Zion Nartional Park part 2 ~ St. George Vacation

We awed and wowed you with the previous post showing all the glorious splendor in Zion National Park; at least one section of it. Now it's time to show you how the family loved being in the peaceful desert region, surrounded by beautiful red rocks.

That picture says it all!

Nathan and Jeremy were being goofs...


While Ryan was being an absolute sweetheart with a local ranger...

We saw lots of wildlife along the trails too.

Rob tried to take a few good group photos.

Notice I said "tried."

Rob then found a perfect spot by the river to do a little bit of picture taking of the boys. The pictures turned out really good!





After a while Ryan got tired and Rob carried him on his back.



He was really tired by this point.


The AFTER picture. Ryan fell asleep within minutes of reaching the van, regardless of the immense heat.

We really enjoyed our day trip to Zion's. It helped ease the homesickness I've been having lately, having grown up on another beautiful portion of the Colorado Plateau. I would highly suggest going, but maybe NOT in the middle of July!

Zion Nartional Park part 1 ~ St. George Vacation

On Saturday, July 18th, we went to Zion National Park because it was a free national park day across the nation. It was amazing! The tallest sandstone monoliths in the world are at Zion's. We got there fairly early because it was the hottest weekend of the year, and boy were we glad we did. Even though it was early, it was still incredibly hot. We later found out it was a blistering 113 degrees... wow.

There are going to be two parts to this post because we took so many pictures! This one is just of the glorious scenery. It was breathtaking. The next post will be ones we took of the boys, etc. Enjoy!

THE house ~ St. George vacation

It all starts with this mailbox.

You wonder if this house is for real.

Oh yes, it's for real.

Every time you pass it, year after year whenever you stay in a certain condo in a certain deserty region, you wonder what the owners were thinking.

They add to the decorations every time we visit.

The kids thought it was great!

At least they don't have to mow or water a lawn, right?

Touring around ~ St. George vacation

On our vacation to St. George, we took some time to look around and take some of the church history tours. It was interesting, to say the least, with Ryan. :)

Here are the kids in a covered wagon at Cove Fort on the way to St. George.


Rob struggling with Ryan while the nice Sister Missionary was trying to talk to us.

The struggling continued as Ryan become more insistent to leave and touch stuff.

We went to Jacob Hamblin's home near St. George. He was an LDS missionary and was well known and loved among the Indians of the time. This house was a mansion at that time.


After taking the tour at the Jacob Hamblin home, we drove around enjoying the beautiful red rock cliffs.

We found our way to the Tuacahn outdoor theatre. This was the scenery on the way to the theatre.


I LOVE the concept of the theatre surrounded by the red rocks. It was so pretty!

Their current season included the shows "Footloose" and "Annie." Since there was no way we could afford to go (can we say well over $100 for all of us to see a show), we walked around and took some pictures in these fun cutouts. The boys thought these were a hoot!

I had to stretch to reach that hole for my face!




We really enjoyed wondering around and just going where the road took us. When it became too hot, like around 11 am, we went back, got some lunch, and then swam for the rest of the day!

Swimming ~ St. George vacation

While we were in St. George, we spent a lot of time in the pool behind the condo. After all, it was the hottest week of the entire year! There were some days we were there for about 4 hours. Talk about shriveled kids!

Here's the pool


Palm trees in Utah? Huh? Oh yeah...

Jeremy loved the hot tub!


Ryan had a blast and wouldn't stop kicking the entire time. Super cute.

Again, I told him not to pose. Who could resist though, right?

I did my fair share of swimming.

But also enjoyed taking pictures,

and laying by the pool in shade reading,

But most of all RELAXING while Rob played with the boys! Ah... good times!

Musical Ramblings

I normally try not to talk too much about my music on this blog since this is a blog about my family and the goings on with them, but music is such a big part of my life as well so I have to mention it from time to time.

On my official music blog, I have been doing a monthly contest where people can enter to win a free copy of my album "Unseen." This month is especially easy! To read the rules of this month's contest, please go to my blog here:

Reflections
and to be all official like, here is my beauuuuutiful picture that graces the top of the blog!

Next item of musical ramblings is SCHOOL IS IN SESSION! Let me say that again!

SCHOOL IS IN SESSION!

Why am I so excited about this, you ask? What does this have to do with music? Oh, how little you know! Imagine, if you will, trying to get anything done beyond breaking up fights, preparing food and snacks, cleaning up said food and snacks, cleaning up any extra spills or sand brought in the house, bathrooms that are used by 4 males, laundry from days of playing in the above mentioned sand box and camping and swimming, going on a vacation, and overall trying to help 3 boys from being so bored for 3 very looooong months. Getting anything else done is next to impossible! The house was in a constant state of disaster, and for those that know me, I do not, I repeat, I do NOT deal well with clutter or messes, and anytime I tried to work on music, I was interrupted within 5 minutes. It's not like I could just go back to what I was doing. Creativity doesn't work that way. You have to get into the moment and let it pull you under and submerse yourself completely in it.
With school in session, I get about 3 1/2 hours a day of complete silent, working time. This is my working time. I don't consider my music a hobby or something I would like to get done, there's no question and I hope to go somewhere with this. So this past week, I have done two things.

1. I am no longer accepting unpaid collaborations. This is huge because I get requests for vocals on songs at least once a week. With charging, it will help weed out the people who aren't as serious, and then the ones who are still interested, will take me more serious and treat me like the professional that I am. Here are my prices as listed on my website HERE. I spend a lot of time and energy on every single song I sing for, trying my very best to make sure everyone is happy.
2. I have already finished the vocals to a song! This is for the project Emeria between friend Adam Amos and myself. This song has only been up for streaming for a few days, and it's already getting quite a positive response! I'm totally tickled! Adam is very pleased (I don't know if he would ever say he was "tickled." That's not expressing yourself properly and he's from England, afterall. You have to be "proper" if you're English.) I would LOVE for you to go listen to the song. It's called "Broken" and you can hear the whole thing HERE. This is the only place we have the whole song streaming. Everywhere else only has a clip.

Last item is a reminder that my album is on a wicked good sale for the month of September. It's only $8.99 a cd and $4.99 per digital album. They make great presents! Might as well get started on Christmas early, right? The sale is available only on my website.

• www.loricmusic.com

Thanks for letting me ramble for a minute! I'm really excited about everything that has been going on. Hope you're excited too!

St. George vacation ~ The Drive

Back in July, during the hottest week of the entire year, we planned a little family vacation down in St. George, Utah. My dad owns a rental condo there and graciously let us stay. We haven't had a vacation in three years where, in fact, we went to St. George! It's obvious we branch out, isn't it.

Four plus hours in a vehicle can get anyone a bit giddy, especially with the anticipation of having a great time relaxing, swimming, hiking, and generally not caring about anything! We didn't even have a watch or a clock the whole time, except when we were in the condo! (The display on the radio in our van only works 1% of the time, though it plays everything just fine, and both Rob and I do not have cell phone coverage beyond our local area. If you only leave town every three years, then why would you need national coverage, am I right?)

Nearing the end of our journey to 6 days of bliss, I took out the camera. First, I took pictures of the beautiful red rock surrounding us.

That soon became boring because honestly, the orange barrels ruined the effect.
So then I took random pictures of vehicles passing us.

BORING!
So THEN.. it was self portrait time!

There's only so many pictures you can take of yourself, especially ones that actually turn out good.
So then I decided to try to get everyone in the picture action.


It soon became photo mayhem of giddiness!




Here are many more shots I took. That didn't help pass the time. Nope, not one bit! ;)

This actually really helped the kids and their boredom and asking how much longer we had to go. We were there only a few minutes later. Oh yeah, this hip mother knows how to have fun!

More to come...