Sun Worshipers After All

For all that Troy and I declare that we could never live in St. George, we sure do spend a lot of effort trying to get down there.

I am sure this has a lot to do with the fact we are currently striving to get through Salt Lake's crummiest season - Sheri reminded me that in 2013 we made something like 6 trips to St. George and all of them happened in the first four months of the year.  Maybe one in the late fall, I can't remember.  But once April hits the land of Dixie, we don't go there much any more!  (I'm sure I don't have those numbers quite right, but it's true, the earlier in the year it is the harder we try to visit Peter and Co.)

So far in 2014 we have made two trips south.  The first was in January over Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend.  We probably would have gone anyway but since Peter and Sheri would be blessing their new baby Iva Matilda, of course we had to go.  It was still pretty chilly but the air was so clear and fresh.  We were able to go just as the peak of inversion season was hitting Salt Lake.  (Getting back was a little depressing - the inversion stuck around for a long time this year although we all remember last year being much worse.)

Time to pass on the name of Bundle to one more deserving?

 The city of St. George has put together a delightful new children's museum.  It's free, so you have to get there early before the crowds roll in.  I found it to be clever and charming.

Oma and Apa came down and really enjoyed getting their hands on wee Iva:

So did I, for that matter:

In the first week of February I had some free tickets to a UofU women's gymnastics meet.  The Romneys love going and I admit that I need to take my family more often.  Of course this warranted a trip to our house for Peter and the gang.  For some reason, we just don't get sick of hanging out!  We had another lovely weekend although the grownups are all learning that it's harder than it used to be to stay up late watching stand-up comedy on Netflix and chatting till the wee hours - we're too dang old and tired!

The best (sorry,,, WORST) part about our fun, rainy, umbrella-toting trip to the zoo was that Bitty had been dying for her own umbrella and even saved up money to get one for herself.  We stopped at the store on our way up there so she could pick one out.  These are such happy pictures of her with her new umbrella - she had used the umbrella for a total of 10 minutes at this point.  I didn't take pictures of the incident that occurred not ten minutes later where, in here umbrella-joy she started spinning Gene Kelly style and the umbrella was blasted completely inside out bending most of the little metal arms.  That was a very sad Bitty.  Very sad.  Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

It was the very next weekend that the kids had a day off of school for Presidents Day so.....why not go back to St. George?  Oh my gosh, it was so lovely.  We were SO LAZY.  We talked about going for hikes and walks and doing fun stuff....but the kids were so happy playing out in their backyard that we just let them.  Stomper was even lucky enough to have a friend going down the same weekend - a really sweet kid who has three little sisters and a baby brother.  He needs boy time as much as Stomper does.  They kindly invited him over one day and Stomper had several hours of boy
time with his buddy which was wonderful.

Okay, okay, on the last morning we were there we actually DID leave the house and go for a stroll on the red rocks.

We're thinking we'd better sneak in one more trip before the heat really hits....