4 Corners

For Spring Break this year we loaded up as much stuff as we could fit in the car and headed to Farmington, New Mexico. Our trip was long and quiet, what a good idea to have all of the kids separated while traveling, Dusty wasn't picking on Hayden and Hayden wasn't bothering Kyrie. The 8 hour drive was nice and peaceful. Hayden was pretty sure that we drove through a rain forest, and where they filmed the Cars movie. We drove what seemed like forever in the middle of nowhere Colorado looking for a place to stop. We wanted to get out and stretch out our legs and get some lunch and for 2 hours we kept telling the kids, we would stop at the next town. Every little town we came to was so tiny, with nowhere to eat. Finally after 2 hours of promises we came to a town with a little restaurant called "Boogies". It was unlike any restaurant I have been to, the waitress kept dropping plates of food, brought us someone else's food, walked around with a cookie in her hand, and asked if we would like any pie as she chewed her mouthful of cookie. We were just greatful to get out of the car and eat some lunch!

We stayed at the hotel in Farmington for 2 nights where we watched movies, had free breakfast and went swimming. Kyrie wanted to "walk" in the pool all by herself and tried all she could to wiggle out of my arms, and Dusty was terrified and thought he was going to drown. He held on to the stair rails most of the time!

Then we were on our way to the grandparents in Blanding, Utah. We had a couple of stops, the first being Four Corners. We all had our turn being in all 4 states at the same time, then we shopped around the booths for some Indian jewelry.

Our next stop was at Hovenweep. I was really excited for the kids to be able to see some Indian Ruins, but it was so cold and windy that we didn't explore out very far.

Our next stop was to the field where we found Grandpa petting his pet cows, and then on to Grandma's house! We had lots of fun, especially Kyrie - when she got to hold baby Sydney. She would talk and talk to the baby. She was so interested in her, and concerned about Sydney wearing her seatbelt.

While we were in Blanding, my cousin Jessi got married and my dad had been asked to perform the marriage. My Uncle Ken offered to take Dusty to the reception in his Miata, Hayden felt a little left out, and Ken quickly said he would drop Dusty off and come back to get Hayden. I'm sure he had a huge grin on his face the whole time, he was so excited! He told me they drove super fast!

We also had the opportunity to go out and shoot guns! That is something we miss now that we live in the big city. The kids got to go for a ride on Devan's 4-wheeler, and they got to ride Kim and Clayton's horses. Hayden was so excited to "drive" the horse all by himself. We had so much fun being out in the country and getting dirty, it really made me miss the lifestyle!

I really wanted to get my boys out to see some more ruins, so cousin Devan and uncle Tom led as tour guides. They took us to see some pretty cool sites!

Grandma Anderson spotted this horny toad and picked it up, then Grandpa carried it around until we got the camera out of the car.

Then we headed to the ranch and cooked hot dogs over the fire and there were some that couldn't wait to pull the guns back out.

Dusty stayed busy hunting for rocks. He found a sandstone and ground it on the cinderblock and make his own arrowhead, it is pretty cool!

We had so much fun on vacation, I wanted to post it all. I hope the boys remember being in Blanding and I hope we get back there more than every 3 years - I can't believe it has been that long! Vacation was so much fun and we got to extend our trip! We headed home on Sunday just in time to hit a storm and we found out I-70 would be closed due to advanced blizzard conditions. So we stopped in Glenwood Springs and got a hotel for the night. We pulled out our swimming suits to go swimming, ordered pizza and watched a movie. Now we are back to real life for just a few days! We are glad to be back to the busy city life, but mostly glad to be back with our friends. We have been so lucky out here, we have some friends who invited us to a BBQ so we wouldn't have to worry about dinner when we got home (but we missed it because of the storm), and a friend offered to take Kyrie for a few hours so that I could catch up on things after being gone. Life is great!!!