December 6, 2008

Week In St. George

Natalyn and David near our Sand Hollow camp site.

Well, the week was really in the Sand Hollow State Park just out of St. George. If I understand correctly Sand Hollow is Utah's newest state park. Given the Thanksgiving Holiday the park was relatively full so we were not able to get the exact site we had last February, however we were able to get a back in site right next to it. Now I am conflicted, undecided about which camp site I like better.

The desert is beautiful in a "nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there" sort of way to me. With that said, in as much as a significant part of my childhood was spent in Kayenta Arizona, the desert feels very much like home to me. Sunrises at Sand Hollow State Park are quite breath taking. It rained toward the front of the week but by the end of the week the rain cleared and we were also able to get some wonderful night skies. I have had an interest in Astronomy as long as I can remember, I just haven't yet fed that interest with what I consider any decent amount of education. When I was a freshman in college I took and Astronomy class and it stood as one of my favorite classes in school. Something I love about being out in the desert is the great view one gets of the heavens. While I don't have the time or money right now to take more collegiate level Astronomy courses I would like to think that this winter will be one in which I get a lot more familiar with the stars and planets. There have been two very prominent stars or planets next to the moon in the evening lately and it has been very frustrating to me not to know what they are.

Thanksgiving

We have some friends in Pocatello who told us that after they had their first Thanksgiving dinner in their camp trailer they didn't do it any other way. I have had a lot of wonderful Thanksgiving dinners with extended family, so I am not sure I am quite ready to say I wouldn't do a Thanksgiving any other way. I will say that we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner in the trailer and being together as a nuclear family is a delightful way to spend the day. Lexie was able to find a turkey small enough that it would just barely fit in our oven. The bird was more chicken sized than turkey sized but it turned out to be big enough to feed the family and leave left overs.

Lexie found a Turkey small enough to fit in our oven.

On Sunday we went to the St. George temple to show the kids the grounds. I am pretty proud of this picture I took it from the car on an errand to get a diaper.

Las Vegas

We did another repeat of camping locations from February and stayed at the Arizona Charlie's RV Park in Las Vegas. The park doesn't offer much for the kids in the way of a place to play outside of the trailer, however it does have a great pool. The kids have grown a lot since February, they were able to touch the bottom of the pool in a lot more places. At most RV parks you can stay a week for the cost of 5 days. Since we wanted to stay at least three days for the wedding anyway we decided to make our Las Vegas stay an even week. Most of the week we have just been in a daily routine of work and school. I guess a little more accurately the routine has been work, school and pool. The kids have been very eager to get in the pool at every opportunity we'll give them. As I am writing this I am getting asked about the next time we'll get in the pool.

The kids love the pool here.

Jeremiah and Crista's Wedding

Jeremiah was delighted with his limo ride to his wedding.

Jeremiah and Christa just before the wedding.

With five kids and a suburban, that needs most of ten feet of clearance with the bikes on top to park, I decided that we should leave extremely early for the wedding in order to make sure we weren't late. Finding the chapel and finding a parking place proved to be simple, leaving us with two hours before the wedding started. The neighbor hood of the wedding chapel has a lot of barred windows. The commercial area is a mix of bail bond businesses, tattoo shops and wedding chapels. I didn't really feel comfortable having the kids play out side. We decided to try and visit my mom's hotel room but aborted that idea while driving toward the hotel when we realized that by the time we got to the hotel, go the kids out, found my mom's room, got the kids in and drove back we would be at risk of being late for the wedding. In the end we simply parked by the chapel and let the kids watch Magic School Bus video's in the back seat for an hour and a half while Lexie and I got the best naps we could manage sitting in the front seats of the car.

I have heard a lot of stories about Vegas weddings so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised with ceremony Jeremiah and Crista had chosen. For reasons I don't entirely know they chose to have a Celtic wedding ceremony. The music was very nice, the script was beautiful, and the ceremony included a lot of very interesting symbolism. Before the ceremony had started I leaned over to Lexie and as I pointed to each one of our boys told her that it was easier to picture Jeremiah at that size, that size, that size or that size, that it is to picture him at that size, as I pointed to him. It really is amazing to me that he is already married. The chapel was the first place we had ever met Christa. We are very pleased with her. I expect she and Jeremiah will be a great couple. It is nice to have her as a part of the family. For people who might want full resolution images of the wedding pictures I took, I uploaded them to a Picasa web album. You can get to it with this link. If you just want to view a larger photo you can of course just click on the photo.

This is a posed photo but probably my favorite from the wedding.

After the wedding we went to the Sahara Hotel where Jeremiah, Christa and most of the wedding guests were staying. I was concerned about parking but found a very simple solution. The hotel offers free valet parking. I have never used valet parking so I was a bit hesitant about it. Now that I have done it, I will say it is the sort of thing one can get used to in a big hurry. I really hate casinos. It infuriates me that they force you to walk through the gambling areas to get to hotels and restaurants. The kids were well behaved but walking through a casinos is like walking through a pig pen. You just don't come through clean. While I will entertain the thought that there are people who view gambling as legitimate recreation with in the bounds of moderation I think it is better to just draw a line at saying one will never do it. It has been shown that the presence of Casinos is correlated to an increase in crime. This means that the presence of a Casino means that more people are going to get robbed, raped and stabbed than they would in its absence. My vote is for their absence.

We had dinner as a group at the Casino's buffet. Tyrell and Dallin were especially excited about the food. As part of an effort to bring in our budget lately before most meals we have been adding the cost of all of the food items to get an awareness of how much different meals cost. Ty and Dallin left the wedding dinner exclaiming that was cheep! That meal should have cost one hundred dollars (meaning per plate)! We need to do a bit more work in teaching them their economics, but I was glad that they enjoyed the meal so much.

My mom and grandma had a great view from their hotel window.