Zion Narrows & Annular Eclipse 2012

We had a super fun weekend.  We went down to Cedar City to visit family, go to Zion National Park, and watch the Annular Eclipse.

The baby slept during most of the hike, which was nice.  He was so good.  When we first got to Zion we went to the gift shop and got the younger boys their official Zion hats.  We have loved the ones that we got for Logan and Damon so we got a couple more.  Jaron still has to grow into his, but at least we have it now.

We got there right around lunch time, so after we bought the hats we found a nice boulder to sit on and eat.  The weather was perfect.  Last year we were battling the caterpillars for ground space, this time we were battling the cotton for air space.  Luckily none of has debilitating allergies from cotton.

The boys actually ate their lunches really well, I think they were excited to get back on the shuttle bus and get to the hike.

Tragon was in the backpack until we actually made it to the mouth of the Narrows, but after that we let him loose and he loved it!  It was a much longer hike than I remembered and that was just going to the "start" of the hike.  It was fun though and the boys were troopers.

 When we got to the water we played for a while.  Tragon's favorite part was throwing rocks into the water. Logan was brave enough to go in the water even though it was pretty cold.  And Damon fell a couple times and got totally soaked from the waste down and surprisingly he handled that very well and didn't totally freak out.

It was nice to take a little break before trying to head back down.  We knew it would be the most challenging part of the hike.  Tragon ran about halfway before he gave up and wanted to go back in the backpack.  I had Jaron on me and followed Tragon while Morgan took turns carrying Logan and Damon like a sack of potatoes as he ran to catch up.

 Another favorite part of the hike was all the smiles that we got from people.  I think almost anyone we talked to asked if we had twins, one even asked if the three oldest were triplets.  Nope, that would have been nice to have fewer pregnancies, but I don't think I could really handle true multiples now.  The boys loved riding on the shuttle bus and were chatting up the other passengers.  I was pleasantly surprised how friendly they were.

 Back in Cedar we stayed at my brother's house.  The boys all said that their favorite part of the weekend was playing with cousins.  They ran around the the house, through the house, and all over the house and they had a blast.  It was tough trying to get them to go to bed at night.  We tried doing a "campout" one night, and that didn't go over so well, but they still enjoyed it.  We decided we better stay inside that last night so we could get some sleep before the drive home.

 On Sunday, the evening of the eclipse we play a baseball game and the kids loved it.  Logan got smacked in the arm by one of the adults and had a little fit, but I was glad that he jumped back in and played, albeit with a very angry attitude for a while, but at least it didn't make him scared of the ball.  He had a nice little welt that evening.

 The eclipse was pretty awesome.  We had some glasses and took turns watching it as it progressed closer to the center.  It made some pretty sweet shadows on the walls and trees.  The camera just doesn't quite capture how cool it was though.

 Throughout the hike we saw hundreds of squirrels I'm guessing and every time we saw one the boys made us take a picture.  Damon was actually able to go up behind one and pet it.  We didn't get a picture of that, but the squirrels were probably the only thing that got them to finish the hike up.  They would have a sudden burst of energy and run to the squirrel..and then want to be carried because they were getting tired.  :)

 We let Damon take the camera for a little while one evening and he came back with hundreds (literally) of pictures of the cement, and while those might have some photographic meaning someday, I decided to only post the ones that actually had people in them.  I doubt Rachel even knew he was taking her picture.

 This is actually a decent one of Logan that Damon took.  Someday we'll invest in a nicer camera and let the boys have fun with our old one.

And, I'm sure Damon told my mom to do a silly face.  She probably won't like it that I posted this picture, but I love that it captures her silliness and that she is always willing and ready to play with the grandkids.  We had such a fun weekend and we're getting excited for more fun things to come this summer.  So, until next time...