::scenes from laaaaaava pt 2::

I'm just completely ignoring the fact that this was all a month ago. At least I'm posting!
Anyway. We stayed at this funny little bed and breakfast kind of place in Lava Hot Springs when we were there. They had about 5 or 6 hot springs pools around the building. The kids were in heaven. The day we left I guess they were refilling the main pool in front, and so the water level was a little lower than normal. This meant that the big boys didn't need their floaties and they could go crazy.
Speaking of the boys, they all woke up SO excited.  They just wanted to get into the pools right away.  They really had a blast.

Here's the funny mountain hill thing that looked like popped up right behind the pool.

and the pool:

Like usual, the pool looked really gross because of all the minerals in the springs, but luckily, _unlike_ other pools like this we've been in, it was nice and clean. And it was truly heaven for the boys. They could've just swam for an entire week straight--well swam and just come out once in a while for red vines and chips of course.
Grandpa Ken always coaches little boys in weird kinds of jumps.

I just asked Max what kind of jump this was and he said "the belly-flop." I guess I wasn't there when we was taught that one.
Parker was a great jumper too.

Max says the next one is called the "daddy jump."

There were some really beautiful flowers around the hotel and pools, we enjoyed those for sure.



After the swam we packed up our stuff and headed back in the mini vans for home. Now that's a whole nother story...

oh, but not before a little big boy fun:

::Lava, we're gonna do it all day::

I'll explain the title of this post a little later.
While we were in St. George we decided to take a drive out to Flagstaff Arizona to see what it was like. We'd heard that it has four seasons, which we like and was high up in the mountains, and we like mountains. And since we're only a short two years away from actually deciding where we want to be, we are trying to check out some of the places in the west we might be interested in.

So anyway, we headed out for an overnight visit to Flagstaff. It was a very interesting drive. First we went through Zion's, which of course is incredible looking.

I love how even the road is red.

Then we drove out through the Navajo reservation and saw some more really amazing landscape. The desert red rocks and mesas and stuff are so striking. Its hard to take pictures of some of that stuff--it's almost too much for a camera to take in.

We got to our hotel in Flagstaff and then decided we'd like to go on a hike. There's a famous old volcano crater just outside the city, so we went over there.
I wore the wrong shoes.

But I was tough, so I survived. Don't look too close at my dorky toes please.
It wasn't a tough hike, but it was very cool looking out there.
There were piles of the old lava rock everywhere.

The crater itself was a very cool color--which is probably why they call it "sunset crater"

Max wore himself out running way ahead of us, and finally just had to be carried most of the way.

Little did we know that he had the stomach flu and would wake up the next morning and throw up all day. Good thing we didn't know.



We couldn't really figure out what his deal was. Oh well.

He made up a song while he was riding on Kris's shoulders that went "LaVA, we're gonna DO it ALL DAY" and sang it over and over and over, very loudly the whole way. It was funny.

After the hike. All that shoulder riding must've been very dehydrating.

After our hike we went and had dinner (good yummy mexican food) and went to bed, planning to take a good look at the city in the morning. Then as you already know, Max decided to throw up. All morning. When he finally stopped throwing up for more than about 15 minutes we quickly threw him in the car and hurried away. We drove through the city a little bit, but after he threw up in the car we decided it was time to head back. So I don't even have any good pictures of Flagstaff. We liked it though. It was small and kind of interesting with lots of pretty trees. I do have a tree picture.

Just imagine a city where most of the buildings are hidden behind trees like this. That's the jist of Flagstaff. Or at least that's our impression after spending about 12 hours there.

We had to skip the grand canyon on the way back, but we made it to St. George without any more big problems, luckily.

Doesn't it seem like little kids always get sick on trips? And always at such inconvenient times? Remember what happened to me at Disney World?!?......Blah