Our very first family vacation!

In January Richard had a long 3 day weekend. These things almost never happen. So we took advantage and decided to take our first ever family vacation to sunny St. George! (Hey, baby steps people!)

The girls had never been on drive this long before. In fact, they think the hour long trip to Papa D's house is REALLY far away. We did our best to prepare accordingly. We packed lots of snacks and drinks and got some portable DVD players to keep them occupied. (Truth be told, these were promptly wrapped in their original packaging and returned to the nearest Walmart when we got back to town. Shhhh!)

They did surprisingly well! I was impressed. I think the only whining happened literally 2 minutes from our destination.

Richard drove a large chunk of the time and was obviously a little tired by the end. We had a lot of fun doing our thing though. We got to talk a lot and sing loudly to our favorite songs. I think long drives in the car are some of my favorite times with him.

We stayed with Richards sister Teressa (one of my favorite people) and her husband David. It was a full house between us, them, their kids, and Grandma LaRue but we managed to all fit comfortably. We spent some downtime while the kids all played together. Us women watched the food network and took naps while the men played video games. After all that resting we got out of the house and did some awesome hiking.

Seriously, this guy is such a hunk! He climbed up every scary looking, super high thing he could find and then stood on it just like this.

 Caydance tried to find every hole that she could climb up to and then sit in so that I could take her picture.

Athena really liked the running and hiking part but was more mellow when it came to climbing. She stuck by her Richard most of the time.

The weather was amazing. It was January and I was hiking in a tank top without any complaints. It was in the high 50's and sunny. I talked about how great it would be to live there. When I went back in June I realized that when you start that warm you can only get more and more hot. Blech!