Sunday, August 17, 2014

The Annual St. George Trip

Salt Lake City summer in August, with its blazing sun and rising Mercury, means one thing: Time for an escape to even hotter St. George.

It's what we do.

The vacation was filled with the usual St. George stuff - swimming, an evening at Fiesta Fun, a trip (for Paige and Traci) to Tuacahn to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, cooling down at the splash pad, and a bunch more swimming.




And we even got in a little education, with a trip to Frontier Homestead State Park in Cedar City on the way there.


Still struggling with the effects of strep throat, I skipped out on some of the fun to hang out in the InstaCare. (It wasn't all bad; I got to speak some rusty Dutch to a vacationing Rotterdam family visiting Zion. Plus I got some throat medicine that was almost exactly like swallowing hand sanitizer. Dee-lish.)

Traci's parents are very kind to let us stay in their condo. My little family stays in one bedroom. It works out nice because it has a walk-in closet. When Tate was a baby, we would just put him in the pack 'n play, stick in the closet, and we'd all sleep peacefully. When he started walking and talking we just told him it was his "St. George bed in his St. George room." He thought that was pretty cool.

Until this time.

"Dad," he said, "Why is my St. George bed a closet?"

"Uh," I stammered. "Because it's awesome?"

That wasn't good enough.

So Traci and I slept on the bed, Curtis and Paige doubled up on a twin-sized air mattress, and Tate lay next to them on the floor. It's amazing how they could sleep that way--at one point, Curtis was lying perpendicular, with his head on Paige's back and his feet across Tate. No one seemed to mind. The next night, Traci noticed that Paige was curled up next to Curtis, using his butt as a pillow. Whatever works, I guess.

I'm not one to say, "Oh, isn't age so-and-so just the cutest?" But I do think I'll miss it when my kids are too old to think sleeping on an air mattress on the floor is the best thing that could ever happen to them.

Hooray for vacation.

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