TheAZRichardsonAdventures: July 2014

Summer 4th of July Adventure -Days 10-12

Well, we have finally made it to Steven's parent's place in Taylorsville, UT. It was a change for us to just sit still for while. We got warm baths/showers, washed clothes and just visited with his parents. They showed us their great garden. The kids enjoyed picking their raspberries and Hunter got to help grandpa water the garden.

Hunter & Grandpa watering the grapes.

Kailyn made an elephant out of some of their toys. They had a blast playing with the toys. It had been almost 1.5 weeks since they had played with any "real" toys.

Around 2pm we headed just around the corner to the city pool. Our dear friends, the Longs, from our years in North Carolina met us there. It was fun to see the kids reunite and strengthen those friendships.

Kailyn got super brave and wanted to jump off the high dive.

She did great. It is on video.

Cool man Alton begged me to take his picture.

Kailyn kept trying to hold Caroline's hand. Caroline is just 5 months older than Kinley.

Kinley is still trying to get her hand. I guess at least she is persistent.

Steven helping the girls work on their awesome swimming skills.

Kailyn, Steven, Becca and Altons's feet. These girls are just months apart as well.

Becca and Henry (Alton's age) also decide they too want to try the high dive as Steven cheers them on.

Afterwards, we met up with their Dad,

Adam, to have dinner at Cafe Rio. Yum!

Becca, Kailyn, Hunter, Henry, & Alton.

Me (trying to cut up Kinley's food), Kinley & Caroline.

Both families: Jennifer, Adam, Caroline, Steven, me (back row)

Becca, Henry, Hunter, Alton, Kailyn, & Kinley

It was so great to see some of our great friends again. Until next time!

On Saturday, we went over to visit Steven's Grandma. She is 88 yo, still living by herself and looks amazing!

After our visit, we headed over to Steven's missionary reunion. It has been nearly 20 years and he has never been able to go to one. The girls had a blast hanging out with Elsa from Frozen and it was great to see his mission president again.

Kailyn showed Sister Helen Warner how to balance an elephant on her head and she wanted to give it a try. She was such a kid at heart.

Brother and Sister Warner (his parents while on his mission), with the family. It was a great reunion.

After the reunion, we hurried back to his parents house, loaded up the camper and our suitcases and headed home. We stayed in Kanab that night (our last night in the camper- mixed feeling of happiness & sadness about this), went to church on Sunday morning there in Kanab and made it home late Sunday evening. The whole trip seemed like a dream. A one of a kind adventure! Hopefully more adventures like this await us soon!!!

Summer 4th of July Adventure -Day 9

Here is one last picture of our nice campground in Yellowstone.

This is the part of our trip where we started heading back south. A sad time for us all. We were able to make a few fun last stops before getting back to civilization. As we headed out of Yellowstone, we instantly entered into the Teton National Forest. We made a quick stop at the visitor's center so Steven could get his passport book stamped and then headed down to Jenny Lake. We were told to check out Jenny Lake by some good friends of ours, the Thurstons. What a treat to see this beautiful lake right at the base of the Tetons. It was very peaceful and breathtaking.

The kids had a blast hiking on the perimeter trail.

They didn't want to stop hiking, but we were able to re-route them by hiking them down to the water to skip rocks.

Notice where Mr. Elephant is (Mr. Elephant was a gift from her baby shower and goes with her everywhere). Kailyn's got her rock and getting ready to give it a try.

Came upon this little friend while hiking down to the water. Think he is just a Valley Garter snake, but definitely got my attention.

Beautiful young ladies!

I love this picture!

A few more pics of the Tetons on the way down to Jackson, WY.

I Love this place.

We arrived in Jackson around 11am and went straight to Big O Tires to get new tires on the camper. We weren't sure if it was a good idea to try and drive all the way to Utah on the spare, so we decided to get it checked out in Jackson. It turned out to be a great decision. While we were waiting for the tires to get changed, we went to the central square and looked at the amazing antler arches.

There are four of these. All of the antlers were collected from the nearby Elk Preserve. Every May the Boy Scouts auction off/sale antlers on this town square. Yes, it was raining and the kids were fighting over who got to hold the only two tiny umbrellas that we own. They are obviously not used to seeing rain anymore.

After we picked up the fixed camper, we headed over to Snow King Resort to try out the Alpine Slide. This turned out to be a super fun last minute treat for us. Our intention was just to find a ski lift to ride up and down, but what a fun way to get down (on a slide). It was fairly expensive, so everyone was limited to only going down two times. Hunter was old enough to go by himself, but Kailyn and Alton had to go with Steven and I. They had more fun driving the sleds and Kailyn had fun trying to make me scream. She was so crazy! These things could get going pretty fast. Yee-haw!!!!

Steven & Alton fly down to the bottom.

Here comes Hunter!

They were ready to go again

But, it was the girls' turn!

View from the chairlift on our way to the top of the slide.

Sled in hand just waiting for our turn to go down.

Ready, set, go!!!

It was finally time to get serious and head to Grandma & Grandpa's house in Utah. It was already around 3 pm. Yikes!

Summer 4th of July Adventure -Day 8

Yellowstone, here we are!!!! We all had a great night sleep and were ready to explore all that there was to see & do in this great national park. We started off at Old Faithful and the surrounding geysers. We then made our way northward up the loop and passed by mud pots, more geysers, the Grand Prismatic Lake, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and finished it out with the sulphur geyser/mud volcano. Enjoy the pics!