New Years in St. George

Seems to be becoming a tradition that we spend New Years in St. George even when we didn’t necessarily plan it that way this year. We were sad to have missed Uncle Mitch at Christmas, but New Years weekend ended up being a good time in St. George. We were able to spend an extra day that weekend which was nice. The boys were so cute on their first road trip without booster seats snuggled up together taking turns playing the Nintendo DS. 

Babi and Papou have recently moved into a new house in their same complex that had a little pool in the backyard. They heated it up to about 98 degrees so it served as a big hot tub. The kids basically lived in that thing this whole trip. They spent hours out there. 

Here are the boys snuggled up and recovering from a long swim:

 The kids reminded me for the weeks leading up to New Years that I had promised them they could stay up till midnight this year and sure enough they did although Carter barely made it no one had too much energy left by that time. Here are the tired boys snuggled up on the couch watching a show trying to stay awake until midnight.

 We watched a count down and said Happy New Years to everyone and climbed right into bed. New Years Day we drove out to the ghost town of Grafton near Zion National Park. We called Uncle Jon on the way out because we knew he had family buried in the cemetery and the kids had fun finding the Jones headstones. 

 The kids actually quite liked roaming around the ghost town and exploring all the empty old houses.

 On the way back we drove up the Kolab Reservoir highway. It had the most gorgeous outskirts views of the edge of Zion National Park. 

 We didn’t make it all the way to the reservoir because we came across a car stuck in the snow and Derek and George and a few other cars pulled over to help push it out and back onto the road. The next day Babi convinced all the kids to sing some carols at some of her neighbors homes.  One of Mom's neighbors has a doc that with join in the singing howling along.  So fin.  Everyone got a kick out of Olivia singing Good Ship Lollipop, the she is currently learning for her MDT company. 

Then, we did a little hike in the BLM land near Mom and George. It was super neat and the kids thought it a fun adventure to go off trail and down to the river which had nice soft sand on the banks. 

 We sat next to a herd of cows drinking and skipped rocks. Then, we hiked up to an Indian burial grounds and then headed back to their place. Derek and I hit up the foot spa and left the kids for more pool time with Babi and Papou. Sunday, we watched out zoom church meetings and then packed up to drive home. It was another nice New Years trip to St. George and great to see Babi and Papou and play at their new house in their new pool.