Vacation, Day #2

I finally finished unpacking for everyone, only four days after we got back. How's that for pathetic? ;-)


Day #2 was pretty action-packed, and I'll warn you now that I took a lot of pictures. Like 200+. Don't panic, I'm not going to post them all! This one is going to be pretty picture-heavy, I'll warn you now. Blame Lisa if you don't like it. (Kidding, Lisa!!!)

We started out with breakfast at the hotel, which was very nice. We saw one of the girls' sports teams from DH's high school (Cedar High, for those of you who are interested) eating breakfast at the hotel, and had the rather sobering epiphany that we're closer to the coaches' ages than the students' ages. Le Sigh.

After breakfast we headed over to a park in the middle of town that we'd spotted on the way in, and the kids had a great time running around.

Ryan actually went down the big slide, much to all of our amazement! He absolutely refuses (and I mean REFUSES) to go down the slides at places like McDonald's or Carl's Jr, so it was surprising to all of us that he went down this one. Not only once, but three times!

He wasn't too sure about the climbing dome, though, so his wonderful daddy helped him out. (Check out the mountains in the background!)

And at the Heber Creeper, this just looked too cool to not photograph:


Just look at that sky! That's a true mountain-desert sky, and I miss it. The skies here in Oklahoma just don't look like that.

I really like that picture for some reason, and I'll probably have it blown up to like 8x10. I got it as a 5x7 and I'll probably use that for my scrapbook.

And a la The Yarn Harlot, here's my sock lace with a person train (the Heber Creeper in this case):

It had gotten a little bit bigger by this point, about 18 hours after the picture on the airplane. Not that I'd worked on it much, as I had sleeping (and getting kids settled, and swimming, and eating dinner....) to do.

It's a tradition in our family that we put pennies on the train track and attempt to retrieve them when the train has gone by. They're usually very flat. [Oops, I probably shouldn't be admitting to defacing U.S. currency, but there it is. We've probably "ruined" about 50 cents grand total.] We only found one penny this time around, but that's all right. My dad had put a penny on the light rail track in Salt Lake and it was still somewhat recognizable as a coin, which was very interesting! Anyway, here are the two we put down:

If I can find the one penny we found after being squished I'll post a pic later. It doesn't look like much, just a flat, elongated copper disc, but I think it's pretty cool.

And here's our little family, before boarding the train. (Thanks, GrandDad, for taking the picture!)

A view of the train ahead as we went around a corner:

That turned out better than I'd expected, seeing as I was borrowing a technique from my sister and holding the camera out the window without looking through the viewfinder. I have a lot of these that are at really odd angles--trying to take pictures with the camera held out on a moving train it not easy. Fun, but hard to get a good picture.

They don't allow outside food or drinks, and they started cooking popcorn about 10 minutes into the three-hour ride. Popcorn is a real weakness in my family and there was no way I was going to go the entire three-hour train ride without some popcorn. My wonderful hubby got enough for everyone and some water, and we were set!

The Heber Creeper is one of the only trains in the country that has a caboose. This one has been restored, minus the bunk beds, and adventurous passengers can climb up into the cupola. It was way cool! The kids enjoyed it and would've spent the whole time up there, but it was very very wobbly up there--the whole train ride was wobbly (kind of like being on a boat in somewhat rough seas), and being up high in the cupola magnified it a bit. It was great! Challenging to get up and down since you kind of got bounced around climbing the ladder, but totally worth it.

We spotted some elk on the mountainside as we went by. The train didn't go very fast so there was plenty of time to enjoy the scenery. [Click on the picture to make the elk big enough to spot--they're in the center, just above the power lines.]

At the gift shop before we boarded the train, Grandma got talked into buying some toys for the kids. Gillian got some of her favorite thing, little shaped sponges in gelatin capsules that dissolve in warm water. They had a set of six that became a train, and she's really enjoyed playing with those. Ryan got a train that makes noise and lights up, and goes when you pull back (a pull-back train, maybe it's called?).

Ryan was fading a little bit toward the end, and actually fell asleep a little while after this picture was taken.d
And here's a picture of the station as we were leaving the parking lot. We sure had a great time!

Directly after getting off the train, we drove down to Cedar City (in southern Utah), and went out to Greg's parents' house. Here's Gillian inspecting the hen house:

There were two eggs, so both kids got to bring one in. (There were cousins involved, too, but I'm not going to post pics--I haven't checked yet with their mom for permission).

And this is an old delivery truck near the hen house. I just couldn't resist taking some pictures.


And the boy, brandishing his egg. I have no idea why, but every picture I have of him with this egg he's being a dork. He kept twisting his arms all around and wrinkling up his face. Kids are so funny!

All right, I'll stop torturing you with vacation pictures now. More tomorrow. Hahahahahaha!! (insert evil laugh here)

In knitting news, I did manage to cast off my German doily. It doesn't look like much since it's not blocked, and I didn't have the time/energy/willpower to block it today so hopefully in the next few days I'll get to that and take pictures.