Serenity Now!!!: St. George

I just realized that I never wrote about our St. George trip. It's the fourth year that we have loaded up all the girls in the family and had a weekend together in St. George. Jake got to go for a few years because he's the only boy in that age group of grand kids, but this year it was just girls. My cute nephew Bo was there, but he doesn't count because he's just a cute little baby. In fact, that was one of the highlights of the trip for me. I got to hold Bo whenever I wanted. All the times I've seen him before, I had to go off to chase Nate or Jason and didn't get enough time. It was really fun to be able to hold a sweet baby who doesn't try to wriggle away as soon as you get him. Oh, he's a cutie. But, on to the trip...

Allie and I picked up Kim and her girls at the airport on our way down to Grandma's house. Allie was so excited to see those cousins and they chattered in the back seat the whole drive to Orem.
Then we slept (through the night for the first time in weeks!) and left first thing in the morning.

I drove the car with Lori and 6 happy girls in the back. They sure do love each other and have a great time talking about whatever little girls talk about.

We couldn't check into the rental house until later in the afternoon, so we went to the St. George Temple to walk around a bit and kill some time. It sure is a beautiful temple.

My mom has 7 grand-daughters and the rest are stinky boys (12). I am so glad that this girl is mine. I may only have one girl, but she is the best girl in the whole world.

I love that Nicole still loves her babies and takes care of them everywhere she goes.

We went to the Tuacahn theater that night to watch The Little Mermaid.

Allie is being the Little Mermaid :).

It was a good production and the girls giggled and gasped and loved the whole thing.

Then we crashed for the night. I got up with Alana and Kim to go to the temple that morning and had a neat experience there. It's so cool to see some of the hand crafted work that the early saints did showing their love and dedication to the gospel and to Heavenly Father. I loved it.

When everyone else was up and ready for the day, we went to Snow Canyon. It's been years since I was there and they have made it into a really nice State park. It has changed a lot, but I could still pick out the places where I tried rock climbing for the first time. I have some really fun memories of Snow Canyon. Now, I have some more.

We went on the Lava Flow hike. It had some cool lava flow tunnels that we could climb down into. The girls tested their courage and found themselves to be pretty brave and strong. It was cool.

I thought this was a Sego Lily. Now, I'm not so sure, but Allie wanted to take the picture for her friend Lily.

There is a lot of hair styling when you are in a group of girls. Allie's hair was done in several different styles on the trip.

Here they are going into the cave. Some of them were pretty scared, but they all thought it was worth it in the end.

There's cute Bo...such a good baby! He reminds me of Jake when he was a baby. Jake paved the way for there to be more little Schwabbies. If we had Jason or Nate first, we might have stopped. :) Steve and Alana are so nice though, it's hard to believe they could ever have a child that isn't sweet and good and smiling all the time.

Grandma even made her way down into the caves.

I almost forgot to tell the craziest part of the hike. Allie is pretty scared of rattlesnakes. We have some living up the canyon and on hot days, when we go up on the wheeler, I can barely get her off the wheeler when we are looking for caterpillars. At the beginning of the hike, she asked me if there would be rattlesnakes on the trail and I told her that they were probably out there, but we wouldn't see any. I should have just lied and told her no...
Anyway, a little while into the hike, all the girls were up front and us moms were hanging back and chatting along the way. Next thing we know there are 7 girls yelling and screaming as they clawed their way to the front of the pack...running back to us. All we heard was "(screaming) snake! (more screaming) rattlesnake!" We all stayed calm and told them they were just imagining things. As we walked, they all fought to tell their story of seeing a huge snake in the path. I finally believed that they did probably see a snake, but we denied that it could have been a rattlesnake. We walked down the path and they pointed out the snake. Jenny and I saw the snake slithering away and sure enough...it was a rattlesnake. The biggest one I have ever seen. Jenny got a picture with her cell phone, but all I got was sagebrush with my nice camera. Anyway, it had 9 rattles and as big around as Allie's arm. No wonder the girls were screaming and running away. It's an adventure for sure. Allie was stuck like glue to me the rest of the hike. She is not a fan...
It was a beautiful hike, but they were all pooped when we got back to the car.