Spring Break 2015

We decided to head south again this year for Spring Break.  Every time we take that long drive down I-15 we end up stopping at the gas station in Beaver.  You all know the one I'm sure.  When we're in there Bryan always takes pictures of the kids in funny hats.  I don't know why, but it's tradition!  Here they are in their cowboy hats.  I love how in every picture he took you cannot see Bree's face. Ha!

We first stopped in St. George.  We wanted to do a cool hike we had heard about but unfortunately the parking area for the trailhead was full.  They told us there was another place to park and then hike in but that added 2 miles to our hike so we decided to try again the next morning.  We decided to just stop at the store instead, because I had realized when we were driving through Nephi that I forgot to pack a swimsuit!  Oops!  So we headed to the store for swimsuit shopping (which is always tons of fun...)  We headed back to the hotel and played in the hotel pool.  The kids always love that.

Our room in St. George only had 2 queen beds and no pull-out couch, but we knew our kids were little so they could sleep all in one bed.  Bryan had the genius idea of sleeping them sideways in bed to give them more room.  They had fun.

Here's a picture of something random, but kind of interesting nonetheless.  Bryan discovered that his carry-on luggage fits perfectly on top of our cooler, with all 4 wheels resting in the 4 cup holders.  Has anyone ever seen the blog called "Things fitting perfectly into other things"?  Well, I tell you it is interesting!  For someone like me who likes to have a home for everything this blog is so fun to look at.  It is just as the title says...pictures of things (not related to each other) that fit perfectly inside other things.  I submitted these 2 photos to their blog, so we'll see if they post them or not.  And when you tip the luggage to pull it, the 2 handles match up perfectly as well.  Aaaaah, nice!

So the next morning we headed back up to the hike.  It was a great hike!  It's just past Leeds (north of St. George a bit) at the Red Cliffs Conservation area.  The hike is quite short so even Bree could do it just fine.  The scenery is gorgeous.  There are pools of water along the way and there is one area where you have to climb up and over the side of a rock holding onto a rope.  It's really fun!  In the hot, hot summer it would be so fun to just walk/swim right in the pools.

(Here we saw some pictographs that were hundreds of year old.  A guy from BLM was there at the time and told us a little bit about them.  Pretty cool.)

Here's Tess going up the rope.  To the left it's just a drop-off into a pool maybe 10-15 feet down.  There were some people jumping off the rock into the pool; I don't know how deep the water was but it looked pretty fun.  We, however, did NOT want to get wet during our hike. :)

This was the only time Bryan put Bree in the backpack.  I'm glad he had the backpack; Bree could not have done this alone and I would have been nervous for Bryan to try to hold her during it.

Miles was a little more nervous but he did great!  There were kids all around us in tears because they were scared to do it.  I was very thankful that my kids were brave.

After our hike and our stop at Nielsen's Frozen Custard for concretes (a tradition every time I'm in St. George!) we drove over to Las Vegas.  That night we drove to the Bellagio and watched the fountains.  They are always fun to see.

We went inside the Bellagio to see their flower gardens.  That place is so beautiful!

They also had the "World's Largest Chocolate Fountain" at one of the stores.  It was so cool to see several types of chocolate all falling down from the ceiling.

And then we went back to the hotel pool.  That really is all kids need!  We wouldn't even have to go anywhere else; they could just swim all day!  The next morning we went back to the strip to do a little more sight-seeing.

This is inside New York, New York--a Statue of Liberty made of Jelly Belly jelly beans...

...and then another made of Hershey's chocolate.

We went to the M&M store which is huge, with 4 floors of M&M goodness!  There was of course tons and tons of merchandise to buy and these huge bulk dispensers with some fun colors.

They also had a little 3D movie playing every 20 minutes or so which was kinda fun to watch.

Here's the official M&M Nascar vehicle.  It was pretty neat to see inside.  The steering wheel is so tiny and it really looks uncomfortable to sit in.

Then we headed over to the Coca-Cola store.  The big polar bear is there for photo ops.  (He had red eyes.  I thought that was weird.  Did he have red eyes in the commercials??  By the way, some trivia for you...the polar bear first showed up in Coca-Cola ads in France in 1922.)

Upstairs was the soda fountain where you could buy a "Tastes of the World" sampler tray.  It was awesome!  They had 16 flavors of Coke products sold all over the world (very few were cola flavored) and also a variety of 8 different soda floats.  That was our lunch that day--we were pretty full after having 24 sodas!  The floats were:  Coca-cola float, Sprite float, Red Creme Soda float, Cherry Coke float, Barq's rootbeer float, Mello Yellow float, Fanta Strawberry float and Fanta Orange float.  

The international flavors were: Inca Kola from Peru, Guarana Kuat from Brazil, Stoney Tangawizi from Tanzania, Sprite Ice from Korea, Vegitabeta from Japan, Fanta Melon Frosty from Thailand, Sparletta Sparberry from Zimbabwe, Fanta Pineapple from Greece, Lift Manzana from Mexico, Fanta Kolita from Costa Rica, Bibo Kiwi Mango from South Africa (this one was everybody's favorite), Jamaica Sun from Mexico, Sunfill Mint from Djibouti (tastes like swallowing your toothpaste or mouthwash...not gross, but seemed really weird because we're so used to spitting it out!), Smart Apple from China, Beverly from Italy, and BonBon Anglais from Madagascar.  Most were pretty good, a few were great, and 3 or 4 were gross!  (One more fun fact from that day...did you know that "someone enjoys a beverage from The Coca-Cola company 1.3 billion times a day"!?  Wow!)

That evening after swimming we went to the Las Vegas temple and then drove down the strip again.

We happened to be right in front of the Mirage when the volcano started erupting and we happened to be in the right hand lane, so we just quickly pulled over to watch.  The kids thought it was neat.

And we went into Caesar's Palace to look around.  Miles was really funny about Caesar's Palace...we told him that the Bellagio was probably the fanciest, nicest hotel in the whole city, and we mentioned that Caesar's Palace was probably the fanciest before the Bellagio was built.  So forever after that he just kept talking and asking about Caesar's Palace; for some reason he was fascinated by it!  So we decided to stop in and look around.  I have only been there a few times, but I always get lost in there, and this time was no exception.  I had to go into a store and ask how the heck to get back to the parking garage.  And, once there, Bryan got lost in the parking garage...we drove around that stupid place looking for the exit for about a half hour!  (And while inside Caesar's I walked right by Carrot Top...he's an odd looking fellow with a whole bunch of makeup on; maybe he had just finished his show?  But it was cool to tell the kids that there was someone (somewhat) famous by them.)

The next day we just drove home.  Bryan & I were both bummed out that we didn't stay longer.  When we planned a trip to Vegas we didn't think we'd want to stay long because it's not the most family-friendly place, but we totally could have found more to do for another day.  I heard there were lots of cool hikes not too far away, so we'll have to go again and try them out!