Road Trip!

Once again it's been quite a hiatus between posts. Holidays and vacations tend to do that... any break in the routine and I abandon my blog. Well, I'm back with lots of pictures and fun things to write about. Ben, Emma, and I drove to Utah to stay with my family for a week during the Thanksgiving Break. We stopped at Zions National Park for a night to break up the drive, as well as give us a nice little trip with just the three of us. We had a lovely time. Our hotel was nice (we even watched the second Pirates movie on pay-per-view after Emma fell asleep... Ben hadn't seen it yet), we ate at a nice restaurant for dinner, and we had a lovely morning strolling through the trails in Zions and getting some great pictures along the way. Obviously, above is a slide show of all the pictures we took on our little excursion. The weather was cold, but the fall colors were absolutely amazing! In fact, some of the pictures even look like we were photo shopped in after the fact, because the backgrounds and views were so unbelievable. Anyway, it was a quick, but great and much needed little getaway for us.

The time we spent with my family was really fun. One thing I particularly enjoyed was spending a morning at the new children's museum at the Gateway in downtown SLC. We had a good time, especially Emma. Ben had a particularly good time playing as well. He really enjoyed this animation station where you could create you're own little movie with Mr. Potato Head and other assorted plastic creatures. It was funny.

At the end of the week we drove to St. George and spent the weekend with Ben's family. They were spending Thanksgiving with Ben's aunt and uncle who live in St. George. We went to the temple in the morning, which was great. Ben and I also had the opportunity to the temple when were in Sandy as well. It's always a good week when you go the temple twice, eh? Anyway, that evening we drove to Las Vegas and went to the Beetles Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage. It was awesome! You can view a little trailer for the show here, but it doesn't nearly do it justice. It was just amazing. So, that was a late night. The show didn't even start until 10:30, and earlier in the day were on Utah time, which is an hour later. So, it was really 11:30 for us. Good grief. I am usually very much asleep for the night by that time. However, it was worth staying up for. We put Adam and Emma to sleep in our hotel room before we left and one of the cousins stayed with them while we partied all night. ;) It's always a rare moment when we get to play late while having a babysitter. How lovely it is when the opportunity comes around.