Finals. Graduation. Mother's Day.

All the activity of the last few months built up to a final accumulation of what is called finals week.

As it turned out, my finals were scheduled 10 minutes apart.  On two different campuses.

Luckily my Spanish teacher let me join another of his classes on a different day to give me some slack, so I took my Spanish final a day early.  Which was good because as it was, after taking my math final I would have had exactly enough time to then drive to my Spanish final, but the stress of standing up from finishing one final just to sit down and take another would have been intense.  Also, there wouldn't have been time for one last glance at notes and flashcards.

Thankfully it all went well and I was able to pass both classes with A's and graduate.

Spanish final on Tuesday.  Check.
Tayler's orchestra concert on Tuesday.  Check. (More on that tomorrow).

Math final on Wednesday.  Check.
Graduation on Thursday.  Check.
Casidee's orthodontist appointment on Friday... well, four out of five isn't bad.  Though I did manage to make my appointment to donate platelets at Red Cross on Friday.  For the first time ever.

Saturday had Tayler's soccer game and was full of errands.  Grocery shopping, Barnes and Noble, Target, and Hobby Lobby.  One of our new friends that we've taken to riding with in Moab has been diagnosed with cancer.  The only thing I can think of to do for someone when I hear they have cancer is to make them a really soft, warm blanket.  I heard somewhere that you get really cold when going through chemo. Unfortunately this isn't the first blanket I've made for such an occasion.  Hopefully the gesture is enough to let them know they're not alone while facing it.  "It" being either cancer or chemo.  I think they both sound miserable.

I enjoyed hanging out with my crew for the week while The Man was away for the week, attending a training in Colorado for work.

Though we sure did miss him.

Sunday dawned on a very rainy Mother's Day but we got to have all six kids at home, and The Man was finally home, so we made good food, including strawberry shortcake, and watched a lot of TV.  I was determined to do as little as possible, enjoying my last day of "nothingness" until school resumed on Monday.  But this time at the U of U, which makes me smile a great a deal.

I want to express how thankful I am for the support and love that was shown to me on my graduation day.  And though receiving my associate's degree is not the final destination, it was a milestone that represents no more general classes and I was excited to celebrate that.

The support the surrounded me filled my soul with love and appreciation for the family and friends that surround my life.  Though The Man was in Colorado with work and wasn't able to be there, I certainly wasn't alone in my day.

The kids and I made a trip to Hobby Lobby (how did I survive before that store?) and found some sparkly letters for the top of my hat.  We wanted to make sure they'd be able to find me in the sea of black hats.

Turns out, it worked better than I could have hoped for.  The Circus spotted me the instant I walked in and had no problems keeping track of me in the crowd.

 

My dad, Brent.

My dad, Dick, West's dad, Mike, my mom, KC.

My brother, Bill.

 

I could not have asked for a better support system than my husband and our kids.  They have never complained once about my schedule or my need to do homework.  They've been excited for me the entire time.  And they've calmed my self-doubt with words like, "You can do it.  You always do."  Even though those words might have been accompanied with an eye roll as it was said.

Casidee, Jayme, and Brynn surprised me with some awesome glasses.

I sent a text to the man at one point while I was waiting to enter in the procession, telling him there was a guy that looked just like Big Hoss from that pawn show.

Some time passed, as The Man was busy in classes, but he eventually replied with, "Is your ceremony today?"

He was answered with this picture.  "You could say that.  Like, right this minute."

He then expressed some very kind words about how proud he was and how much he loved me.

Like I said, I couldn't have asked for a better support group.

Easter. Sand Hollow.

Easter has a long standing tradition of fleeing south for us.

It's a holiday that signifies, for The Man, that it's past time to have the trailer out and stocked and ready to roll.  He washes the winter dust off the toys, loads them up, along with The Circus, and we head out for fresh air with fresh spring hopes in our hearts.

Fleeing south guarantees us that we won't get snowed on.

This is Utah, afterall.

The drive seemed longer this trip than other trips, but I somehow feel it was a harder winter for us mentally, so perhaps it took us a little bit to shake winter off our brains as we drove.  School seems to be dragging for everyone, and there have been the mental pressures of The Man switching from being a business owner to putting that on the side and taking a job working for someone else in hopes of growth and new opportunities.
We made a traditional pit stop at the Scipio gas station that doubles as a petting zoo to check on our llama friends and our favorite Utah resident zebra.

Sadly, we didn't find our zebra friend, but we believe we found his offspring.  What we can't decide is should we call it a Zonkey or a Deebra? Whatever you call it, it was super friendly, pushing its nose at us to be pet.

Either way it was a fun find on that stop.

We made it to Sand Hollow (here) and pulled right up on the beach, which seems to be par for us.  Easter is always right on the beach.  Fall is in the campground where the rock formations in the water can be explored, and where it's nearer to the scuba diving launch.  The water is warmer in the fall, which is a little more inviting for submerging yourself down to the bottom. Although we have yet to actually dive there.

This fall.  This fall.

It only took a moment, long enough for us to level and open the trailer up, before we found our groove for the next three days.

As we pulled up to the beach area we noticed a lone kitchen chair sitting out in the water.  We claimed it for a day but it didn't take us long to find a better use for it.

More on The Man's brilliant fire pit shoveling skills here.

It was a good beach chair.  But it was even better firewood.

We got to visit with Grandpa Dick and Grandma KC, I pretended to do some Spanish homework (two weeks left!), and we welcomed Papa Mike when he showed up to sit on the beach with us.

The Easter Bunny showed up leaving books and kites, which directly translated to occupied kids for hours.

I truly think all I need is my family, the beach and sunshine (and I'd be a... happy snowman!), and a good book and I would be happy for life.

This.

I can be content in taking it in spurts.

Roadtripping.

Winter doesn't bode well for our mental state.

We do realize that, as far as that's concerned, we live in the wrong state.

As it is, we found ourselves with a long kidless weekend over the President's Day holiday (which was also attached to the weekend of Valentine's Day) so The Man declared that he needed warmth and sun.  Being as I felt so inclined myself, we planned a trip south to St. George where there was the promise of at least 60 degree weather and sun.

Even if we didn't know what we were going to do down there, we were going, by golly.

I've been toying with a website, roadtrippers.com, for awhile now, and with the plans set to head south I thought I'd plug into that website to see if there were new things that we could see while were on our way down.

Four hours later I had more road trips planned than we'll be able to do in a year, but I also had to road trips planned for our weekend.

One that would take us down to St. George with two stops and one the following day that made a loop, starting and ending again in St. George with four stops.

We invited my parents to tag along on our loop drive.

We headed out mid Saturday morning, having no real agenda to stick to and no plans beyond just following the flow of what we felt like and seeing the stops on our way.

Generally I despise waking up so we didn't set any alarms and let ourselves get the sleep we needed.  We finished packing up our bags and made sure the dogs had plenty of food and water and toys so they wouldn't destroy the house.

And we set out.

The link to this particular road trip (with directions, a map, and description of the stops) can be found here.

Our first stop was the ghost town, Thistle, which was flooded out in the 80's.

We stopped at McD's in Spanish Fork before heading up the canyon to Thistle for breakfast and the mandatory Coke.

At first we couldn't understand why McD's would have a half fence.  And we didn't understand why they would hang a sign up asking if we liked it.  And why would they want us to tell them we like it for a free coupon?

But then we looked just beyond it and realized that the fence was just enough to block the displays of the windows in the adult shop that had been built next door.  Being a happily married couple, we're not against adult shops, but being a family type of folk we completely appreciated McD's efforts at keeping their establishment "family friendly."  So we told them we like their fence.  Because we really did.

And they really did give us a coupon for a free sandwich.

On our way out of McD's parking lot The Man spotted this bad... bug.

Our trip had only just begun and we were already laughing at the adventures that we'd found in just a McDonald's parking lot.

And the pressure was off.

We weren't racing to a destination to attend some event and trying to get somewhere as fast as we could to start our trip, for once, the journey really was what it was all about it.

It was relaxed and freeing.

Our GPS dude (The Man downloaded a skeleton hand and a creepy voice for me.  He likes to say things like, "Have you seen my spider?  It was crawling around here just a minute ago..." and, "You're driving like your life depends on it.  I like that," and, "Ignore the noises coming from the trunk.") led us straight to a submerged house that used to be part of Thistle.

It was surreal, to try and think that someone had lived there in my lifetime and the events that had taken place, leaving them with no home.

We stopped at an abandoned barn/work shop structure which was full of garbage and then parked on the shoulder and hiked uphill in the mud to another abandoned home that was affected by the flood.

You can almost feel the stories as you look these places, like the history is still tangible all around it.

There were other stops we could have seen on our way down to St. George, but I felt those stops would be better in the summertime we so we drove back to I-15 and headed south.

We detoured in Leeds to see the stop of Silver Reef which is an old mining town, now set up as a museum.  The only place where silver has been found in sandstone.

My favorite part is seeing the old foundations from the original homes that were in the area.

Then we drove around Leeds and looked at the seriously posh houses in the area.

We finished our way to St. George where we met up with my parents for dinner and then crashed on their couch for the night.  We'd invited them on our road trip the following day and I was super excited for it.

Our second trip can be found in full here.

The agenda called for a stop in Pipe Spring National Monument in Arizona, The Old Frontier Town which I found out through googling is actually a museum called Little Hollywood, the Moqui Cave, and then the ghost town town of Grafton.

Our first stop was Pipe Springs which is a national monument ("Free this weekend for President's day!" Score!)  Where we learned about Pioneers and Indians and Mexicans all rolled up into one settlement area.

We had the option to wait for a tour inside the "castle", but as it was off-season, the tours were only held at specific times and only if they knew you wanted to take it.  We never really told them we wanted to, and we didn't feel like sticking around to wait for one, so we decided to skip that part and head on to our next destination.

I was especially excited for the next two stops, the Little Hollywood museum where they had the sets from the filming of old western's and the Moqui Cave which used to be a hidden speakeasy during prohibition, but is now an open to public store.  Though they still have the bar set up in it for people to see.

I'll tell you now that if you follow our roadtrippers.com map for this trip, it's slightly wrong.  Little Hollywood (Old Frontier Town) came before the cave did, and the cave is actually on the same road, you don't have to turn off for it.

But what we found is both the museum and the cave were closed for off-season.

I was so disappointed!

We stopped at Carmel Mountain Junction, where we were to make a left turn, for lunch at the Thunderbird Restaurant, home of the ho-made pies, where we didn't get any pie, but we did buy my dad a t-shirt, and would have bought one for The Man but they didn't have his size in the color he was hoping for.

Turns out that the simple story of that is when the restaurant first started, it was sitting out in the middle of no-where on dirt roads and the owner just simply didn't have room to write out the full "Home Made Pies", so he shortened it to fit best he could.  Only recently has it created some controversy, so doing the only thing they could do, they made merchandise and kept running with it.

I'm an open minded person and feel that the reason for their claim for ho-made pies is simple enough, so we supported it with buying t-shirts.

I knew our trip was going to take us near Zion National Park, but what I didn't realize was that it was going to take us straight through it.  Which was a happy surprise and added bonus, so be prepared to pay the park day fee ("Not this weekend!  It's free for President's Day!"  Double score!)

I was happy to recognize Checkerboard Mesa when it loomed up before us, a spot on roadtrippers I had seen and thought would be fun to visit.

That place is just beautiful.  We'd been there before and done some of the hikes (here) but I'd never driven through the whole park like that before.

The tunnels were awesome, one being so long that they had to cut windows into the side of the mountain to give it some light here and there, but it was still mostly dark and very closed in.

We ended our trip with a stop at the ghost town Grafton which is near Zion's.

I fell in love with the history of that place.

Apparently people back then didn't need much head clearance?

We had so much fun on this trip, that we're planning to do it again with The Circus.  Only this time we're going to do it when Little Hollywood and the Moqui Cave will be open.

Do you use roadtrippers?  Let me know, I would love to swap road trip maps!