create such fear.

Sam and Abby sure are enjoying this little creepy crawly though. I'm grateful that Sam didn't eat it.

So I forgot to tell you about the funniest conversation we had on the way to the zoo. We were discussing about getting into a Mormon temple, cause you can't get in unless you are mormon. I said "Well, maybe they will think we are mormon because of our size...no half of us are the wrong color" Tsega said "Maybe they will think we are Catholic." Caleb said, "No, I just think they will think we are crazy...." He summed it up about right...

The pictures don't even do the color much justice here. It is a very deep rust red. Absolutely beautiful. There were hardly any people here either.


Isn't this a great picture. As I said, it's been my favorite place so far. Tomorrow we are headed out to Zion. I like Zion also but I imagine it will be much more crowded.

Oh, I forgot to mention- Yesterday, Trevor found a Magnet Arts school that was putting on a musical "Once on this Island" an adaptation of The Little Mermaid (the real version not Disney). It was set in Haiti, lots of singing and dancing. Kids liked it alot. It actually was at an amphitheater set at the base of Snow Canyon so it was absolutely beautiful and they used part of the rocks as the set and scenery. Trevor was really happy seeing that.

I know this is Day 7 but I'm finally doing day 3 which was the zoo. I don't know why this is blue and underlined. I've lost interest because I was having computer technical difficulties (imagine that). On day 3 we went to the zoo. It was cheaper to buy a year family pass then pay for us for 1 day. It was great fun. I still love the elephants,monkeys and giraffes the best. This is Sam on his first train ride. He love Thomas the train. So he was SOO excited.

We took all these great pictures of animals but I think the kids had more fun posing as animals at the zoo park. Here's Caleb as a turtle
Caleb is hatching an Addis and Hiwot.
Tsega and Sam coming down the slide
I think this one is my favorite.

When I was in Tri Cities I bought a family pass to the CREHST Science Museum for $40. It gets us into alot of science museums. We've been having great fun with it. So Tuesday morning we all go to the zoo and then Sam and I go back to hotel for a nap. Trevor took rest of the kids to Children's museum for free with the card. On Wednesday, we all went back to children's museum and then to Clark's planatarium for free. They were kitty-corner to each other downtown Salt Lake. The shopping district was very well kept and done from the olympics. There were 2 outdoor levels of shopping on these brick streets. Sam, Abby, and I went back for naps in the afternoon and Trevor took the rest of the kids to the Utah museum of natural history (equivalent of OMSI) for free.
On Thursday we packed up and headed south. We stopped at a Dinasaur Museum which was great fun. Kids got to dig for dinasaur bones and watch Imax and do other fun things. We drove about 4 hours south to St George. It was amazing. On Wednesday it was 80 degrees. On Thursday, it snowed. Weird weather. We checked out a canyon called Snow canyon. It reminds me of Red Rock in Vegas. We played in the red sand dunes. It's been my favorite place so far. It's about 15 minutes from where we are staying. Tomorrow we are headed out to Zion. The last couple of days, we've been taking it easy and hanging around the pool.
The condo is amazing. It's probably about 800 sf. There is 3 bedrooms and a pulldown murphy bed. and most importantly 2 huge pools. I'll try to post more pictures later.

This is the Place Heritage Park is a town reenactment. Kind of like Jamestown or Williamsburg but set in 1850's. It was an awesome day to come. There was practically no one so when we would go into the different building with the people dressed up in character we were the only ones in the building at the time. I couldn't figure out why it was named this name until we took a train ride and I guess Bringam Young sat up from in the back of a wagon ( he was really sick with West Nile Disease or something- the mosquito one) anyhow and said "This is the Place" as he looked over the Salt Lake City Valley. Trevor thinks he was just really close to dying and wanted to stop traveling. But the town was great.This is another teeny tiny log cabin that had 7 children in it
On the train ride around the town.