Vacation to Utah!!

Now if you're thinking, hey that doesn't look like Kansas - You're RIGHT!! We took our first family vacation in almost 6 years recently and it was WONDERFUL to get away. Of course, we had to drive through tornadoes, hail, rain, thunder and lightning, and a couple of blizzards to get to Utah (see previous post for the full story).
But everything was worth it when we saw the sun coming up over the MOUNTAINS!!! Almost brought some tears to our eyes. These are the mountains and bluffs just outside of Green River, Utah.
When we got to Green River, it was too early to check into our hotel, so we spent about 6 hours at the little city park there. We played on the toys with Grant and walked around and ate lunch and took a long nap since we were all pretty exhausted from the drive. Then we finally checked into the hotel and discovered that EVERYTHING in the truck was totally soaked from the rain. Almost all of our clothes had to be dried out and Jared had a couple inches of water standing in the bottom of his tool box. Water had also gotten into the pipe in his bike. So we found a dryer and dried all our clothes so we would have something to wear the next day. Then we had dinner - Jared barbecued in the parking lot - and waited for Jared's friend Rob to get there.
The next morning, Jared and his friends packed up their gear - Jared's boots were still wet - and they went off to go dirt-biking all day. Grant and I got up and had breakfast with them before they left and then we decided to go off and go exploring. This was Grant's headgear for most of the time we were on vacation - hat and sunglasses!! We played at the park again - Grant was crazy about the slide and the merry go round. After lunch and a nap, we went swimming in the hotel pool. Grant LOVED swimming. He learned how to blow bubbles in the water and even learned how to dunk mommy! He thought it was really funny when I put my head under water. Grant also loved the hot tub. The regular pool was a little cool, so it was nice to end with the hot tub and get him a little warmer before going back to the room. After the bikers got back and cleaned up, we all went to dinner.
Here's a picture of Jared, Rob and Grant with Jared's dirt bike. This was from the second night of dirt biking. On Friday, the guys went down to Moab to go biking in that area. They came back a little earlier on Friday, and sorted through all the gear and loaded the bikes up since Rob and the others were leaving the next morning to drive back to Seattle. Grant was a big helper unloading the bikes and making sure they were all secured. He helped carry things and put them in Daddy's truck. His favorite activity was finding really cool rocks to carry around and just generally being in the middle of everything.