St. George Trip

When Alyssa went to St. George with her tennis team, we decided to go along to support her(and to be close in case she or any of the other girls on her team got sick that week). We were all going to go, but then we found out that Ashley had an all day field trip at a Ranch in the mountains during the trip. She didn't want to miss it and we didn't want to force her to miss it, so we arranged for her to stay with Gawbie and Grandpa while we were gone.

We left for St. George on Thursday afternoon, after the boys got home from school. They were so easy to travel with. They each had an electronic device to entertain them in the car. They didn't have strong opinions about which restaurant we chose to eat at. They were most excited about swimming and playing at the park(mostly free forms of entertainment). And they didn't mind sharing a bed. It's crazy to think that it used to be this easy when Alyssa and Ashley were little.

When we got to St. George, we checked into our hotel, unloaded our stuff, and then headed out for dinner. We ended up at Black Bear Diner. The next morning, we were up bright and early for Alyssa's 8 am tennis match. After the match, we had about 2 hours to kill, so we headed to this park I had read about called Thunder Junction. It was one of the coolest parks I've ever taken the boys to. It had a dinosaur theme and was an all abilities park, so there were some different things to play on. It also had a little train that went around the outside of the park. It didn't start running until and hour and a half after we got there, but the boys were the first kids in line to ride when it did open.

After lunch and Alyssa's second tennis match, we had another 2-3 hours to kill. This time we headed back to the hotel and I took the boys down to the pool to swim. We stayed there as long as we could without making us late for Alyssa's last match of the day. After the match, we grabbed dinner and then headed back to the hotel again. The boys talked Danny into taking them to the pool again. They stayed until Alyssa's whole tennis team showed up at the pool and made it too crowded down there.

The next morning, Alyssa had another 8 am tennis match, so we were up early again. The boys wanted to go back to Thunder Junction again(this time in their swimming suits so that they could play in the water feature). Because Alyssa and her teammate won their 8 am match, it gave us an extra hour to allow time to go back to the park. We were surprised when we got there, to find that the parking lot was full and there were a bunch of college aged kids in the park. It just happened to be Dixie Day and all of the Athletic teams from Dixie State were there running activities in different sections of the park. There was also a scavenger hunt, that they gave the boys. I think they had the most fun squirting the swim team with water sprayers.

We even ran into a girl that used to be in our Ward(her parents still are). She is on the cross country team at Dixie. So we got a picture to send to her parents.

We let them play until we got a call from Alyssa telling us that the matches were happening earlier than the schedule said. So we headed out quickly after that. We watched her last match and then we found a Chuck O Rama on the way out of town for lunch. It was the first time going to a buffet since the pandemic hit, but they had plenty of precautions to make it safe to eat there. The drive home was uneventful. We ended up getting to Gawbie and Grandpa's house before Ashley had gotten back from her field trip. But she arrived within 10 minutes. She had all kinds of stories about taking a sinking kayak onto the pond and then falling into the water in her clothes. She also spent a lot of time with the dogs on the ranch. It was a fun weekend for all of us and so good to return home again.