Goblin Valley State Park

Okay get ready for picture overload.  I really should have split this up into two posts!!  Anyway, it's hard to pick between so many fun and cool pictures of our favorite camping spot!  

We've discovered, living in Utah, that it's important to have a fun place to go camping where it's warm, since in Northern Utah it's only warm enough to go camping in like July and August.  

We have found such a spot, where you can go camping in April and the weather is PERFECT. It also happens to be pretty much the most fun place ever for kids, because they can climb, climb, climb to their heart's content!  If you live in Utah, this needs to be on your bucket list!  Just don't go in June-August. :)

This time around we also managed to get the BEST spot, (#12 for future reference) it's in it's own little valley around the corner from the rest of the campground, so cool!  Cool enough that here are several pictures of it.

The little trek to the van (and the bathroom) were well worth it!

We love campfires, and s'mores, and stars, and our giant tent! :)

Okay now here are the pictures from the kids scampering around our own private little valley by our campsite.  Me and Owen with Whitney up on the left.

 Where's Waldo- can you see the girls??  When they called down to me I was like "yikes! that's high!" but it's gradual. The girls are pretty responsible climbers, I trust them to not go too far or high.  And Eric was always there to help them down if they needed it!  I like to climb too, but obviously I didn't do much climbing this time haha.

 a close up of them up there!

Me and my Owen

The next morning Eric helped Owen climb up to a different spot the girls had tackled.

Eric and Owen on the left and the girls in the light in the middle.

Katelyn and Whitney sliding down- two views! From my perspective and Eric's.

And now the pictures from the actual "Valley of the Goblins", about a 1/4 mile down the road from the campground.  We went for a short hike there the first day and a longer one the second.

We like to find rocks that look like animals, so here's Katelyn riding a "dinosaur"

 Whitney on the dinosaur

 The "turtle"- also a helpful landmark because it leads to the cave- see below!

Whitney on the giant alligator head- she's on it's snout, the eyes are the bumps behind her.

 Owen on the alligator head, but I was too afraid to back up any farther from him to take the picture!  He's a little unsteady still. :)

 Kate up on some rocks :)

 Taking a water break.

 Eric on one of the many perches I turned around to see him on. :)  He loves jumping around on the rocks, it's cute. :)

 Katelyn with her "slice of pizza" rock she found.  The funny thing I just realized is that she doesn't even like pizza haha!

And here's one of our favorite parts of Goblin Valley: the cave!

In the entrance.

 In the back of the cave.

 "sand waterfall! sand waterfall!"

 And the extra fun part- there's a little opening you can squeeze through and come out in a totally different spot!

 Whitney made it out!

 Then I went up top to pull Owen through, and here's Katelyn about to come up.

Going back out the main cave entrance.

 On the second day Owen and I let Eric and the girls go explore for a while without us slowpokes holding them up- I got some pretty funny looks from people though, a largely pregnant girl and a toddler all alone in there??

The explorers setting off.

 Isn't it just the coolest landscape??  So fun to play on.

 A while later Owen and I heard yelling and looked up to find our family up on a high spot.

 I guess after that they made it up to the ridge where you can look over the whole valley, cute:

 and Eric took some sweet panoramic pics with his phone:

Meanwhile Owen and I had started back towards the car, expecting them to catch us on the way.  Owen was quite the trooper and we had lots of fun just going our own pace for a while, but finally he started to get tired and I couldn't coax him to keep going-  his energy totally gave out and he seriously just laid on the ground and wouldn't get up, he was spent!  Just then I saw Eric and the girls at a distance, going right past us!  They didn't hear me call to them, so I finally carried Owen for the first time until they got to the parking lot and looked down and spotted us and Eric came running back to help.  Luckily it wasn't hot so we were totally fine, and Owen perked back up as soon as he saw Eric.  He even walked the end himself.  So cute.  I love my little family, and I'm so glad we got to go camping before the baby comes!  Eric goes camping every month with the scouts, and the kids are always jealous, so we finally had our chance to go.  Now they can't wait for the Father/Son campout and the little backpacking trip Eric wants to take the girls on this summer. :)  Oh and I should say camping at 35 weeks pregnant was totally do-able!  I had been a little nervous but I just let Eric do all the hard stuff and it was fine. :)

Easter

We had a really nice Easter this year.  It was cool to read the scriptures about Christ's last week in the week leading up to Easter, and that's about all we did to prepare.

Easter Bunny Day was fun, obviously. 

Katelyn liked to keep saying she had bunny teeth.

and Owen was hilarious at the City egg hunt, he only wanted to pick up like 2 eggs!  He got about 10 Smarties though, he only wanted to pick up candy he could SEE I guess.

Then for Easter Sunday we got all spruced up in new outfits to take pictures before Stake Conference, and the tulips were in full beautiful bloom!

 I love how Owen's looking up at his sisters in this one!

 And I had to take a picture of the torpedo belly- ridiculous!  This was at 34 weeks.

Not pictured are making Resurrection Rolls with Uncle Derek, and the egg hunt Whitney made for him, it was hilarious.  

tidbits

Here are some other tidbits from the last couple of weeks.

Owen finally consented to wear this adorable sweater he got for Christmas and he looked ridiculously handsome, I had to get a picture!

 Then some pictures of my huge baby- she's as big as a watermelon!  My books all say she's like 4 1/2 pounds by now, but since my babies are bigger than average she's probably already like 6 pounds haha!  6 and a half weeks left, 6 and a half weeks left, I can make it, I can make it!

Here's the side view, and this was like 3 weeks ago when I was 31 weeks, so I'm bigger now!  I'm seriously as big as I was when I delivered Katelyn, *sigh*, but it's okay.  This is my 4th child, I am just so happy to have made it this far, so happy to have healthy strong babies, and happy that I have the exercise/healthy eating knowledge I need to be able to get skinny again eventually. :)

 Other feelings about this baby right now: I am SO excited to have another girl, I can't wait to hold her and watch my other kids with her.  I can't wait to pick a NAME for her- we are still working on that one and it's killing me!  The top names we've discussed are Maris, Emily, and Emma, and Eric likes Audrey and Abigail and I like Annie(Anna) and of course my old favorites that Eric refuses- Callie or Hallie.  Nothing is jumping out at us yet though as the PERFECT name, so we'll see!

Our (hopefully) last snowstorm produced perfect snowman-making snow, and Whitney made her first snowman with Zero help from me!  then she put some grassy hair on and said it was her twin--hilarious!

 And then there was this- a source of much laughter for me!  Whitney put this sign on Owen's door. These are the worst insults she could think of lol. It says "you fouling heroshie (pretty sure she meant ferocious) beast with your booty on your face. What a naughty boy you are." Hahaha. He was playing with one of her toys and she ripped it out of his hands instead of asking nicely, so I made her give it back. Life is hard with such a mean mom and horrible brother :)

Katelyn later replaced it with a sign about how cute and sweet Owen is. :)

But don't worry, Whitney writes nice things too- she made Eric the most adorable book and left it on his pillow when we went to St. George without him for a couple of days.  It was all about the reasons she loves him, complete with cute pictures.  

Life is good!

Spring Break

What a fabulous Spring Break we just had!  It gives me hope that this summer will be good, I've been nervous about having 3 kids to entertain and a newborn, with no school to distract the girls and give us a schedule.  But last week went really well so.... we'll see!  

Anyway the first few days were full of relaxing and playing outside, and our first lawn-mowing of the summer.  After watching Eric mow, Owen spent about 20 minutes "mowing" our front lawn, it was hilarious!  He would go back and forth, then over on the side and back, I really think he covered the whole area of the grass, so cute and methodical. :)

 Wednesday of Spring Break Eric took the day off and we went up to Provo, it was so fun.  Owen really wanted to sit in the backseat with his sisters, and he was SO happy when we let him!

We went up to Provo Canyon and played at a park and rode scooters on the River Trail for a while.  I LOVE the river trail, and even though it wasn't pretty because everything is just barely starting to bloom, I was in heaven.  It was a beautiful day and I was all nostalgic- every run I've done on that trail has been either a super long training run or a super long race, all of which are good memories for me!  I am excited to be able to run again in a few months. :)

And then the big day arrived- Thursday we went to St. George (Ivins actually- I really liked it out there!) to Katrina's and Allison and her kids met us there and we had a big 3-day-long cousin party!!  ( Eric stayed home and worked and went on a scout campout.)

It was definitely a little crazy having 9 kids between the 3 of us (including 3 2-year-olds and 2 babies!), especially at mealtimes!  Here is Owen sitting between Caleb and Jenna at breakfast Friday, cute cute.  Caleb is hilarious and Jenna is adorable.

 Owen playing with Seth: actually right here he is trying to stop Seth from grabbing his Cosmo haha, but really Owen loves Seth and kept asking to hold him and talking to him in this cute little voice.  Whitney really liked to talk to him too.

 One of our activities was hiking "the crack" as my kids call it, a little slot canyon the locals call "Fat Man's Misery." Here we are walking there from the car: Jenna running out in front, Caleb and Whitney wanting to be first, Lydia and Owen following the crowd, and Katelyn and Natalie leisurely making their way, talking non-stop!  Then Allison and Katrina with their babies and me with my big belly bringing up the rear. :)  This was pretty much the scene everywhere we went together!

 Owen and Ryder had at least as much fun playing in the dirt as the big kids who went up the slot!  

Owen really likes Ryder too, and it's super cute now that Ryder is walking, he's going to be a fun real playmate soon!

 Yay for sisters and cousins!!  I love this picture, I have a feeling it's going to become a classic!  There are 2 unfortunate things about it though-- how largely pregnant and chubby I am, and that we are missing one little cousin, Evelyn!

 Right after this picture Whitney started doing her favorite thing, climbing, and I kind of noticed Caleb and Katelyn following her, but then we were getting ready to go so I was distracted until suddenly there they were, calling out to us from the rocks above!  Cuties.

 Next we went to the St. George Temple, and I didn't really get a good shot of the kids because Owen refused to stay up by the door.

 So, sorry Allison for this picture of your behind!  I'll steal a better one from you when you post it on your blog. :)

 Love these little blond twinners, born just 2 weeks apart!  

 And these twins too: our next stop was a splash park, and we discovered Caleb and Owen have matching swim shirts. :)  Whenever Caleb wasn't running around with Whitney, Owen let him lead him around, it was SO cute.  

 I didn't even get any pictures of the girls, because they literally never stopped moving long enough for me to even talk to them, but they had a LOT of fun!

 So WEEKS after I had planned this trip to St. George with my sisters, we found out my parents would be passing through the same weekend after picking up Jonathan from BYU-Idaho!  Fun surprise!  So Saturday morning the kids woke up to Grammy, Grandpa Jamie, and Uncle Jonathan!  It was a crazy fun time.  We decided to go on a hike that morning to see some petroglyphs, and I brought the stroller in case Owen got tired of walking, but he decided to throw a fit right at the beginning because he wanted me to carry him--not happening buddy!  I can only carry him anywhere for about 30 seconds.  So by the time I got him calmed down (notice the fruit snacks in his hand!) we were way behind and he refused to ride in the stroller.  So here we are happily walking far behind the rest of the family. :)  Soon my mom came back to walk with us and he finally got in the stroller, so we eventually caught up.

 The best part was climbing around on the rocks and finding the petroglyphs.  Here's Whitney with the deer/mountain goats?  I can't remember what they were supposed to be.

 Katelyn, Jenna, and Grandpa Jamie with some cool people, snakes and symbols.

a rock we couldn't get to.  

 The girls really liked the petroglyphs, since they're into history, and Katelyn loves rocks in general!  Also I wish I had taken a picture, almost the whole way back Whitney was walking with Jonathan and he was teasing her and they had a lot of fun, it was cute.

 A few hours later we packed up and went home.  I was so glad I could spend a couple of evenings chatting with my sisters and Phillip, spend a couple of days watching my kids play with their cousins, and spend a few hours catching up with my parents and brother.  Oh and one thing that was really fun was when we drove to the petroglyphs, my parents came in our car and my dad sat in the back between Katelyn and Whitney, and it was super cute I could tell they were really excited and felt special to be sitting by him and talking to him about all kinds of random things.  I can tell my kids listen to all their grandparents differently than they listen to me, it seems like they really pay attention and soak in and believe what they say more!  They know their grandparents are wise I guess. :) 

Anyway I'm grateful Katrina was willing to host us all so I could be sure to see Allison some time this year!  And now we're back to normal life for the last few weeks of school. I just want my baby girl to come, I'm dying to hold her!  But I WILL try to enjoy this time before I have a newborn to take care of. :)