St. George

We've been to Utah a few times this year but hadn't made our way down to Tyler's parents in St. George since last Christmas so we decided to take a weekend and spend some quality time with the Rhode's parents. 

I love spending time in St. George. It's gorgeous there and so relaxing and Tyler's parents are amazing hosts. We arrived on a Saturday morning and spent the day at this cute little sprinkler park/water area:

How cute is this picture below? Collette loves her Grandpa!

Tyler's parents have this great little garden in their back yard and Owen and Collette loved helping pick peas, tomatoes and fill the hummingbird feeder. What a fun Grandma!

To end the night, we had a little bedtime story action:

The next morning we got up and decided to take a little walk to this cute Nature center where you feed ducks; they also have this awesome community garden and a fun little park to play in.

One of Tyler's best friends lives in Cedar City (about 45 minutes out) so we invited them to Tyler's parents for dinner. It was so good to hang out with them for a couple of hours. We love you Paul and Lindsay!

We couldn't be in St. George and not hit up the fun park by Tyler's parents house. I think I mentioned this in another post but seriously, this park is amazing. I might love it more than my kids.

Fun fact about Tyler's mom- She loves looking for rare glass, pyrex, etc. at DI, Salvation Army and other thrift stores and she finds some gorgeous stuff so after the park, we decided to head out shopping for a few hours with her to see if we could scout out some goodies.
Neither Chris nor I found anything for ourselves but she did find some fun stuff for the kids. Collette ended up with this little baby backpack and Owen ended up with some spy binoculars (which I failed to get a picture of):

(btw, is this one of the cutest pics you've ever seen?)

A few months back I found out a friend of mine opened a candy store (CANDY BLITZ-check it out people!) in St. George, so that afternoon we headed over there.

Wowza, look at that bag of candy! Yummy.

That night Tyler's parents gave us a night out. They got us tickets to go see Alladin at Tuachan while they took the kids to a movie.
We love date nights! Thanks Kent and Chris!

The last day we were there we hit up this awesome indoor water park. Seriously, how fun is this place? We had such a blast, although I will admit that my Florida body was pretty cold without the sun beating down on me. I've become such a wimp.

Unfortunately, our vacation did have to come to end so the next morning, we had to say goodbye and head to the airport.
So sad to say goodbye to grandpa.

I love this face

And just because she is so so cute, I need to post a couple of these. Already at a year and  a half, she knows what she wants to wear, when she wants to wear it.

Thanks Kent and Chris for being so much fun and letting us invade your house for a weekend! We love you! 

Here's to long drives and best friends...

A few weekends ago we were heading to visit Tyler's parents in St. George and I decided it would be fun since we were already heading out west to leave a few days early to go visit one of my very best friends up in Spokane. I called her on a Sunday and we flew out that Tuesday. Luckily she was great about having us come up for a visit on super short notice.

Ever since I got this job with Delta I've wanted to go visit Tyanna. As I said up top, she is one of my best friends. I met Ty almost 12 years ago when we were thrown together as roommates in the magical land of St. Thomas. We bonded over eyebrow plucking and old English window stickers and the rest is history. From the second I met Ty, I loved her. She is hilarious and easy talk to and just plain amazing. So easy to love.
Anyways... back on subject, me and the kids flew out on a Tuesday morning. We got to Spokane and headed to the Powell home so the kids could run around for a little while (seven hours on a plane is a long time to sit for a one year and a three year old). She has a daughter Owen's age and a son that is Collette's age. They immediately hit it off.

Later that afternoon we headed over to Coer d'alene, ID to go for a hike (something else for me to love about Ty. She loves hiking as much as I do). This hike was amazing. Have I mentioned before how much I miss hiking?

 Picking out their walking sticks

Sennah kept putting the moves on Owen. He wasn't really having it. Owen really likes his personal space.

After the hike, we headed out to have some amazing pizza. I really need to take some photoshop courses or something. I'm sure somehow there is a way to make Kris look like he isn't the spawn of Satan but I have no idea how.

After dinner, we headed back to their house and got a good nights sleep because we were getting up the next morning to head to a little town called Leavenworth and then on to a condo on Lake Chelan to spend a couple of days.
We started our drive around 11:00 that Wednesday morning and were so pumped to get on the road. It was supposed to take us 3 hours to get to Leavenworth.

Six hours later, we arrived in Leavenworth. That's right people, six hours. You would think we'd have been pissed about the drive taking three extra hours but I loved that Ty and I were able to sit and chat for six hours straight. I can really talk to Ty for hours and hours and never run out of things to say to her. Once she and I had a work trip and we talked the whole four hour drive, stayed up talking until three in the morning, talked all through work the next day and talked the whole four hour drive home and I remember when she got out of the car feeling like there were so many other things I still wanted to talk to her about.
Back on subject... One thing that was unfortunate on the drive was that Ty's kids don't sleep in the car. You'll notice my children sleeping soundly but her poor children went the whole six hours without a wink. Her kids are troopers though so when we arrived in Leavenworth, we jumped out and did everything we could to enjoy this beautiful little town.

First thing we saw when we got there were these goats. For the kids, I think a six hour drive was totally worth it to see these guys.

Also while there were found the cutest little old school candy shop with about a million types of taffy and black licorice ice cream (one of my favorites... yum!)

After we grabbed our ice cream, we headed out to play in the grass.

 Poor thing, had no idea her ice cream had fallen off of the cone.

 The discovery.

Is there anything better for kids than rolling down a grassy hill? So cute.

After an hour or so, we decided it was probably time for us to head to the condo. Since Sennah and Dutch hadn't slept at all on the car ride, we thought it best to get the kids to bed so we could wake up and enjoy Lake Chelan the next day.

Isn't this place gorgeous? It was a bit of a bummer when we were there because there had been fires in Oregon that week and the smoke had drifted our way. Our view wasn't quite this beautiful because the mountains were covered with smoke but still such a pretty place.
In the morning we got up, had breakfast and then spent time playing with the kids at the playground and swimming at the pool.

 Oh my, aren't these kids the cutest? Running around in saggy diapers and pj's? Love them.

 The playground at the condo was awesome. Something right out of my childhood. Metal slides, metal monkey bars, real merry go rounds and then rocks to break your fall. The kids loved it.

We tried swimming in the pool but my Florida children, as I've said before, can't handle cold water so we ended up swimming in the hot tub for the next hour or so.
Remember how I said that Ty's kids didn't sleep the whole six hours in the car? Well unfortunately, poor little Dutch didn't want to sleep in the hotel room either. I think that he and Ty got maybe three hours of sleep over the course of the two days. Because of that and the fact that me and the kids were heading home the next morning, we decided  to leave Chelan that afternoon.That night we just hung out and soaked up as much of  the Powell family as we could. We were all so bummed to leave these guys the next morning. It sucks having friends live on the complete opposite side of the country.

We miss you Powell's! Now that we've seen what Spokane was all about, you need to come see us and find out what Fort Lauderdale has to offer! We miss you!