snow and hail and cold - oh my!

We almost turned this bus around today!! When we left Page this morning it was 18, and we were wearing sandals and capris, and 2 hours later it was -6 and there was snow everywhere! It was a grumpy carload to say the least!! Even Miss 3 year old was saying "Oh no! Snow!" We also encountered rain and hail today. We had a moment of excitement at a regular scheduled gas/pee stop as Scott realized the tires on his trailer were almost worn through. Twenty minutes later and a little poorer we emerged with 2 new tires and a spare one to boot. Moment 2 of excitement was even less popular as I had accidently programmed a specific address into the GPS for Salt Lake City and we had a bit of a scenic 'loop'...before Scott finally noticed, adding who knows how much time, but probably about 30 minutes, to our already (long),9 hour day of driving. We covered the whole of Utah today. I have never before seen a billboard which read, "Help for Poligamists. Crisis counciling" The girls were amazingly high spirited all day long. They have counted over 500 flags during this journey, and tasted 2 new kinds of gum today. They spent a long time blowing bubbles and popping them all over their faces. Anika entertained us with songs - from a rousing chorus of"halleludiah" to a self composed song which included - "Did you know your foot was a part of your leg? Did you know that? Did you know that? No, I didn't know that. Well, that's okay because I'm telling you now that your foot is a part of your leg...." and more. The older girls are very into 'mad libs', and they find them endlessly funny. They get funnier as the day goes on, for sure! Scott also sings hilarious songs, but I won't attempt to recreate his lyrics here. We are spending the night in Pocatello Idaho, at a nice hotel where we had the lovely pool and hot tub to ourselves. We should be re entering Canadian airspace tomorrow as we are aiming for Lethbridge!

Grand Canyon!!

In my fatigue I posted 3 posts in my other blog spot, Roesler homeschool....I think you can find that through this one...if you really want to read about it that is! haha!

Cactus Encounter of the worst kind!

During or first hike this morning we had a little accident! We had hiked to the end of the trail, which was a fantastic, high rock formation, with beautiful views and lovely scenery. There were a bunch of prickly pear cacti, which has been interesting us for the whole trip, especially since we sampled the candy made from the fruit of it. One of the cacti had a bloom, or fruit on it, and I wanted to take a picture of it, but instead of walking around on the trail to get to it, I stepped over and between a couple of cacti. Tia followed me, and I guess Anika followed her, because just as I heard Tia say "be careful Anika, those are pokey', I turned around to see Anika trying to walk between them, and she was teetering, and I gasped but couldn't do anything, and She fell right into the cacti!! Poor, poor little girl! Scott was right there and he scooped her up and I dashed back over the way I had just come, and we spent the next 15 minutes picking cactus pokes out of the sobbing girl! Scott had her arm and hand and I was trying to do her leg and her clothes - they were everywhere! She even had them in her stomach! Some of them left blood spots where we picked them out, but most were pretty shallow, but it really hurt, and her legs were just shaking! Lucky for us Scott is very calm in a crisis, and he kept her pretty calm! We got everything out, then stripped her right down to make sure we had everything out of her clothes and skin. She had lots of little bumps everywhere we picked pokies out, which a nurse who came by said was a mild allergic reaction. Her hand bugged her the most,and she favoured it for the rest of the day.

Sedona

Sedona is a totally cool place. The landscape is awesome and you will have to see the pictures. We woke up this morning in a lovely motel complex with little bridges over a little running stream. The room included breakfast of eggs, sausage, waffles, yogurt, cereal, oatmeal, muffins, etc. We headed out for a hike, we chose the .5 mile as we have short legs among us. The girls were cute with their water bottles and backpacks! It was totally hot out today, we were glad we wore shorts and hats and had water along! The earth and rocks here are completely red, and everything is called 'red rock...'. The mountain formations are very beautiful, and now that we're out of the desert there are more pines and green trees. There are lots of prickly pear cacti, but haven't seen any of the big Saguaro since we left Phoenix. After our hike we had snacks in the car and headed for 'Rock Slide State Park'. This park is a beautiful place unlike anything I have seen before. It is a river cut into the sides of the beautiful mountain, and you can walk along it - there are little bridges at some spots, but it is mostly natural. Some spots are very shallow, and some very deep. There was one spot where people were jumping off a cliff into the water, but most spots were shallower. At one spot there is a waterslide that has worn smooth by the rushing water, so lots of people were doing that. The water was numbingly cold, but that didn't stop the adventur-ers in my family!! Scott and all 3 older girls did the water slide, and Scott, Tia and Madie cliff jumped a few times!! It was really fun to watch them, and we have lots of great pictures and a video. Anika and I waded into one of the shallower pool areas, but she almost cried - it was SO COLD! I hope I captured her horrified face - this princess is used to heated pools now! haha! We have driven to Flagstaff, and are spending the night here, tomorrow the Grand Canyon won't know what hit it!!!

Fast Exit - Thursday

Apparently when you are on holidays for 30 some odd days you lose such track of time that you think it's okay to leave the condo that has become home on the first of the month instead of the 31st, just because you want to. Apparently the realtor that rents the condo which is now your home has the ability to rent said condo to SOMEONE else. If that person happens to want to get into it at 9:00 a.m on the morning of the first, and the cleaning lady still has to clean, you have to leave on the 31st!!! Go figure. So after an organizational magic trick of packing up 6 people and 30 days of living/shopping, as well as a quick swim to cool off in the THIRTY TWO degree sun, we pulled out of Phoenix around 7:00 p.m. We had a quick bite en route to Sedona, pulling in to a hotel where we were told they were full and many of the others in town were as well. We found a hotel, stumbled in around 9:30, waking Anika up as we walked the entire perimeter of the complex, having mistaken our room number of 611 for 119....Amazingly, although she woke up enough to chat continously through us squeezing 6 people into a 2 bed room, making beds on the floor and fighting about who would sleep where, she went straight back to sleep as soon as we covered her up!!!