They fight... constantly and argue over the silliest things like... who get's to be first in whatever or who picked out what popsicle flavor and the ultimate... Walker choosing the same things that Ainsley does causing huge yelling, "HE's coping ME... that's not fair!...It was my idea FIRST!" So she'll change her decision and the next thing Walker's changed too and the same sentence is yelled a bazillion more times! I've tried explaining to her that the lil' brother thinks she's ultra cool and that he wants to be like that too... so far she's not buying it... she's adamant that he's trying to annoy her. (yeah, there might be a little bit of that too.)

So it's nice that at the end of yesterday they could be found outside... sharing a chair... giggling and talking over dessert.

Had a great 4th... besides waiting for the parade to start at 10am in the rain...

it was an extra long wait since unbeknownst to us they decided to move the parade time to 11am (it's always been a 10am parade for as long as we could remember). We had our first 4th of July party and it was a fun time with good food, lots of laughing and great friends. The fireworks were spectacular as usual! Here's a favorite from the night..

Have a wonderful holiday!

A great way to spend a hot afternoon is to head to the movies. Thanks to Uncle Scott, the kiddos wore their State Farm Cars shirts to see the movie.

We absolutely LOVED the show, and for the rest of the day little Bug in his best lil' Italian accent would say, "Francesco always wins!"

She had her first big sleepover at her BFF's house... totally loved it and had such a great time.

For us parents it was unusually quiet, our family schedule felt off, and a bit hard to have an empty bedroom to tuck in, give hugs and kisses before bed. But we survived and let the umbilical cord stretch a few more inches. (man that's hard!) It was good however for little Bug to have some one on one time with just Mommy and Daddy.

Home is a very nice place to be. Just about a week home and Mulan kitty cat has finally stopped yowling at us and following us everywhere and is back to her usual routine...

The laundry is now all caught up and the yard work that was very overwhelming has finally gotten under control... or a least a plan is in motion.

Summer is in full swing here... Popsicles and water fights...

Hard to believe that today is the last of our trip already. We first stopped at Cedar Breaks National Monument and the weather was gorgeous at 10,000 ft.

Cedar Breaks is a smaller version of Bryce Canyon... it was just to our temperature liking nice and cool at 64 degrees…and of course there was snow that high up! We planned to squeeze in Bryce Canyon today as well so we were unable to attend a ranger walk in snowshoes... how cool would that have been?   But we did get in on a geology talk... found out a lot of questions that were floating through my mind while we took in the scenery.

I wondered about the white tops of the rock and learned that it is just limestone... while the red areas have iron oxide in it…that I knew but was unsure about the white.

On the other side we could see the red rock with the white snow... beautiful.

This was a quick stop just a couple hours since all the trails were closed from snow and the visitor center and points of interest were pretty small. You can tell we are having so much fun today…

Walker was at his limit of “fun” and only Ainsley completed the Jr. Ranger program to earn another badge.

A few miles down the road with tear stained eyes…little Bug decided to finish his and we headed back.

On the way to Bryce Canyon we came across this lava flow…

It was really eerie to see it filled with green trees, and grasses... so vastly different from the other lava flow we’ve seen in Craters of the Moon.

It was amazing the different in temps in Bryce Canyon... it’s a few thousand feet lower in elevation and again HOT.

I feel bad that we didn’t even give this park much of a chance... you can tell it was the last on the list and we were just done and ready to head home. Kiddos earned one last badge...

We plan to catch this park again in the Fall when we go back to Zion since they are not far apart. We will head back home in the morning.

Today we are in Zion National Park…oh my hot... hot.

I didn’t think this area would be hotter than Death Valley but it’s 108 degrees today!   The car currently says this..

We loaded up on water... love that they have these water stations at many of the parks.

Attended a Ranger program on the Mt. Carmel highway that is built through a mountain and then started out on the shuttle to the Lodge..

had lunch and ice cream and even after chilling a bit it was just too hot to hike.

We decided to ride the shuttle to each stop... get off and take pictures of the surroundings..

Hard to believe that just sitting you’d sweat through clothes... not fun.  Everyone is starting to get crabby and is ready for home.

But it is beautiful here... similar to Arches in orange dirt and rock formations but the amount of greenage makes it feel like an oasis. We hope to come back for a 4 day weekend in October (that’s when the locals told us was the best time to visit) so we can really hike and explore.

The Ranger said the low of 74 wouldn’t happen until the wee hours of the morning... so another change of plans, decided to forgo camping and headed to the nearest Holiday Inn... proving to be a fantastic idea... kiddos got to swim, we ordered pizza, and we all got to sleep in an air-conditioned room equaling less crabbiness.

Later we found  this…108 degrees caused deodorant to melt... imagine that.

Today we left the Grand Canyon and stopped along the different points of the South Rim leaving the park for more pictures.   One stop was at the Watchtower...

it was built in the 1930s and was designed to be an observation deck on the top floor and a gift shop on the bottom. It feels and looks like it has always been apart of the park…very cool! The inside...

This had some of my most favorite views of Grand Canyon, all along the tower there are small windows looking out. We could actually see the Colorado River and the views were beautiful. (the windows were dirty... and there are some spots on the picture)

We started toward Zion NP and found ourselves driving right by a National Monument... Pipe Springs.

Of course we had to stop and check it out. We had a tour of Winsor Castle a Mormon owned cattle ranch that provided meat, cheese and butter to the Mormons building a temple. They built a fort around the spring in fear of the Paiute Indians that occupied the current land.

The visitor center had good stories and the history of the people... something that I really look forward to at each stop. We had enough time for the kiddos to earn yet another badge. (Ainsley gets so nervous and is always looking down during the Jr. Ranger oath)

At the hotel we had a room with 2 separate bedrooms... the kiddos thought it was pretty cool that they had their “own room” with their “own tv”. We needed a good and not a quick meal for dinner and headed to a familiar place…Texas Roadhouse and had yummy ribs!

Our first full day in the Grand Canyon. We did the usual park movie, went to the Kolb Brothers Studio... who are famous for photographing people heading down the canyon... and being the first people to make a movie of their trip down the Colorado River. In the bottom of their studio there was an exhibit about the Indian artifacts that have been uncovered from settlement excavations. Fascinating…

Kiddos had a ranger program all about Animal tracks and scat found in the park…a real “Who pooped in the park?” program. We mostly did ranger programs here since the hikes were long into the canyon. The last ranger program for the day was on California Condors... really interesting about how the birds became nearly extinct in the 1980’s and how the biologist made the decision to take the last known wild condor into captivity and establish the captive breeding program. Now there are around 400 condors in CA and the AZ area.

They also completed their Jr. Ranger booklet and got another badge.

I guess it was a long and tiring day for little bug…since he fell asleep on the shuttle bus.

I wanted to get some evening shots of the every changing colors in the canyon and got just a few before the sun was down.

Kiddos are feeling the trip today and wanted to head back to the tent... so we missed the star gazing program tonight but I snapped a photo of what it looked like in the parking lot with the telescopes.