Bryce Canyon

On Friday we drove down to Bryce Canyon National Park. It is the last national park in Utah that Abe and I had yet to visit. I was blown. away. I love all of the Utah parks, but I have to say, Bryce Canyon is absolutely, without question, the most beautiful.

We did have one rough moment when Lydia didn’t want to look over the rim into the canyon, and Abe, in an attempt to quickly cure her of her fear, threw her on top of the fence that is supposed to keep tourists from falling into the canyon. This made Lydia scream, all of the tourists gasp, and me…say bad words. Abe immediately put her down, apologized, and asked forgiveness (even though he admitted he had no idea what he had done wrong.) I was giving a lesson on forgiveness the next day, so I waited until my rage and adrenaline dropped before having a much needed healing conversation with Abe. (It took ten minutes for my chemicals abate to the point where I could see straight again.) But after our conversation, we went on to have a wonderful rest of the trip.

We finished by hiking the mossy cave hike right outside of the park. It was our absolute favorite part of the trip. I wish I had taken close ups of the river there. The rocks were all pink and purple. It was amazing and the light was incredible. Sigh. We’ll just have to go again, I guess. I can’t wait!

Mossy Cave.

Abe played a game with Clarissa where he kept trying to take her picture on this bridge and she kept turning around, racing away and laughing right before he could get a shot.
See?
He got one!

We finished by picnicking in this grove of trees. That was Abe’s most favorite part.

family photo shoot day

Today Abe took the day off of work. He has been working SO hard, and he really needs a break! Plus, it is fall break and our family photo day to boot. So it helped that Abe was around.

After doing bikram this morning, I got ready…and then went back to bed. Abe brought me breakfast and played with the kids. He is a saint.

When I got back out of bed, I cleaned the house. Then my neighbor came over to teach me how to curl my hair. I am very challenged when it comes to hair tools, so this was quite difficult. She gave up and ended up curling it for me.

Then we all changed and were off to Jolly Ranch Campground for pictures. We should have taken some ourselves so that I could blog today, but, alas, we didn’t. We left that up to Wendy from Blue Lily. She was spectacular. I really couldn’t rave enough. We adored her, and our kids ate out of her hands. Speaking of spectacular, Abe and I were blown away by how GOOD our kids were. They were sweet, charming, perfectly obedient, and just amazing in every way. We were so thrilled. And shocked. And thankful.

Afterward we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner. We waited approximately one million hours for dinner, but boy was it worth it. I probably ate five thousand calories because I had starved myself before the photos. Now I am a plump ball blogging away in bed. This was a great day and actually, I think I might be sad it is over.

Playing at Cracker Barrel.
Ammon wanted me to take his picture because apparently having Wendy take it a million times wasn’t enough. I caught my mom in the background playing sweetly with Lydia.