Goblin Valley and Capitol Reef National Park

Ok- last camping trip post... I will finally get it done...
Goblin Valley State Park. Super amazing. Kind of out in the middle of no where, and a bit surprising to come upon. We spent a couple of house wandering around the Valley of the Goblins climbing on and exploring.

The goblins are all crumbly and made out of dirt and sand somehow packed together, but still amazingly strong. I was a bit afraid that this would break off with Caleb on it, but not even close.

Henry found another little "cave" to get inside and dig in the dirt.

Gav just wanted to get higher and higher, but we talked him out of it, since getting down presented a bit of a problem.
I found a sunny spot to sit and watch the boys climb.
It turns out that Goblin Valley is more of a stop than a destination. By the time we left we were very hot and pretty tired. There was almost no place to get out of the sun and even in early April it was quite warm already. Definitely worth seeing and enjoying, but I would choose wisely what time of year you go there.

We had reserved a camping spot in a small down about 20 miles from Goblin Valley, but when we arrived at the campground it looked more like a gravel parking lot with a run down restaurant and bathroom with a few over-grown trees and bushes. I found it super unappealing and it was still early enough in the evening that we would be spending a lot of daylight hours there. We decided to drive on the Capitol Reef National Park, and see if there might be a camping spot there, and just continue on home if not. Every place we had been for days was full, so we didn't expect much. We got to the Fruita Campground and discovered they had almost 20 sites to choose from. The campground there is in the middle of a bunch of fruit orchards and beautiful, but no reservations allowed, so most people pass it by. Perfect for us. We had a nice spot and got to see a bit of the park before we headed home the next day. Only drawback... turns out our air-mattress has a whole and a few hours after going to be, we were on the ground. Pregnant lady sleeping on the cold hard ground that can't only lay on her side= sleepless night and sore grouchy morning. We didn't stay long before starting our drive home.

We hope to head back to Capital Reef soon, and would highly recommend it.
Now we can move on, since I am sure all of my pictures have encouraged you blog readers to head to a few places that you may not have been. If not, well... you should. You won't regret it.

Little Wild Horse Canyon

Henry on our last morning in Moab, sitting next to the bacon. His favorite place to be. He probably ate half a pound on his own.

Our next stop was just outside of Goblin Valley State Park- Little Wild Horse Canyon. It was a decently long drive down a gravel road, so we expected it to be a fairly empty hike. Turns out we were pretty wrong about that. It was super crowded. Lots of crazy youth and scout groups and plenty of family groups. This hike seems to have a reputation for not being too difficult or complex, so it attracted a lot of people on a warm day. Caleb found this to be very annoying, since he likes to enjoy his nature alone, but for the most part we didn't have too many encounters that troubled us.

The hike was through an empty river bed and the canyon narrowed down to these beautiful slots pretty quickly. Of course, my hiking partners wanted to climb on every possible thing, so they learned some new skills for scaling the walls.
Henry would walk through the straight canyons just like this, a hand on each side and face to the sky. Love it.

Caleb was really loving the canyon, so we have tons of pictures of the back of the 3 of us hiking, from him following along with the camera.

A guy from Caleb's lab that had done this hike had told him that he might not want to take a 6 month pregnant wife there, since I would probably get stuck in the canyon. At first I was super offended- "How fat does he think I am?" But we did reach a few really narrow spots that were a bit tight... though I didn't come close to getting stuck. Caleb found it pretty amusing.

Canyonlands Day 2- The Needles

Our second day at Canyonlands was spent at the southern end of the park, about 65 miles from Moab, in The Needles. This was probably my favorite day. The weather was perfect and being inside the canyons and exploring the rock formations was super cool. We did several short hikes, and a lot of clambering around on different rocks and formations. The boys were fabulous climbers and seemed to love this part as well. They were on a quest to find caves, and while we didn't find anything that I would call a cave, they found enough small holes in rocks to suit their fancy.

This was a great little hike where we started under these "mushroom" formations and then ended up on top of them by way of a couple of cool old fashioned ladders placed on the trail.

On the Elephant Hill Trail, we thought there would be some rock that looked obviously like and elephant, but it was decided that all of these rocks more resembled elephant poop... yep, somehow every conversation can lead back to poop.
My handsome men showing off several of the different colors of rock.

The boys usually ended up finding the steepest and most difficult route to any point because once they started climbing, they didn't tend to lift their heads much to see where they were going. Just plowed on ahead on hands and toes.

A little crevice where my belly got stuck, which was quite amusing for all of the guys with me.

The views were so amazing, I wish a camera could capture the feel of how awesome it was.

This is how Henry would choose to sleep on the drive... he would always put on his sunglasses when he was going to fall asleep so that no one would harass him while we could see his eyes drooping shut. He was pretty funny about not wanting to let on that he was tired.

Canyonlands Day 1

Last week we took a little 4 day camping trip to southern Utah. We stayed right outside Moab and decided to spend our time in Canyonlands National Park since we had never been there before. The first day we spent at the north end of the park in the Island in The Sky area. It was sunny, but windy and a bit chilly. Most of the time was spent hiking to different viewpoints to look down into the many vast canyons. It was beautiful. We really needed to get out of town, and heading for warm and sunny weather was fabulous for the soul.

The boys were so excited for this trip. There were such super little hikers, and as always loved to find an excuse to fill their pockets with rocks and climb around off trail any place they could.

The views were beyond description and the air was so clear that we could see forever. These mangy and gnarled trees somehow withstand all the wind and harsh weather that hits this parks.
Cute little Henry.
Favorite phrase used on this part of the trip- "If all your friends were named Cliff would you jump off them." (Jimmy Neutron's Dad)

Caleb making us all pretty nervous on top of the arch overlooking a 1000 foot drop.
The happy newly-weds... yep, I mean Us.
This is the cabin where we stay for the first 2 nights of our adventure. It had a queen-sized bunk bed and a playground about 20 yards away. The boys loved it, and even the pregnant lady got a little sleep while we were here.
The next few posts will be picture overload, my apologies in advance, but I prefer this method to the huge slide show that I would otherwise end up with. It will take me a bit to get it all posted, but since I firmly believe we saw some fabulous parts of Heavenly Father's creation and that you all need to be burdened with my pictures.

Seasonal Depression

That what I have when this is the view from my front porch on the 6th day of April.It has snowed more days in April than it did in February, and I am none too pleased about it.

Keep in mind I no longer have a winter coat that fits... grrrr.

The Big Bunny

Friday when we were grocery shopping Henry saw "The Big Bunny" at Sams. Gavin explained to him that it was the Easter Bunny who would bring treats and eggs to our house on Easter. This all sounded fine until Saturday night when he was acting pretty nervous about all this talk of "The Big Bunny" coming into our house. Luckily, I was able to reassure him that the bunny would only show up while he was asleep. Whew- close one. :-)

All fears left when he realized he would get to eat some jellybeans before breakfast.My attempt at bunny pancakes.

Thanks to the horrible weather the boys spent the morning discussing how it might be Christmas instead of Easter, except that we didn't have a tree up. They finally decided that Santa would be more than will to help the Easter Bunny with his sleigh if it turned out that the poor Bunny didn't own snow boots... All I have to say about snowy Easter is- BOOO.

Easter Egg colors

I am a little embarrassed to say that this is the first year in our kids lives that we have dyed Easter eggs. It goes without saying that the boys loved it. Henry only broke one in the coloring process, so that was also nice. Here are a few of our beauties.

Gavin was very meticulous and detailed, and loved trying to do so creative things.

Henry was his very silly self and loving the colors.
Even Dad was getting super creative and testing out his skills.
We just had to post this one since the boys can't stop laughing at Henry's crazy antics.

Colorado Blue Sharks- Game 1

Gavin started a Pre-K soccer league last Saturday. He is so very excited to be playing the 8 team games, and to have a cool uniform. His team was assigned the color of Colorado Blue, and then picked their team name- SHARKS. There are 20 Pre-K teams in the league so it was pretty funny to see all the varieties of colors that the rec center had to come up with for all the teams. We didn't have any friends our age who were signing up so Gavin is making all new friends on this team, which I think is good for him, and he is too excited about playing to even notice.

Highlights from Game 1:
Unofficial score of the game- Sharks 2, Lime Green 0
number of goals score by Gavin... 2.
Number of parents on the sidelines to ask me- "How old is your son?"... 4
There is no goalie in these games, but twice Gavin jumped in front of the Lime goal and blocked their shots. One of the other dads that coaches some 1st graders was loving this and cheering so loud for Gavin every time.
He had a couple of really nice fast breaks.Watching Gavin line up with the other kids to run a few kicking drills before the game... Can you tell which kid is mine?

This picture seriously cracks me up, but I promise Gavin wasn't knocking kids down for the ball. This little guy was just trying so hard, but the soccer ball came up well above his knee, and I think he was almost tripping on his shorts.

I am sure there will be plenty more action shots and videos to come. There are 7 more games coming up. One thing I have to love about Gav, is that even though he was the only one to score the entire game, he came home and told Caleb that his team lost since Lime was such a fast team. And even though, his own team kept inadvertently blocking his kicks by just being in front of the ball half the time, he didn't even notice and just had a great time. It's going to be fun to watch.
(In my defense, the games are played in the field house, so the pictures are a bit blurry from the weird lighting.)

The Invisible Ghost

The conversation
Gavin, "Dad, can you help us prepare. We need some strong tape."
Dad- "Um, Sure. What are we preparing for?"
Gavin- "To catch the invisible ghost. He is hiding in your closet. He tried to choke me."
Enter duct tape, knight helmets, and small flashlights. Ready...
That invisible ghost had better watch out.

Happy 5th Birthday Gavin!

Somehow yesterday my tiny little guy turned 5. He is pretty impressed with himself for being so old. We celebrated over a couple of days with a few little friends and he was even able to take treats to preschool. When I was combing his hair this morning I asked him how my little baby could possibly be 5. He just pointed out that he hasn't been a little baby for a long long time. :-) Geesch, when did that happen?

He once fit in the diaper bag for a trip to the coast when we forgot a carrier for him.

He is sporting a nice black eye in honor of the big day, caused by a collision with a preschool friend's head. I think it helps him to look more mature.

We went to soccer orientation last night for the Pre-K league that he is going to play in. It was funny to hear the usual "And how old are you?" with the innocent tone that we know from years of experience means that they are wondering why I signed my huge kid up for a Pre-K league. Luckily, he doesn't know the difference, and likes to brag about his 45.5 inches, and insists that I remeasure him almost weekly to see if there has been a change.