St. George Trip

My Dad brought down cassette tapes with story books that I use to read growing up. The girls loved it. It entertained them for quite a while. I loved how they laid down and held the books above them.
Brooke wanted to ride out to Tuachan with Grandpa, so Derek had pulled her car seat out to put in Grandpa's car. Everyone thought it was pretty funny that Brooke went and got in the car seat while it was sitting on the side walk. Derek then carried her like a Queen on her throne and placed her in the car. Such a cute girl.
My Mom was attacked my this Hissing Cockroach. (??? We really aren't sure what it is. But that's what Derek thought it was.) Shortly after intermission, my Mom thought one of the family members behind her, (we always get two rows and split up. Then it's not one big row.) was tickling her and picking on her. She went to scratch, and the thing bit her finger! She flung it backwards and then my brother stepped on it. The pictures don't really do it justice. It was literally at least two inches long. Not exaggerating. We should have had someones shoe next to it to show how big it was. I have never seen a bug that huge before. Thank heavens the girls didn't really see it because we would never hear the end of it. DaKoda calls everything a 'bug'. She calls pieces of link, a bug. We have experienced bats and other bugs while at Tuachan, but never something like this. It was quite the talk after the show. Speaking of the show... Brooke and DaKoda loved it!!! Well, Derek and I did too, but the kids were dazzled by it. They sat quietly through almost the entire show. I had played the DVD for them a few, well actually a lot, before we went, so they knew what was going to happen. My favorite DaKoda moment- my sister, Krista taught her to say 'Dumb Dog'. When the dog came out on stage, DaKoda said 'Dumb Dog' over and over. She still says it once in a while.

Brooke says that Miss Hannigan is her favorite. Go figure, right? So of course we had to get a picture with her. I think it turned out really cute, don't you?
Here's a few of us with Annie. Annie was played by a 12 year old girl. She was sweet as can be.
In the picture is my niece, Brittney, myself and DaKoda, and Annie holding Brooke. Brooke wasn't frightened at all. Which normally she would be. DaKoda had been asleep until this point. She fell asleep at the end of the play. She slept all through walking out of the stadium, which is a really long walk. We almost always get the 5th and 6th row, so we are right up front. I love getting to see every facial expression. Anyway, back to DaKoda, she woke up in between these two shots. DaKoda had no idea who she was standing next to. I think she was totally out of it.
We had WAY too much fun with these 'face in the hole' stands. I love my Dad's expression! My camera's batteries kept dying, so my pictures didn't turn out the best. Dang it, what can you do?
Another one of my parents. No goofy face from my Dad this time.
Brooke and DaKoda
My niece, Brittney and my nephew, Kyle.
Myself and Derek
My Dad, Kyle and Brittney
Derek, Brooke and DaKoda
I LOVE these two of Brooke.
Myself, Brooke and DaKoda
They had these two giant posters and then tape ran all across the plaza. I love what the sign says. Click on the picture to read it. I didn't get a picture of Daddy Warbucks poster, but the saying on it wasn't as cute.

We went and saw Footloose the next night. I really enjoyed it. I had never watched the movie before, so it was all new to me. Thayne Jasperson from last years 'So You Think You Can Dance' played Ren. The main character. I loved watching him up close, his solo's were fabulous. The girls were still pretty well behaved during the show, but not like during Annie. I think the shows with a lot of kids in it are really entertaining to them. Plus, Footloose has a lot more dancing in it. I can't really say which show was my favorite, but I love that the girls picked Annie. I still want to buy the soundtrack of Annie on CD for the girls to listen to. I have to order it because no one carries in the stores. I would buy it on ITunes, except we only use the IPod when we are going on a trip.

We took a drive with my parents one day up to Kannarraville (it's just south of Cedar City) to see some headstones that we were told about at the family reunion. We went to see William Rees Davies in particular, but we scanned a lot of the other headstones. There were so many children's headstones. It was really sad. About 75% of the cemetary was youth.
I have an uncle named John R Davies who passes away this past December. I thought it was really ironic that this headstone was for someone with the exact same name. Spelled entirely the same. Maybe he was named after him? Hmmm, I'm curious.
Brooke wanted to be in a picture. I thought it was great to show just how crazy windy it was out there. It was unbelievable. The wind picked up just as we got there.
The headstone is of Rachel Morris, who is the wife of William Rees Davies. Notice though that they spelled her last name wrong, but right behind her is William, and his is spelled right. Wonder who messed that one up. I've heard it happened all the time back then.
One of the infant headstones. Wonder if this last name was spelled wrong too. Notice thought that all the other information is missing. I wasn't sure what was in the right square, but it wouldn't move. It was permanently there.
A 'Women of the Mormon Battalion' marker. I thought it looked pretty neat.
The girls were being pretty goofy in the car.
DaKoda's angry face.
Brooke with her mittens on. We tried to convince her that she didn't need them on. She wanted to keep them on when we got out of the car, but we insisted that in the heat of St. George, she really didn't need mittens on.
This is one of my favorite pictures of DaKoda right now. She always seems to make the goofiest facial expressions, but we are rarely ever able to catch them on camera. A lovely video of DaKoda being goofy. She was smacking her lips. Derek announces that there's no sound, but I told him after that there's sound when I play it back on the computer. There's just no sound on my camera. Then in the middle of the video, DaKoda says that the 'batteries dead' and points to the camera. She remembered the other night when I was upset about my batteries dying and not being able to take better pictures out at Tuachan. Thankfully I remembered to pack extra batteries on the trip, I just didn't have any out at Tuachan. Anyway, enjoy the video. Anyone know how to turn it the right way? This is the first time I have ever even posted one.

Melissa, my sister in law and her husband (my brother, JD) played some pretty fun pranks on my Dad. One night they switched out the toilet paper in his bathroom. They had ordered the tricks on the internet. The roll had no end to it. It was like the paper was glued to the previous round. I had no idea about it until after, so I didn't understand why my Dad was so frustrated. He told my Mom to ask the maid for extra toilet paper. He asked Mom what was up with that last roll? I guess he sat there and shredded a few rounds before giving up. He finally found the other roll of toilet paper. They had only sat it on the towel rack instead of hiding it, which would have been even funnier. However there are tissues in the bathroom too. I'm surprised my Dad didn't resort to those.

Another night, JD and Melissa stayed behind a few minutes before leaving for Tuachan. By this point, we were filled in on what they were doing. My Dad still didn't know about the toilet paper. They snuck into their room (we left them a key) and put this thing in their toilet, called 'The Toilet Monster'. When you lift the lid up, it jumps out at you and is supposed to make some sort of noise. So when we all returned late that night from Tuachan, we anxoiusly awaited for my Dad to go to the bathroom. Everyone knew to make sure he was the first one to use it. We were all huddled around the bathroom waiting. We heard the lid lift, and then nothing. We couldn't figure it out. My Dad came out of the bathroom and we were all cackling up a storm. Melissa threw him the roll of toilet paper and asked if he needed it. He had caught on. We all wanted to know why the Monster hadn't jumped out though. Apparently, you have to just lift the 'lid', and my Dad lifted the entire seat as well. He saw the monster and knew we were pranking him. It was still pretty funny even though it didn't work.

One of the days we were looking for something to do and decided to go see a movie. I know it seems silly to do something you can do back home, but I love going to the movie as a huge family. But, we decided to split up this time. My parents and most of the older siblings went and saw The Proposal. My older brother, Andy, my neice Brittney, my nephew Kyle, Derek, the girls and I went and saw Up. We loved the movie. It is so cute. Such a tear jearker though. We got to see it in 3D. The girls wouldn't keep their glasses on, but it really didn't matter. You could easily watch the movie without them. This was the first time we have taken DaKoda to a movie theater. I was a little anxious about how she would be. She did pretty well. She just wouldn't be quiet!! She didn't cry, she just kept yelling things to me. "Look Momma." "Where Daddy go?" (When he went to get drinks for Kyle and Brittney.) Thankfully the beginning of the movie doesn't have much talking, so no one missed anything. There were two older couples near us with no kids, so I was a little concerned that we may have annoyed them. But, you are going to have noisy kids at a kids movie. I mean come on. What did they expect? My favorite part of the movie were the dogs. They made that movie. ".....and, Squirrel!" If you've seen the movie, you'll get this one liner. Loved it. Brooke keeps asking me if I remember that movie we saw where the guy hooks balloons to his house. Totally going to have to buy that one as soon as it hits DVD. The theater we went to had something I hadn't seen yet. Of course, we haven't been to a normal theater for a while. They had popcorn shaker flavors. We got out a little before the others and had fun sampling each of the flavors. You can find the flavors in your local stores. Find out more about it here. I want to go buy some!

Here are some of the places we ate at this year (for journaling purposes):
Fazolis and Carl's Jr
Pizza and Pasta Factory
Pancho and Lefty's
A local deli. (I forgot the name, but it was an alright place.)
In and Out Burger. (For anyone who is familiar with Chadders, I swear they really do taste and look exactly the same.)

We also went swimming a lot. We love to go swimming in the evenings although the one night I went, it was a little chilly. Sorry no swimming pictures. I never feel safe leaving my camera beside the pool. Yeah, it may be a cheap camera, but I can't afford to replace it. One day we even met up with one of my friends from high school, Jessica. We met at a splash pad type park. We enojyed some yummy lunch provided by Jessica's husband who is the manager of the Pizza Factory. Then we went over to this river walk and the girls loved that. It was a lot of fun to just sit and chat a bit. Thanks again Jessica!

Another highlight of the trip: I was asking Kyle and Brittney what their favorite part of the trip was. Brittney said something about Tuachan I think. Kyle said swimming with Derek. Then Melissa announces that she entered the 'little boys room' at Target. JoLyn, Andy and Melissa had gone to Target one day. Right when they got into the store, Melissa tells JoLyn that she has to use 'the little boys room'. She literally went into the men's room! At first she couldn't understand why this guy was standing there, until she saw the urinals. When she joined back up with JoLyn, she looked a little frazzled, but wouldn't tell Jo why. No, she waited until we were all around to announce it to everyone. It was fun to see how embarrassed she got, but she was the one who told us. If she hadn't, we never would have even known. We also celebrated Melissa's birthday while we were there. She wouldn't let anyone sing to her though.

All in all, if you can't tell my now, we sure had some fun. This trip is something I look forward to for months every year. And now, I can't wait until next year.