Vacation with a Twist

Melody and I flow out to Idaho for my friend Tina's wedding. We were going to be gone a week and Isaiah was going to take care of the three older kids while I was away. This was the longest I had ever been away from the kids.

It was so fun to see everyone. The wedding was beautiful and Tina was a gorgeous bride. This is a picture of Maggie, Tina, and me.

Isaiah told me he was taking the kids camping for the weekend and that they would probably be out of phone service. On Monday, he called me to tell me he had emailed me a picture of their campsite and wanted to know if I recognized it. Well, at the time I was in town, so I told him I would look as soon as I got back to the house. My mom dropped me off at the house awhile later. I tried to get on the Internet, but it was being very slow. The whole time I was trying to get the computer to work I keep hearing noise from up stairs (I knew I was the only one home at the time). I decided to go check it out and discover Isaiah and kids hiding out. He had driving all the way from Missouri with the three kids to surprise me and I was surprised. I was so glad to see them because I was missing them really badly.

This is the picture he had emailed me.

Since Isaiah was at the house now, my mom had to have him do some home improvements. Him and the kids ended up painting Monte's old room.
This picture is of Carter, Benjamin, and Jeff's daughter Sydney helping out.

We decided to spend a day at the zoo with Jeff's family. It was pouring down rain when we got there, but cleared up enough for us to walk around the zoo and have a picnic in the park later. As soon as we loaded up in the car to go home it started pouring rain again.

The kids had lots of fun feeding the geese in the park. Here you can see Angel, Annette, and Benjamin feeding them.

On our way home we spent a few days in Salt Lake visiting people. We went on a two hour hike in the mountains, which was my favorite part of the trip. We did take the kids to the Hogel Zoo. It was lots of fun.

The kids snuggling up to a rhino.

This picture is of Benjamin in downtown Denver wading in a stream we found. It is out of order and didn't happen till the last day of the trip.

After Salt Lake, we drove to southern Utah. We found an arch to go climbing around. Benjamin and Carter liked chasing the lizards all over the rocks.

Here is Amita and me under the arch.

Here is Isaiah with the arch behind him.

After, Utah we headed for Denver because Isaiah had a conference to go to. We had fun there too. The only rough day of the whole trip was the 12 hour drive home. Amita had the stomach flu and through up multiple times and Melody decided she was sick of riding and screamed the last 6 hours. I am so glad Isaiah surprised me and we got to turn it into a family vacation.