Spring Break Continued

DAY #3
We woke up to snow softly falling all over the red earth. Great. Our plans were to drive to the Grand Canyon. We were already concerned as the owner of the condo told us the road would be closed but we could get "easily get around it as long as we have 4 wheel drive." Which we don't. So we were worried in the first place. Add snow to the mixture and we were going with plan B-which was nothing! Or next to nothing.
Okay, so all along my plan was for my children to be vested IN this vacation. They were suppose to Google and research stops and things to do.

Devee wanted to go to an insane asylum or a ghost town. I actually found a ghost town but that was before I knew our route and the ghost town was near St George. Not Kanab. And I didn't even try the insane asylum. I mean really. Devree must have let go of the insane asylum idea as well because she actually found another place, Big Rock Candy Mountain. We were going to hit that on the way home.
Austin had found "The Pastry Pub" in Ceder City-thinking it would be an oasis of pastries and donuts but upon discovering they only had ONE rack of pastries-he saw pictures on line-he was disillusioned. And he didn't come with anything else. (Well, besides bungie jumping and sky diving!)

Alex looked at the map and came up with all sorts of places to go hundreds of miles from where we were going. On this the 3rd day-with no plans-he finally came up with "fro rocks in lake" (Yes, he still struggles with the "th" sound) and we said sure but we couldn't find a close lake and the rocks in Kanab aren't that great for throwing anyway. He then decided that for his part of the trip-he wanted to go to a Dollar Store! That we could handle.
Rylee on the other hand had really researched at home and she wanted to go to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. So we were off!
(This is a funny picture I forgot to post yesterday-the kids on the way home from the hike. No one is faking!! Austin always sleeps with his eyes half open.)

It took about an hour to get to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes and we were the only people there. Of course. Who wants to be dune buggy-ing or four wheeling when the Coral Pink Sand Dunes are.....

WHITE!!

We stopped at a torist trap on the way back, "Moki's Cave". We walked in and upon finding it would be $30 for a 15 minute tour to said cave/tourist crap store we said no thanks and got back in the van.

On to the Dollar Store!! Only in Kanab it's called Family Dollar and there are many things more than a dollar! We hung out looking at junk for an hour and left with thirty dollars worth of treasures. (Which was money well spent considering that we would have spent the same at the cave!)
After that we went to lunch at the Three Bears Creamery and had lunch and ice cream and then home where James and I took a lovely nap and the kids watched TV and explored outside.
I forgot to mention the April Fool's joke Rylee played on me that morning. I was getting in the van and there was a pillow on my seat and I pulled it off only to discover an ugly statue of a bird under it! Anyone that knows me knows I HATE birds! I jumped and screamed and everyone laughed!
We hung out watching TV-a treat actually for us and then we went to a yummy Mexican food restaurant that was recommended to us by the condo owner. It was very good.
We played Scum....again. No tears. Thank goodness and went to bed.
Kind of a lame day. Oh well.

Day #4
Was beautiful! The sun was shining and the skies were blue and we were heading home!
Austin logged a lot of hours on the road between driving there and back. I had just switched off with him when the car started making a terrible thumping noise. We threw tread on our back tire. We pulled off and much to Kambree's surprise (she drives the van regularly) we got the spare out-which was a fifty mile per hour donut) and changed the tire. We were about 20 miles out of Ceder City.
Sitting on all our stuff. Waiting.
Meanwhile the men-folk changed the tire:

After driving like a snail for twenty miles, we dropped the van at Big O Tires where the most annoying know-it-all tire sales boy helped us. I finally sent James out to check on the kids and get the keys as I could tell he was going to throttle this kid any second! (And James is a patient man-but don't be yakking about tires and acting like he doesn't know one end of a lug wrench from another!)
Here's our van.

We walked to Subway and had lunch then back to the tire store where we waited an hour for our van to be finished. Here's me in the tire store with my lovely-dread-lock hair.

And the girls posing by the tires.

We finally got on the road-only a two hour delay-but not after the girls singing and dancing while we pulled everything out to replace the donut and reorganize everything. (See video below) They got lots of honks and whistles and possibly drummed up some business for Big-O. Hopefully, whoever came in got a different sales boy or their marketing efforts might be in vain!

Just disregard the lovely behind shot of the poor woman trying to get the van put back together. I don't know who that could possibly be!

We did for-go Big Rock Candy Mountain and rolled in around eight pm to rescue my Dad from our lonely, sad dog.

A little side note about Ella. We had barricaded her-or so we thought-in the back of the house. She had plenty of food and water and her dogie door so she could run around outside. She even had a little bed. Was she content? Nope. She managed to get into the whole house-chewing up toilet paper in the bathroom and a craft project of Rylee's and had little Ella muddy footprints EVERYWHERE! She escaped to my Dad's house twice where she finally just kept him company until we got home. She's so very naughty when we're away.

That night Alex wrote in his journal "Mom drove the car and the tire got a big hole and then I helped Dad fix it." Why does that sound like the car broke because I was driving it?

Saturday I did six loads of laundry and cleaned the house and went grocery shopping. Besides catching up on my blog friends.

Whew! Vacations. Gotta love 'em!

Last year was the first day of our ten day wait. (Jen I talk about the cabbage scones in this one and the hill where the kids pictures are taken is pretty close to the place where you can buy them!)

http://blessedwitharichhart.blogspot.com/2009/04/day-one-of-our-10-day-wait.html