Little Mountain Vacation

Since Chris is attending Touro University which is a Jewish Private School we decided to celebrate Rash Hashanan this year. One day a few weeks before that I was sitting at work looking over Chirs's school schedule and noticed that he would have Friday the 18th off of school and he doesn't have school on Monday's. So I called him up and asked him if he wanted to get out of town Friday-Monday. Of course he said yes and I put in my request for two (much needed) days off. After they were approved we decided to finalize our plans. We called our friends who have a cabin up at Duck Creek and asked them if we could visit the cabin. They said of course and those were all the plans we needed. Aunt Lisa had been down the previous week for Katelee's Birthday and decided to come up to the cabin with us on Friday and then head home Saturday afternoon. So Friday we woke up, packed the car and headed up to Cedar. We stopped off at Wal-Mart to pick up a few things that we needed and headed up the canyon. We got there around 2 o'clock our time and hung out for a bit. Of course Chris headed straight under the house to turn the water on and get a four wheeler out. He had a tough time getting one to start, but after a few hours of labor was successful. We really didn't have any plans except what we were going to eat. This made it really nice, there were no expectations to be ruined and no time constraints. We finally ate dinner and Chris took Ethan for a ride. Of course our little Princess was into EVERYTHING! She loved opening the drawers and then closing them and then opening them. This wasn't too bad until she decided to start pulling out the Ziploc bags, then it got to be a little too much! When we headed to vacation Ethan was fighting a cold, which it seems he is always doing. When we got up there Ethan, Aunt Lisa and I jumped on the trampoline for a while. It seems like after that Ethan was never really able to catch him breath so we got to do this:

That night. Thanks heavens we brought the breathing machine with us or we might have turned our vacation into a one day trip! Ethan's heart rate was pretty fast and he was coughing and wheezing like crazy. Before bed he got a treatment and Chris gave him a blessing... and Ethan was able to sleep great! Now Katelee on the other hand decided to cry a lot and sleep in the same room as me and Chris. This was a HORRIBLE experience. She had a bit of a rash going so we gave her some Benadryl thinking maybe it itched her and that was keeping her up. Well apparently she has the same problem I do with Benadryl. Instead of making her sleepy it kept her up till around 1-2am. Yeah! So needless to say the first night Chris and I didn't really sleep that good! But we both felt pretty good the next day for having had hardly any sleep.

Katelee was able to get in on the Bedtime reading that night, and she kinda took over the book! After the kids were initially asleep and all was quite, Chris, Lisa and I had our own little fireside, without the fire. It was very nice to speak so personally and spiritually with them. It was very uplifting!



The next morning Aunt Lisa took Ethan outside to play and I got this picture of Katelee at the door.

She watched him for quite some time and would laugh randomly. She really does love her big brother!

Chris and Ethan went for another ride and came back with this picture of four deer. The deer were everywhere. One night Ethan and I went out and were able to see about 6-8 deer in just one trip and Chris and I almost hit one on one of our rides too. Ethan loved it and kept saying he saw "deers."

Just a random picture of the kids on Saturday!

The kids and Daddy went for a four wheeler ride on Saturday and they both loved it. Katelee wanted to go faster. She is our little dare devil. She wanted to go over the bumps or go faster ALL the time.

While Aunt Lisa was with us we drove around a bit and went to the Mammoth Caves. We had packed a picnic and took it with us. While we were eating in the caves it started to rain, again, so we hurried and got out of there and finished our food in the car. I feel bad because I guess we used Aunt Lisa's camera for those pictures. Oh well, just imagine a big cave and a very wet ground... After naps we followed Aunt Lisa down the canyon and had dinner with her at Wingers. I think this could be my favorite restaurant ever! It poured on us the entire ride down the Canyon and this is what we saw when we got to dinner....

This rainbow went all the way to the other side and was a double the whole way too. Too bad I couldn't get that in the picture. It was beautiful. Just another reminder that God truly does love us and want us to see how beautiful this crazy world is that we live in! After dinner we headed back up the canyon and put the kids down. They both went down very easy and let Chris and I have a very nice and peaceful night together.

The next morning after Katelee's nap we packed another picnic and headed over to Navajo Lake. This area is very beautiful and quite nice. The weather was great that day. We were going to go on a hike by the lake too, but decided instead to just throw rocks in the lake and enjoy ourselves there instead.

Here are my lake buddies on our way to the lake.

Ethan was so excited he ran almost the entire way to the lake.

And here is my favorite picture of the kid. Katelee was so excited to be by the lake as well. She wanted a rock and she held on to it forever. She would act like she was going to throw it and then she wouldn't. The rock was finally taken away when she tried to eat it for the tenth time. Silly girl!

It was a bit windy so we decided to eat our picnic in the car again, but this time the kids got to sit in the back and eat. They really liked that.

And Daddy had to get a picture of me with the kids! So here it is!

After naps that afternoon we put both of the kids on the trampoline and to our surprise Katelee loved it. This was the first time Ethan has really liked a trampoline so for Katelee to like it so soon really made me smile. She would fall and laugh, she just didn't care!

Here she is, just enjoying holding on to the mesh. Good thing it was there, or she would have been on the ground in no time... Same for Ethan too!

A little later Ethan and I got back on the trampoline and played around. I stood Katelee by the picnic bench and that is where she stayed for the next 20 or so minutes. She would lean down and pick up a rock, throw it and then lean back down and get another one. She is really good at playing by herself! Thank heavens!

Here she is in mid-lean!

Later that night we let the kids play around with the tractors while Chris built a great fire. The first night we tried to make a fire, but the wood we used was wet, so it didn't quite turn out well. But Sunday night we got it to work very well.

Katelee pretty much just knelled by her tractor and made silly noises. Ethan was all over picking up dirt and dropping it off somewhere else.

I set up the camera to take a picture of our family by the fire and this is the best we got! Look at that fire, isn't it AMAZING!!!

That night we put the kids down and had another nice quite night to enjoy before we headed home the next day. On Monday morning we woke up and started cleaning up. We put Katelee down for her nap and then Ethan and Chris went for one last ride and I did some major cleaning! When Katelee woke up we were ready to go. We headed down the canyon and I took a few pictures of the leafs. They were starting to change colors and it was beautiful!

We had a really nice trip and enjoyed spending so much time with one another. It really makes you appreciate your family and how fun it is to hang out. With Chris is school for pretty much the next 3 1/2 years solid I'm pretty sure these little trips are all we are going to be able to do... But that is okay with me, as long as we get SOME time together, that's all we need!

Oh and we went for a family ride on the four wheeler. Everyone enjoyed that, except Katelee when we went slow.... :)