Travel

Saturday we went up to Iowa to visit some of Faron’s family that we hadn’t seen for a while. We visited his grandpa and his Aunt and Uncle. The girls had a lot of fun playing around and even got to see a baby cow be born.










It was about a 6 hours up and 6 hours back, so we had a pretty late night. The next morning while Faron and Alexander were waiting for the rest of us to get ready for church they both fell asleep.

Washing the car

Washing the cars is now a family experience. I use to think it was silly, why not just drive through at a gas station? But now, the kids love it, it is an excuse to play in the water, what can be better than that!
This was Alexander’s first time washing and he did enjoy it! The bucket of soapy water was great, but whenever it was in use he went to a fun place under the back bumper where there was a great mud puddle in which to play, and eat muddy rocks.

The girls even got to help was this time, and then to make a bigger mess of themselves they too played in a mud puddle. So after the vehicles got cleaned, the kids came inside for a bath. If you ask the, that is the perfect end to any activity.

Alexander’s new skill is clapping, he just learned it yesterday and he finds it to be quite entertaining. He has also added a new sign to his “vocabulary”, which is clean up. He likes that one too, so much so that he has stopped signing “finished” and just goes straight to “clean up”, just as his sisters did when they learned that sign.

yard work

We have been working like crazy in our yard! A month or so ago Faron cleared out our fence line and we have had PILES of branches waiting to be chipped. So, on Tuesday before Faron’s vacation was up he and his mom spent 4 ½ hours chipping all those piles! I came behind them and started loading the piles into the wheelbarrow and hauling it to the front yard. After about an hour of doing that (with Alexander strapped to my back) the girls and I had all we could take, so we went inside while they finished up.

Faron was exhausted, and I’m sure Sharon was too! So we also spent the next several evenings loading and dumping woodchips. Today we finally finished! Here is the finished product.href="http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b66/verahopp/whereallthewoodchipswent.jpg">

Colorado Springs

Sunday morning we woke up, had a nice breakfast in the hotel and then headed out. We decided to go to a water fall called 7 Falls, instead of Garden of the gods. Isabella absoloutly loved the water fall that we saw in California, so we opted for another fall, over more mountains.

It was a pretty nice little park. First we went up the mountain elevator, honestly, we had to walk through a cave in the mountain and then there was an elevator, I have never heard of such things. However, we did it, up to the top for a fabulous view. Once we reached the top, though, we found that this was not the mountain with the falls, so we went back down and over to the falls.

Where the water fall was, there was no mountain, only 250 stiars, oh my. We climbed them, Phia and I climbed under protest. Sophia couldn’t stop wimpering after the first 50 stairs or so. We reached a landing about half way up and stopped to admire the view, I was perfectly satisfied with this view, however Faron and Isabella wanted to continue up the very top, so on we went. About half way up the second flight of steps Phia starts kicking her shoes off. I have to stop her and grab her shoes before we lose them to the mountain forever, but we got them safely up and back down (Alexander ditched a sock at the first set of falls in California, then again at the zoo!).

After reaching the top and being duly impressed by the view we had to go back down all those stairs. Faron did this with Alexander strapped to his front and phia in his arms, talk about nervous! I was a little worried, but he made it, and so did they.

After these falls we headed to the mountain top zoo, it really was too! Every where we walked was quite a hike. We only viewed about a third of the zoo before we were worn out and ready to go, but we had a great time. The giraffes were the best, you could buy crackers to feed them so the giraffes were literally coming up and being right in your face. It was pretty neat.

After those festivities we got in the car for our final trek, we were headed home. By then it was about 3, so we were hoping the kids would be tired and ready to lounge and nap on the drive, which worked from time to time. The girls were very ready to get home and see all their toys, Isabella dearly missed Pop’s baby and was busting at the seams to get to her.

We finally got home around 1:30 am, and boy were we happy to be here! I had almost forgotten what my house looked like, every where I walked it was like walking into a new room! We put the kids to bed and slept til 9!

Thursday, Friday and Saturday

Thursday was our last day in Tahoe, so we swam one more time, did lots of laundry, and packed up. We also had a fun trip to a cool mini golf course. The girls played about the first 4 holes, then they didn't want to play anymore, but they still thought everything was cool and they had fun running around on the course. So, it wasn't exactly what we had envisioned, but they had a good time.

Here is a picture I couldn’t resist. Isabella was drawing on her magna doodle and wrote a letter “p”, so then she wanted to know how to spell “Pop” because she knew it started with “p”. Then she wrote “Pop” and “Papa”. It was neat because I haven’t taught her how to write yet. She can read both of these words and is learning to read quite well, but we haven’t focused on handwriting or anything yet. So, she just wrote these letters from memory, I thought it was cool.

Faron packed up the car Thursday night, so Friday morning we took off around 5 am and started driving. We had planned to drive like crazy and get to Colorado springs,

but we also took a more scenic route than the "time efficient" route, so we didn't make it quite that far. We did get about a hundred and fifty miles into Colorado and finally stopped around 2 am. We found a hotel and slept hard, we thought we would get up and drive about 4 hours and get to Colorado Springs and head for Adventures in Odyssey (aka Focus on the Family), however the scenic route that we were on actually took us about 6 or 7 driving hours to get there! So, it closed at 4 and we finally got there at 3! The girls got to play and see everything they wanted to see though,

so it was great. Isabella has been asking to go back there for about a year now! We went 2 years ago (Isabella was 2 and Sophia was 7 months-ish). She remembered so much about it that I was shocked! We listen to Adventures in Odyssey all the time, so they know all the characters and were excited about all the different displays.

Next we found a hotel with an indoor pool so that we could swim (we swam in Tahoe, but our pool was outdoors, and it was only in the 50’s so a heated pool still wasn’t that warm!). We have been having a great evening, went swimming twice, ordered in Chinese and are now getting ready to catch up on our sleep!

Our plan for tomorrow is to visit the Garden of the gods, then go to the Zoo. After the zoo we are hoping every one will be tired and ready to sleep while we drive home! The kids are SICK of driving. They were fabulous on the drive out here, but after that 26 hour drive they were not hip on the idea of getting back into the car! It didn’t help that we wound all over mountains for 2 days, up down and all around (the current car sick count is 3 times for Phia and 2 times for Xan, and lots of “my tummy hurts, I think I am going to throw up” by Isabella). Phia has also said “I don’t like it here” and “can we go home” a lot in the last 2 days. Isabella requests “I wish we could just be home, so I could sleep in my bed”. So, we are all ready to be home, and not drive any more!

Tuesday and Wednesday

Thursday we headed up to Virgina City (just north of Carson City NV) which was one of the biggest gold mining towns, apparently. It was pretty fun, very touristy, but they had it all done up like an old west town, with lots of "Saloons" and plenty of Casinos. We took a tram tour around the town and got a crash course in Virgina City history. It was lots of fun, the girls both say it was their favorite part.


We stopped for a rootbeer at Malgoon's Saloon where the girls got to sit up at the bar and all the waitresses made a huge deal out of them and brought them cupcakes and everything. The girls, of course, remained silent. Sophia did eventually say "Thank you". We also toured the Piper Opera house, which was pretty, they still have performances there.
Apparently Bonanza had something to do with Virgina City, the lady who gave us a tour of the Opera House was quite the Bonanza buff.

Today we went way out in the middle of no where on a very narrow and often scary road and found a beautiful waterfall. It runs into Fallen Leaf lake, which was also quite lovely. Faron had us climbing all over the place at the falls, we climbed down on the rocks until we were right at the bottom of the falls, I was nervous with all the kids there, but it was great.

This vacation is brought to you by HG TV

My favorite part about staying in a hotel is the TV. That my sound funny, but since we have no TV at home, it is like a special treat to be able to watch all the design and home repair shows (fixin up the house shows). I could just watch them all day long (as could the kids and Faron, which is why we don’t have TV at home!). Isabella and I watched part of “What not to Wear” the other night and she enjoyed that (my fashion queen, imagine!). She thought it was pretty cool to see them cut and color a lady’s hair.

TV aside, we are having a pretty nice vacation. We got into town Friday, so that day we played at the park, had some pizza, then met the groom (Terry Best, an old friend of Faron’s), for who’s wedding we had traveled this far, at the hotel that he had purchased for us so that we could check in. Friday evening Faron went out to dinner with the Wedding party and the kids and I stayed here and crashed, the time difference was wreaking havoc on their sleeping schedule, so we didn’t want to take them out to a restaurant at what would be about 9:30 their time!

Saturday came, the day of the wedding. We went to breakfast with the wedding party at a nice local pancake house (Heidi’s) and ate, then Faron dropped us off at the hotel and went to pick up Mr. Groom to do some last minute wedding errands (like buying ties! It was not your typical wedding, very loosy goosy). By the time they were finished, it was time to get ready and head to the wedding.

Faron came back and got into his suit, the kids and I got dressed and we went to the hotel to caravan with the Bride and Groom, however they were not yet ready, so we went on to the wedding spot alone.

The wedding was to take place at a look out point overlooking the Lake with a beautiful mountainous backdrop. We got to the outlook, but had no idea which point the wedding was happening at, so we stood around for about 20 minutes waiting for somebody who knew what was going on to get there! The minister got there at 5 (wedding start time) but the bride and groom didn’t get there for another 10-15 minutes, so he was a little nervous, however the arrived and we headed out to a precipice that was truly beautiful.

I was a little worried about how I was going to take pictures of the ceremony while trying to keep any kids from falling down the side of the mountain. However God provided the perfect little “seat” for the girls, cut out of a huge rock. They were well contained there, and I could take pictures. They were great, they sat on their little rock chair and ate a snack and played with dirt until the ceremony and the post wedding pictures were done (about 25 minutes in all). I am always nervous to take pictures for other people’s events, though I love it, I am always a little worried that they will not turn out and I will have nothing to give to them. I was relieved to see the pictures turned out well!

The wedding “reception” was a lake dinner and dance cruise on the US Dixie. I was not planning to attend with the kids as we would have to pay $60 apices for Faron and I, as well as $30 apiece per child. However, one of the workers had told the bride (Tisha) that if we got a nice ticket person, they may let the kids on for free. So Faron went to haggle and got them to let 2 kids on free if we paid for 1. So, we did it, and I am glad because it was a fun experience.

This was the first boat ride for all of the children, and they were excited about it. We had a nice dinner and then went upstairs for a live band, dancing and a view of the mountains. Unfortunately by the time dinner was over, the sun had set, so we didn’t see a lot of the mountains, but we did get to see it through the windows as we ate our dinner. The girls had tons of fun dancing and we sat at a table right next to the paddle wheel, so they got to observe that the whole time. Of course, the girls were quite the whole trip because we were in a group, so they couldn’t speak. However, as soon as we got into the car to drive away they were talking over each other saying what a good time they had.

After all the wedding activities on Saturday we didn’t do much at all on Sunday. I went grocery shopping earlier this week (since our hotel has a refrigerator, microwave, blender, toaster and dinnerware) in an attempt to not eat our every meal. So we just stayed home and lounged, ate meals here, went to the park once, played on the swings in the hotel courtyard and even went swimming for a few minutes. The pool is heated, but the temperature of the air is only about 50, so the pool wasn’t exactly warm. We had fun though!

All in all we are having a nice relaxing time.

Vacation Update

Well, we made it to California! We left on Wednesday morning around 8 (we had planned to leave around 4 but our early riser (Faron) stayed up talking computers with Gabe way too late for that early of a start!) and started driving. We headed up toward Nebraska and the all the way across Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, then into California, according to our trips program, it is about a 26 hour drive.

On the first day we drove all the way through Nebraska and into Wyoming. Between the 5 of us, somebody needed to stop for something at least every 2 hours, and when we did stop we tried to stop long enough to let the kids run around a little. Somewhere in Nebraska we stopped at a nice park and had lunch. The kids ran around on the playground and we ate some sandwiches, all total it was about an hour and a half stop. Those stops made the trip a tad bit longer! All the rest stops in Nebraska have a little sand pit and a sculpture-ish looking thing for the kids to play on, so we took advantage of that once too.

In Wyoming we discovered that only cows populate that state. We almost never saw houses or stores, or buildings of any sort except for the occasional gas station, and even these were tough to find sometimes. When it started to get close to dark, we decided to look for a place to set up camp. We found one “campground” right off the highway with plots just big enough to set up a tent, however the ground was swampy, so we decided to drive further and keep looking. A few more exits down the highway we found a KOA campground and pulled over there. When Faron got out of the car he discovered that it was FREEZING! So we ended up staying in one of their tiny cabins that they have for rent. It was cute, and much better than a tent. I froze half to death sleeping in there (with the little heater cranking all night) because I got kicked out of my bed by some little girls in the middle of the night, so that put me on the floor on a mattress, but without my covers. I had some off cast kid’s sleeping bags, and a very very cold nose! It rained all night too, so we were very happy to be inside.

When we headed out the next morning around 7 it was about 29 degrees, and within a few miles we started seeing snow covered ground. About half an hour of driving and all the sudden we were completely encased in fog. We could barley see anything but the car right in front of us, then the snow started! It was a little crazy for a while. At one point Faron tried to wash off the windshield and the wash froze on the wipers and left the whole windshield covered in wiper fluid/ice. Faron’s heart was racing for several minutes. After about 15 minutes we drove out of the fog as quickly as we had driven into it, and then discovered that we now had some mountains.

We got into Utah and had some pretty sights to see. This was the view from a rest stop in Utah. We walked up a very steep path and got to look out from there. It was beautiful.

Once we passed through Salt Lake City, we found that they really do have salt lakes. They were lining a stretch of the highway and we kept looking at them and saying “what is that? Is that water? Is that sand?” When we stopped for lunch we asked the waitress and found out that is was really salt.

As soon as we got into Nevada it was casino city! That was all we ever saw, every hotel was also a casino, gas stations had slot machines, even the grocery store had electric slots. It is pretty crazy, there was complete poverty right next to these super big expensive casinos.

We decided to keep driving after the kids fell asleep so that we wouldn’t have to make them drive for another day. So we drove and drove until about 3am (5 according to our own time zone) and we were finally in Lake Tahoe California.

We got a hotel and all the kids woke up for about an hour before we got all settled and back to sleep. They all went to sleep though and we got to sleep for about 5 hours, then just lay around the hotel room and take showers before check out time.

Later that afternoon we found a park and played and explored for a couple hours before checking into our hotel that we will be at for as long as we are in Tahoe.