Impulse and "Satan George"

With Michael as busy as he is, being a bishop and everything, it is really hard to make or keep schedules. Quite often, our scheduling goes somewhat as follows:

 

Michael: I have a meeting tonight.

Me: Okay. What time do you think you'll be home?

Michael: It should be quick: probably about 8.

Then he usually gets home at 9:30-10 PM.

 

Also, we get a lot of these:

Michael:  I don't have any bishop responsibilities tonight! We can just have a quiet night at home.

Phone: Rings the rest the night.

 

It's pretty funny.This portrays an interesting challenge when it comes to working around him. We still get a lot of time together as a family, it is just not always at the times that we expect it to be.

   Last week was Evelyn's last week of school. Michael wanted to do something to celebrate the kickoff of summer: especially since Evelyn was dreading school ending so much (she is such a different kid!). We tried to come up with  ideas of what we could do, but mostly it was the same things that we do all the time. On Thursday, Michael came up with the idea that we should get a hotel and go on a mini-vacation. It turns out we could get a free hotel in St. George with Michael's hotel points.

  Friday morning we got up and took Evelyn to her last day of school. While she was gone for that last hour and a half, we packed up overnight bags for all of us and  then we picked Evelyn up and started driving. She had no idea where we were going. We had snacks, books, games, and we had rented a movie at the library for her to watch to make the drive go more quickly.



 

 We got to Saint George at about 1:30 or 2:00. We ate lunch at the Black Bear Café. We love experiencing all the different atmospheres at the ma and pa kind of restaurants. We tried to avoid chain restaurants like the plague--because we can go to those anytime up here. We also ate at the Bear Paw Café and a little pizza shop called Riggatti's. That was particularly fun because they throw the pizza dough in the air and they involved Evelyn; they let here come behind the counter to look in their big wood-fire oven and taught her how they turn the pizzas to cook them evenly. I think she came home with a major crush on one of their workers. She even dared him to throw the pizza with his eyes closed. He almost got a face full of pizza dough.

  Another aspect of our trip that was memorable was going to the Red Cliffs. We don't get out camping or hiking much (I don't love uneven ground with my arthritis) and so it was very special to be out seeing those beautiful creations. Michael has never camped around the red rock, and Evelyn has never played in sand dunes. It was very nostalgic for me as my family growing up used to camp all the time and climb those cliffs like nine little mountain goats: making up stories about a wild man that lived in the cliffs and feasted on lizards. 

It was a beautiful day and perfect for Southern Utah: we had a lot of cloud cover, and wind that was gentle enough to not stir up the sand and blow it in our eyes--most the time. 

Evelyn tried to slide down this rock and discovered it wasn't slippery enough.

Evelyn was hunting for lizards the whole time. We were lucky enough to see three pretty big ones, but they were too fast to catch. She wanted to catch one and make a friend of it. Luckily, I knew my daughter pretty well and I brought her own lizards from home. (Yes, they're plastic.) Evelyn had fun burying them in the sand and playing around with them.

 The sand got probably 5 feet deep in some spots. It had blown into drifts, and Evelyn loved climbing them and rolling down them.

Here is her little sand angel.

Saint George (Or "Satan George" as Evelyn used to call it,) is also where some of my ancestors are from. In fact, one of my ancestors, Hans Ulrich Bryner, was the first person buried in the Saint George Cemetery. We went to visit their graves. Evelyn loved hearing some of our pioneer stories. If you would like to hear one of my ancestor's stories, visit this blog: here . 

 

We swam. We stayed up late eating way too much junk food. It was a blast!