Hiking in Arches National Park Moab, UT

We finally got smart, and bought a pack to carry howie in. We learned a hard lesson when we were in Telluride, CO without one. Howie liked it a lot. He was up high and could see everything.

Howie loved playing in the pathways, since ROCKS are his favorite toys, Arches National Park was his playground.

Tommy and Howie atop of Sandune Arch.

Couldn't resist this one.

We made howie wear daddy's fishing hat even though he had sunscreen on. With his fair skin, the sun in torture on him.

Howie playing in/on the rocks.

mommy and howie taking a break in the shade. Blessed shade, there isn't much of that in Arches.

After a long day of hiking, granola bars, water, and sun check out what you get. Even through all that, howie is happy and saying cheese to the camera. I think we might have found howie's favorite place to be, in the middle of tons of "ROCKS". A boy's heaven.

Camping with Howie

Breakfast of champions: Cereal!!! Don't bother howie, he's eating. He focuses pretty hard on breakfast. Cereal is one of his favorite meals of the day.

Howie playing around in the tent with daddy's beanie on.

Daddy and howie enjoying some popcorn made over the fire.

Howie had a ball with roasting marshmellows. Well, it turned into burning them and doing it again. "more" as howie would say. He loved it. Funny how camping has a whole new fun added to it since howie loves it. It is a lot more fun with howie.

no explaination needed.

howie's first marshmellow.

howie is a little dazed and confused. this is the first marshmellow roasting experience for him and he isn't sure what to do. He caught on real fast and laughed as we did more.

Telluride, CO

Telluride, CO was just beautiful. It is a little town tucked down in the valley of beautiful mountains. There is so much to do in Telluride, we needed a week to enjoy it all. We went here for the film festival that happened over labor day weekend. We couldn't afford any of the showings, but they play a free film each night in the park, that was the plan, but we didn't get to see one because it started raining and it was too cold for howie.

There is a free gondola that takes you to a mountain village and up to the ski resort. Here is a not so good one but it gives you perspective. We were decending down into the town.

The mountains are just beautiful, it is an awe-inspiring place. We loved it.

This is called bridal veil falls. We took the 1.5 hike to see it. It was pretty laborous with howie, but we enjoyed the end result.

Howie wanted my jacket hoodie to place on his head. He called it his "cape". Check out those mountains behind us.

The falls were beautiful and cold, so refreshing.

We are rookies at hiking. We didn't plan for howie. We tried to push the jogging stroller up the trail for a while and got very tired very fast. Howie also got tired during the hike. This is a fun shot of howie resting on tommy's head.

The Rushton family with Telluride, CO nestled in the background.

This was a short walk from our campsite. Constantly, I am blown away by the beauty on this earth. We just loved this trip.

Happy 25th Birthday to me.....

Today is offically my birthday. Yes, born 25 years ago in Caldwell, ID. It was a nice day today because of costco cheesecake (you can't beat that)! That was my request instead of a birthday cake. I could probably eat the whole thing, but have invited people over to 'help' me eat it. We went to dinner last night at Red Lobster and enjoyed some lovely seafood. It was a family affair and howie loved the popcorn shrimp. What a nice day.

HIKING IN SNOW CANYON STATE PARK (in Utah)

Okay, last weekend we had family visiting!!! Yea, I love it when family comes to town. We had my cousins from Las Vegas stay the night with us and also my sisters stayed with us too. Becky was making the move from Tucson, AZ to Provo, UT for a temp-one year teaching position at BYU in the Anthro dept. (This is to fill in for a professor, it will be great since she can teach and finish writing her dissertation too! Kudos to you Becky) So, they flew Sheree, my younger sister to AZ to help Becky with the move. They stayed over at our place for two days!!! Party for us. We went hiking in Snow Canyon State Park, which we can see out our window, meaning it is a whole 10 minutes away. It is a small park, but really pretty and we had a nice, small hike. It was fun. Howie totally enjoyed it. He would through small pebbles down the hill and laugh and be thoroughly amused. He is all boy and loves being outside, he would do anything to be in the outdoors.

This is my favorite photo of us all. It turned out really well. Gotta love those red rocks of St. George. L to R: Sheree, Howie, Tara, Tommy and Becky.

This one is really cute. Howie and Becky, studying ROCKS, howie's current favorite subject.

A view from inside the park looking back towards St. George.

A view looking into the park. I love the orange and while swirl rocks, it reminds me of the orange dreamcicle ice cream bars. This state park has a lot of white rocks (probably where it gets it name) that are pretty cool to look at. Kind of a sharp contrast to all of the red rocks in the St. George area.

Having a lovely afternoon.

Amongst all of the red and while rocks are the black lava rocks and lava caves. We hiked down into a few. They were fun, and much much cooler than above ground.