The start of summer!

I had this brilliant idea back in February to start our family vacation on the day the kids got out of school.  The first week of summer is the WORST around here, and I knew if the kids were still in school I could pack and be really prepared.  It worked out wonderfully!!!  I got everything done on my "list" including cleaning the kitchen and finishing up the laundry.  It was awesome!  The kids were home for about 2 hours and then we left for Kirk's brothers house in Grantsville, Utah.  Thanks to the wonderful mind of my sister Anna I had the kids occupied the whole time.  They didn't fight, they weren't bored, and they didn't over eat.  (I think I will save all the travel tips for another post though.)

We went swimming at a fun aquatic center on Saturday.

We spent the weekend in Grantsville and then we packed up and headed out for ANOTHER 4 hour drive to Hatch, Utah.  Again, the travel ideas worked like a charm!!  I made it a point to "unplug" the entire week. It was so nice to have no e-mails to answer or facebook posts to look at.  (I did miss it though!!)

In Hatch we did all kinds of fun things.

Fishing....

Watching sunsets....

Hiking...

Looking for wildflowers...

More fishing....

I spotted this cool flowering cactus on a cliff wall!

Visiting a really cool antique/junk store!!!  There were treasures everywhere!!  This place was so small too, I can't believe all the stuff inside.

I loved all the vintage kitchen stuff!!  

The boys helped demolish an old barn on the property.  They worked so hard, and it was HOT!

The kids loved their cousins Porter and Russell

Logan and Russell got along really well-Russell reminds me so much of Logan when he was two.  

(That gave my sister in law hope!!)  

 We had fun cooking together and just hanging out in the cabin.

We found a few of my absolute favorite wild flower-Scarlet Gilia.  It's so small, but very delicate and beautiful.  It stinks though-it's also known as a skunk flower!!

We went swimming in the river.

More fishing...Logan and I had one day to fish with our license so I was glad we caught some!!  We didn't keep Logan's fish, but it was still fun to catch it!

This is one of the trouts I caught.  It was so much fun, I really love fishing!!

Here's the two fish I caught-a brown trout and a rainbow trout.  We even cooked them that night over the fire and they were very tasty!!

I'll do part two later on...my favorite-Zions National Park and Bryce Canyon!!!!  Beth