Thanksgiving in St. George

Where do I even begin? First of all, I need to apologize in advance for having like zero pictures of the whole trip due to our camera being "lost" the majority of the time. You will have to check out my mom's or Molly's blog to see more pictures and videos. We left Wednesday night for Salt Lake where we stayed the night with my parents. Jamie and Amy stayed with them that night as well. Thursday morning we all headed off to St. George to meet Molly and Craig who were already there. We stayed in some brand new condos that my dad manages. He was working on this project back when I was still working at VRI, and clearly he finished strong! Anyway, Thursday we cooked dinner and played a dice game (with presents) that my mom brought. Every game is better with presents. Bradlee won some My Little Pony fruit snacks; she was pretty pumped. Mom also provided the entire Thanksgiving dinner.
Friday we went shopping at the outlet mall, while Jamie, Amy and Craig stayed to swim with all the kids at the resort. We all met up later at Cafe Rio and then we went to walk around the St. George Temple and watched a short film at the visitors center. We came back and had a great dinner (thanks again to my wonderful mother). The kids spent the night playing Wii, and the guys played some basketball.

Saturday we went to Zion's National Park and took a kid/stroller friendly hike. We packed some leftover ham...that is relevant because it is what sparked my favorite conversation of the trip. This is what Jaiden told Chase about the ham..."You know, this comes from a pig's butt!" It was super funny because no one in our family is even allowed to say the word butt. That afternoon Molly and I went back to the outlet mall. We went out to dinner that night after driving around for about an hour we just decided to eat at the mall food court. Turns out the mall doesn't really have a food court, but we all had good attitudes about our two choices anyhow! After dinner we went back to the condos to celebrate Christa's first birthday! Everybody loved the yummy cupcakes. Happy birthday Christa, Christa!!! Also Friday night we played Bunko and Molly provided some AWESOME prizes! I won some slim jims for having the most zeros. What can I say? I am amazing. Tyler must be pretty amazing too because he won a prize for having the lowest score! Dad rocked it, and won the most bunkos and highest score. Apparently still amped from our wild and crazy game of bunko, we had a family dance competition. The kids were the judges, and well, they were less than impressed by our choice of dance moves, but in the end Molly was the winner (because she practiced her dance moves beforehand in the mirror)! Jamie's dance was by far the most original and unexpected, and mine was just plain awesome. Dad performed a family favorite with some sweet jumps, Tyler rocked the grave digger, Craig belly danced for us, and watching Mom dance is ALWAYS a good time!

Jamie and Amy left early Sunday morning. The rest of us went to Sacrament meeting at a local chapel. After that we went to play on some rocks that Tyler knew about from when he went to Dixie. They were pretty neat rocks. I was too big of a weenie to crawl through the slot canyon. I knew I would regret it, and I do.

All in all it was a fantastic trip. I already miss my family. The last day with them is always hard because I am already starting to get sad about leaving them. Bradlee LOVED spending time with her cousins. She also loves her grandparents. Apparently, she would wait for Tyler and I to fall asleep at night and then sneak out of our room to enjoy some midnight treats and TV with her Papa. From what I understand she did it a couple nights in a row. We had a lot of fun, and we are trying not to be too sad about being alone here in Cheyenne because Christmas is just a few weeks away!