zion national park

last weekend, the smart family vacationed at zion national park.

beautiful weather and fun times, lots of memories.

hike to the zion canyon overlook on day 1. carson made us all nervous (he almost fell off the cliffs waaaay too many times) until i asked if he would be my hiking buddy, at which point i clutched his hand and prayed for the best. we both made it out alive, so...church is true.

and, bottom left, a squirrel that paul had a photoshoot with (seriously, like 20 pics).

valentines day after church we went to the park's visitors center. the kids loved loved it, especially those bridges and all the stuff they could climb on and explore outside.

short-sleeves? in february? get out.

right outside our motel door was this courtyard that the kids played at...for hours. past dark on one night. all the cousins rode these tonka trucks down a little grassy hill into the courtyard over and over and over and over. carson enjoyed the sandbox, addie climbed all over everything but especially liked an airplane teeter-totter thing, and layla worked it in, yep, her bathing suit and snowboots.

this is "the cube" on the trail to the court of the patriarchs. jeremy climbed unassisted. paul was boosted up and pulled himself up the last little bit. looks pretty sweet up there, right?

carson desperately (i do not use that term lightly) wanted to reach the top. he came up with all sorts of ideas to bring this plan to fruition: climbing up a big stick (bottom left), having me boost him up (bottom right), climbing up as big a bush as he could find to move over to the cube (top left), and, finally, building a ladder out of the big stick (top right).

to his dismay, none of those ideas got him to the top, and he was quite sad.

lucky for carson, he has a brave, strong-gripped dad and some careful uncles and grampa who were able to boost/pull him to the top. it was probably the best moment of his life. honestly.

of course, ella couldn't be left behind. she was boosted up as well, and the three (accompanied later by jeremy) hung out as kings of the mountain for quite some time. who can blame them?

we had a fun time with extended family; we also had a great time as a little family. on the emerald pools hike, the trail was super muddy. layla dubbed it the "mudilicious hike" and declared me her "muddy buddy." we had a fun time making up lots of play-on-words with the term "mud." addie enjoyed the scenery...well, we all did, but she had the most time to enjoy it on paul's shoulders.

beautiful. perfect weather. it was a great time, and we look forward to doing it again for many years to come.