Sealed Deal: St. George

So, it's a sad story. My amazing husband bought me a trip to St George to run a half marathon andsee the St. George temple for a weekend for Christmas. Both bucket list items and i've been soexcited about it! Unfortunately, I felt unprepared for the 1/2 marathon after a month of training lostin birthdays, Moronis Quest rehearsals and holidays, and while my pride pushed me to run further and longer than my body was ready, I knew if I ran I would hurt my knees or my ankles, possibly perminitely. It took one real bad run and I sobered up and decide to look into reimbursement options for the 1/2 marathon but we still wanted to make the trip and I'm so glad we did.
Sometimes you just need FAMILY family time, just your spouse and your kids, and it was truly rejuvenating. Since our previous plan was to run the whole day Saturday, rest Sunday and drive home, we ended up having a lot of time to spare and no plans to fill it with. Thats our favorite way to travel. Some people thrive with a plan, we thrive with spontaneity. The whole drive up, I researched fun things to do in the area and found that there was far too many things to decide which ones we should do so we educated ourselves on the area, picked a few 'must see' things and played everything else by ear. Our drive up was on of my favorite parts of the trip. We stopped EVERYWHERE! we stopped whenever something looked interesting, so we stopped at an alpacha shop, a new resturant by the grand canyon, we slowed down over the hoover dam but the kids were sleeping.

The weather was amazing so we felt like we needed to let the boys enjoy it a little. When we were passing through Vegas, we decided to stop and walk around, Liam was fixated on the height of all the building,. we took them to the M4M and the Hersheys Factory, then over to the Statue of Liberty and then we talked to a few street characters, Ninja Turtles, Captain Americas and such. The boys LOVED the 3D movie that they show in the M&M factory, they were both 100% immersed in the 10 minute movie. We walked across a big bridge, listened to some very talented street preformers and played in all the creative and artistic water features. Then we drove through the Canyons leading to St. George and I could have stopped every 2 minutes, it was so beautiful. It looked like someone cut the mountain into layers then threw the pieces up in the air and let the land all over and someone cut a road through the middle.

When we pulled into St George we went straight to the temple. The sun was setting so the white temple was lite up so bright with a pink and purple sky as a back drop. Liam wanted to hike straight to the top of the steep, tall staircase. He wanted to pick the flowers and I explained that this was the Lords house which he replied " ok, i'll just smell them, i think Jesus likes to smell them too!". They have the most beautiful rose Garden that we got to admire and age old trees that I imaging create acres of shade in the day time.Shorty after the sun set, we met up with Gail and Jay and Karen Osmond for dinner and found our way to our hotel to get the kids down shortly after. The hotel was, probably in the top 3 worst hotels I've ever stayed in but it gave us lots to laugh about through the weekend. In the morning we were up early and headed to the library were we had heard that thier water park was amazing, and they were right, it was set up like a St. George stream, with beautiful red rocks for the kids to climb on and the waters flowing around them, perfect for creative play and easy for the parents to get in on the fun too. I was so impressed with everything they have for the public to enjoy for free, we quickly ruled out anything that cost since there was so much that didn't. We found access to the river and spent lots of time playing in the fast flowing waters beneath a bridge. We made a boat out of drift would and watched it sail away. Matix tried to jump in about 40 times and his courage drove us nuts but it his naive confidence was hilarious! We rode a carousal, ran around a green belt, enjoyed some local art and some peir 49 pizza!

The boys were just the worst sleepers, Matix hasn't gotten used to sleeping in the pack and play yet so the slightest discomfort woke him with no means of suppressing his cries. Oh and did i mention we were staying in the sketchiest hotel i have ever stayed in... ever. SO long story short, none of us got any sleep at all. But we were tired and happy.

Sunday morning we got to tour Brigham Youngs home down the street from the temple. It was incredible, so much history i had never known about before and truely a beautiful home with so much love and charity in the walls. I loved the garden and the rows of trees and the entry way was amazing. It was over Liams head but I'm glad he gets to see chad and I get excited about this stuff in hope that he will have a love of church history that we can share.