Christmas Fun & Petroglyphs

The kids have been enjoying the Christmas season and got to mail letters to Santa last week. They also did a Lego project with Daddy over the past couple weeks putting together a Santa House.

This past weekend they also got to visit with Santa twice! A local couple makes their backyard into a Santa Village every year and the kids get to see Santa for free. Then on Sunday we did the Lightwalk in Salt Lake and they had a Santa there for the kids to visit with. We also put up our tree this past weekend, so the kids got to enjoy decorating.

Here is a quick video of part of the maze we went through at the Lightwalk.

Continuing with our pictures from the trip to Moab, we saw some cool petroglyphs one of the days. They were all along a cliff side and very clear. We also were able to do a short hike to some dinosaur tracks!

The dinosaur tracks were very obvious, once you knew where to look! The dinosaur that made the tracks was a Grallator.

More pictures to come!

Moab Vacation - Moab Giants & Canyonlands

 Day four of our vacation we started at a place called Moab Giants which has a 1 mile walking path that takes you through the different periods of Dinosaurs. The kids loved being able to get up close to the statues and there were two "dig" sites where you could dig up dinosaur bones with different tools!

Here is a video of the kids and Carlton working at the dig site. They found something but it was really big and after digging for about 5 minutes, the kids lost interest and just wanted to play in the sand! 

There was a playground towards the end of the path along with a second dig site. So the kids really enjoyed the playground and probably would have stayed longer but we had Canyonlands to explore!

Canyonlands was just another 30 minutes from Moab Giants along with Dead Horse State Park. Lots of scenic viewpoints in Canyonlands and just one viewpoint at Dead Horse.

We did a short hike to this Mesa Arch which was a cool arch to see - but the backside of it just drops off!! Then Gavin got sworn in as a Junior Ranger for Canyonlands. Avery was napping in the car otherwise she would have been sworn in as well! She still got her badge though!

Here are a few more pictures of Canyonlands:

Coming up next is petroglyphs!!

Thanksgiving!

 We were very lucky to have our friends, the Schecter's join us for Thanksgiving this year! They are in the process of moving from CT to WA where Matt will now be stationed. We first met them in Guam and then we were stationed in CT at the same time as them too! We haven't seen them since we left CT in April 2020.

The kids really enjoyed playing together, their son Holden is 9 and our kids loved having him around! Especially since he enjoys building with Lego! We also had them paint some rocks for our front yard.

The kids helped us play Ticket to Ride, we enjoyed cuddles on the couch and lots of play time!

Here is a video of the kids being goofy when they are posing for pictures.

Here is another video with Avery trying to get the dog's attention. She really wanted to throw balls for their dog, Duke, but when she was on the ground with him, he kept trying to get the ball from her before she threw it. She also took a really long time to throw the ball!

And one last video of the kids saying goodbye when Jess, Matt and Holden left for their next destination. They were able to stay for two nights and it was so great to spend time with them and catch up. But at the same time it was too short of a visit! The kids really wanted Holden to stay longer!!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with our friends and hope to see them again before too much time passes!!