Our Interesting Camping Trip

Every Memorial Day weekend my family heads to Blanding for our annual camping trip. This year was a little different than usual.

Day 1- We headed out at 4:30 AM, in a rental car. Our car's heating core was leaking and was supposed to be fixed before we left, but of course it wasn't! I was so mad!! We had good weather the whole way there, but when we got to Blanding it looked pretty ugly. We started up the dirt road and we were sliding all over the place. I'm not very fun to be in the car with when this is going on! We drove up to the campsite and saw this...


In all the years that we have gone I can remember one other time that there has been snow, but it only lasted for maybe an hour. We spent the whole day cooped up in the trailer playing games and talking. Then we headed to our tent...yes tent, but with heaters...and went to bed. Of course, me being pregnant I had to get up in the middle of the night for a bathroom break. I stepped out in my crocs to about 4 inches of snow...BRRRR!!!!

Day 2- We woke up to the campground covered in about 7 inches of snow and it was still falling. We decided to head in to town for lunch and a stop at the park...get out of the snow for a bit. My parents and Joe and I went to check out a different campground that we used to camp at. It seemed much more appealing than the snow so we decided to pack up and head to a little warmer climate.


That night was much more comfortable...we didn't even need to heaters on high!!!

Day 3- It wasn't a hot day, but it definitely wasn't cold and snowing! I went in to Monticello with my mom and sister to take a warm shower...much needed!! Since it was Sunday we spent the rest of the day relaxing, sitting around the campfire. My dad made his famous dutch oven chicken and potatoes for dinner...YUM!!




Day 4- It was a pretty nice day. We were finally able to ride the four-wheelers. We took a nice ride with all the kids. They all loved it of course! We spent some more time playing cornhole and sitting around the campfire. Then some of us headed out to go clay pigeon shooting. After that we went in to Monticello to the MD Ranch restaurant. We've gone there every year for about 5 years. I don't know if it was because I'm pregnant, but I wasn't a big fan!!

Zachy caught this grasshopper and he was very proud of it!


Day 5- Time to get back home! We packed everything up, loaded up the car and headed home. We had to get our rental car back in time...we were so ready to get our own car back!










On the way home we drove past Monument Valley...beautiful!!!(I was taking the pictures in the car so they aren't very good!)




This has always been one of my favorite vacations...even with the snow. We had a great time with my family and look forward to next year...hopefully with no snow!!!

Ultrasound #3

We had to get another ultrasound today. This was our 3rd ultrasound since we found out we were pregnant. The last ultrasound we had showed that the baby's heartrate was a little slower than the doctor would have liked so he wanted us to get another one just to make sure. The heartrate went up to 171...it was such a huge relief! I have been stressing out about it since he told me it was low! We are so grateful to know that things are going well so far. This baby couldn't be a greater blessing in our lives right now.

Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!

Joe and I were finally able to take some time off from work and get away on a cruise together. This was the first vacation that we have taken by ourselves since we got married. It was so nice to be able to spend time one on one and just relax together. We left from Long Beach on Monday afternoon. We were able to get on the boat earlier than we had expected and scope things out. The rest of the day was just full of relaxing and getting used to our new home for the next few days. When we left the port I could feel the boat moving. Unfortunately I am one of those people who has to deal with motion sickness. Dinner that night wasn't very fun because of it, we ended up having to leave a little early and go back to our room to lay down. The next morning we stopped at Catalina Island. It was a lot bigger than we had expected. The island was beautiful, very green. We had planned on renting a golf cart to explore the island but unfortunately when we got there we found out that you had to be 25. Bummer! We explored as much as we could on foot, just walked up a few of the streets and checked out some of the houses. Then we walked to the Catalina Casino, it is a beautiful building. It is no longer a casino, it is used as a theater now. After that Joe decided he wanted to search for crabs. I was surprised how many we were able to find. As we had been walking down one of the streets we noticed a run down miniature golf course. We decided to head back up there and try it out. It was actually a pretty fun course! By then we had had all the fun we could on the island and decided to head back to the boat.
These are some of the houses on the island.
This is the view of the island as our boat was bringing us to the shore.
This is the old Catalina Casino.
Here is one of the crabs that we found...pretty ugly things!!
We were trying to take the picture by ourselves!! This was as good as it got!

That night was very rocky!! You would watch people walk past and they couldn't even walk straight...and it wasn't all from the alcohol. So once again we went to bed early. The next day was Ensenada. A dirty little town in Mexico...it kind of reminded me of Tijuana. We didn't have any plans for what we were going to do. We ended up getting a taxi to take us to La Bufadora, the blowhole, and the open air market. The blow hole was pretty neat. Neither of us had ever seen one before. There are only 2 others in the world. Then we made our way through the market. The people would not leave us alone. Everyone wanted us to come in to their shops and bargain with them. I'm sure we made a few of them mad. But we got what we were after and headed back to our taxi. He dropped us off in their downtown shopping district and we decided we needed to get some lunch...nothing better than McDonald's! We didn't quite trust any of the other restaurants there. We walked around a little more, I finally found someone selling chicklets...I love that gum...and we headed back to the ship for a peaceful day of no rocking...we were docked until 10 PM.
Here is La Bufadora. It's hard to see how it works, but water from the ocean builds up and shoots up next to the rocks.
This is the lovely open air market where I learned to talk people down on prices...I was a little intimidated at first!
This is a 500 lb Mexican flag that was right by where our ship was docked. Joe is the amazing photographer!

That night we went to a few shows. There was a really cool magician that I could have watched for hours. Then a comedian came on. Joe thought he was pretty funny. They also had Bingo. It was amazing to see how many people were willing to pay $20 for 3 cards of Bingo and only one person wins! No thanks!!! It was so nice to be able to have a night that we didn't have to spend in bed feeling crappy! The next day was our day at sea. I thought I was going to be miserable all day, but the boat wasn't moving very fast so I didn't feel it much. We laid out on the top deck and just relaxed all day...and all night. We ordered room service and watched LOST...I know, pathetic, but we couldn't miss it!!

The sunset was amazing!

The next morning we were off the ship by 7 AM and on our way home. We were ready to be off the boat! We ended up having a wonderful time together! I wouldn't have wanted to share this time with anyone but Joe!!!