Slices of Life

We had originally planned to see 4 of Utah's parks and managed to squeeze in the 5th one at the last minute so we saw them all in one week. And we felt like we did a great job seeing a wide variety at each park too. Going with 2 teen/young adults I kept each day's schedule wide open and just went by a majority rules kind of vote on what to do when. We were up very early on Saturday morning May 2nd to be out of the house by 4:30 and our way to the airport. We flew from Providence to Salt Lake City, Utah (with a stop in Mid-way Chicago). We saw sunrise at the airport.  Each flight was around 3 hours long and we landed in Utah around lunch their time. It was neat to see the snow covered mountains on our way in.  After picking up our luggage and car rental we found a place to eat lunch-- they happened to be serving brunch so I opted for yogurt/granola.  Legends Pub & Grill Then we piled in the car for our 4 hour drive out to Moab. It was long but very, very pretty with ev...

*Originally shared May 13, 2015 when the boys were 11, 9, & 7   My boys had an amazing day!!! It was one of those homeschooling days that I know they'll be talking about for months, if not years, to come. There was a homeschool field trip to the Microsoft store for a free coding class that we were participating in. I was half excited and half dreading it; I knew the kids would love the class and the experience but I'm not a huge fan of driving through cities, in traffic, or to any place new.  Homeschooling has really forced me to try new things outside of my comfort zone.  We're constantly trying new things, driving to new places, and meeting new people; all things that tend to make me uneasy.  As usual it was a good thing we went. We had such an amazing day! I know I keep saying that but it really was amazing! And you just can't beat free! We had a good 20 kids showing up and since this was a bit further away from us we had a lot of new peop...

We arrived home Saturday night and I'm busy playing catch up this week. We had a lovely vacation -- of course not every moment was perfect. Alec was fighting off a cold most of the week, my husband and I had some pesky admin/tax stuff to deal with that cropped up late in the afternoon the day before we were leaving so that came with us, we learned that Alec was accused of writing his final paper using AI and got a zero (despite not having used AI at all-- but how do you prove that?!).. luckily his grades are super high so even with the zero he walked away with a B but what a disappointment! We consoled ourselves with beautiful scenery, delicious food, and once in a lifetime types of hikes. My recaps will start tomorrow-- all of the posts are very photo heavy between both mine and Evan's photos.    How was your week? Being in a different time zone kind of threw off my blogging schedule but I decided to just not worry about it. I will eventually get around to visiting everything...

I've always wanted to write one of these fun "by the numbers" wrap up of a vacation but usually blank on what numbers/facts to include-- but not this time!    8-- total days we were gone  7-- total nights we were gone  4- flights taken to and from Utah; Providence to Midway, Midway to Salt Lake City, then the same flights in reverse  1,253- total number of miles we drove in Utah with our car rental 5-- National Parks visited (Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, & Canyonlands)  2-- State parks visited (Dead Horse Point & Red Canyon) 4-- trips to the grocery store 0-- number of ice cream dishes/cones I ate   7-- Number of restaurants we tried for the first time  7-- Number of restaurants we'd go back to a second time! The food was fantastic everywhere we went 2-- Number of times we had to stop for cows IN the road 646-- Total number of photos Evan and I took combined (not counting those blurry or duplicate/deleted ones)  1- T...