On Christmas Eve we headed north from AZ to St. George, UT with a stop to see our friends the Fillmores in Vegas. In St. George, we met up with Jim's side of the family minus his brother Jon's family who were stuck in AK due to work. Jim's parents had gotten three timeshare condos for the family to stay in for the week. We started the festivities off with the traditional nativity play. Grammy has been hard at work making costumes and had a slew of them this year. Jonas was a wise man with the other 2 year old cousins, Maren an angel, Whitney was Mary, and Jim was a donkey and camel.
It was followed by the traditional angel food cake for dessert. The next morning we all gathered to open stockings and gifts.
Some went hiking that afternoon while the others finished up the preparations for our big dinner. Sunday was spent attending church and relaxing. Monday we headed to Zion National Park. The older kids and a few adults hiked up Angels Landing while the others explored other trails in the park. Jim and Jon created a harnessed rope team of the older kids to take them on the last exposed section of the trail.
After a quick lunch, many of the adults went to do a canyoneering adventure down Keyhole Canyon. Three of the guys had done this the month previous and wanted to take the rest of us down this amazing slot canyon. They said it would be cold but pretty fast and the worst part would be a 50 meter swim just before reaching the car. However due to recent storms there was a stream running down the canyon that hadn't been there when they previously had done it.
As such there was much more swimming involved and downclimbing short waterfalls that had once been dry. Due to these conditions and a larger group it took us much longer to travel the short canyon.
Even with the wetsuits and other gear we wore, I think we all had various degrees of hypothermia when we reached the car. It was fun but I'll look to do it again in the summer months! The next day Pops rented ATV's and we spent the day exploring the desert. The older kids had fun taking turns driving the small one around. Jim and his sister got some climbing in that evening before the sun set.
The next two days the weather became cold and wet so we enjoyed a trip to the dinosaur track museum where it was cool to see the numerous dinosaur tracks preserved in the rock and they had a fun hands on kids area. We also alternated trips to the St. George temple.
It cleared Thursday evening so we headed to Snow Canyon State Park to do a few short hikes and explore a cool, little slot canyonwith the kids.
Friday we packed up and headed home. We enjoyed dinner with friends from AZ and then games with the neighbors to ring in the new year. Luckily my sister in-laws took lots of pictures as Jonas had broken my lens just before we left so most of the pictures are from them.
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