Vacation to Zions??

I knew that camping + dirt + 2 little kids = an unrestful "vacation" but this trip to Zion's had a few more unexpected occurrences.

Thursday morning we woke up at 5:30 to Brigg puking. He did this 4 or 5 times in one hour. We didn't get back to sleep and we wondered if we would be going to Zions like planned later that day. We kept an eye on Brigg all morning and decided that we would chance him being done with the strange sickness. (Brigg had complained about his stomach hurting the previous 2 days but he didn't have a fever or any other symptoms). We packed our bags and finally hit the road at 3pm. Brigg slept for the hour that we were loading firewood into the truck and picking up a few items at Walmart. As soon as we hit the road, however, he woke up. Figures.

I should mention that Koby's dad was very generous in lending his awesome truck to us. This was half of the the excitement of the whole trip for Brigg and even Kallie. Brigg is in love with "Pah-kah's truck" and will take any chance he can get to ride in it. It was very nice to pile in all our gear without squishing only half of it in our car.

We got into the trip about 1 hour just fine until it was past Kallie's nap time and she got grumpy!! She threw a major tantrum for at least 20 minutes until she finally cried herself to sleep.

Brigg entertained himself with Shrek on the Ipod. I know, we need a portable DVD player.

The trip was actually quite beautiful. You rarely get to see the bottom 2/3 of Utah in green. The crazy part was that coming home, just a few days later, it was dry vegetation again.

Koby was a very diligent, focused driver...

as we drove through rain

Then snow, and then hail.

Kallie slept peacefully for about an hour when she woke up and commenced her screaming.
We endured it for quite awhile before we decided we all needed a break and stopped for dinner. At this time we discovered Kallie had diarrhea! Ahh! We were just about an hour away from our campground but if we had discovered this earlier, I think we would have turned around and headed home. I had to change two full diapers just while we were stopped for dinner.

The rest of the trip wasn't quite so bad. You can see Brigg using his puke bowl for other things. Thank goodness he didn't need it at all.
The camping part of our trip was fun although we, I mean I, froze the first night and didn't sleep.... much (I had to change several diarrhea diapers that night too), was a little warmer the next night but still didn't sleep well (Brigg woke up having to urgently go to the bathroom- he is always really out of it when he wakes up during the night) and I had to change several more diarrhea blow outs), and the third night was windy! The kids slept through it all but Koby and I couldn't sleep. It thrashed our tent around and kept blowing the side wall on top of us. I finally slept a little better once the wind died down. The kids actually slept well all three nights despite the few wake ups because of diaper changing. I was the only one who didn't sleep. I'll blame it on pregnancy.

We went on several hikes in Zions. We went to Emerald Pools.

One of the two pictures I have of me in it. Unfortunately both very shadowy.

Pretty waterfalls at Emerald Pools.

Hiking buds.

Brigg and Skylar putting their red, muddy hand prints on the white wall.

Brigg pretending I'm not there.

Catching a ride with Grandpa.

We hiked another trail that wasn't the one we were looking for but it was fun anyway.

I stopped here. It is a lot harder to climb boulders with a big belly. We all turned around because this was a dead end.

We ate lunch and the kids played in the sand. The kids loved the sand but it didn't taste good in the food.

Smores, yum!

Koby, my brothers Devin and Landon, Landon's friend, and my dad all hiked Key Hole. This is a trail you have to get a permit for because of the flash flood potential. They had to repel off some small cliffs and jump into frigid water. It sounded like a lot of fun! Maybe next time..

Sunday morning we finally headed home. It was a much more pleasant ride home although we had a bag of blankets spew across the freeway. Koby had to gather up the blankets and that was a little freaky for me. A pillow spilled it's guts after being ran over by a car.

We were SO glad to come home to comfy beds, warm showers, and clean clothes. Camping makes you appreciate being clean. It took me several days to wash all our clothing. I have been sleeping in (thank you Koby) until 8 the last few mornings because I was so exhausted. Despite all the craziness, we had a great time. It wasn't a restful vacation, but it was a fun get-away.

The videos are for Joy. She wanted to see a Kallie tantrum. I can't even remember why she was mad. I think it was because I either left the room or because she needed to get her jammies on. The hysterics were even before I could get in on camera, but you get the idea!