This was the week of our spring break! So, on the first day I went out for a morning walk to enjoy the spring-ness. This is what it looked like:

No worries! We needed Monday and Tuesday to get some work done, at least Kevin and I did. Beth and Claire and Annaliese went to the movies on Monday and had fun. Ben went running Tuesday morning and then was worn out the rest of the day!

Wednesday morning we left for our campsite at Willow Beach in Arizona.  Since we were driving through St. George, we stopped to give Mariah a hug and she gave us a tour of the old jail because the jail is now used to store marathon supplies. It has a strange sort of symmetry about it.

We got to Willow Beach in the afternoon and it was beautiful! Willow Beach is on the Colorado River south of Hoover Dam. We set up our tent and I made dinner with a beautiful view. The temperature was just the right sort of cool/warm. AFter dinner we went down to the marina and walked around the water. The kids played some games around the table that night before we headed to bed in the quiet of the desert. A coyote woke us up at some point in the night but we all went back to sleep.

The next morning we had breakfast and headed out early on paddleboards to see the celebrated "Emerald Cove" which was a mile and a half up-river. We knew the wind was supposed to pick up later in the day and so we hurried, hoping to beat the wind. The trip to the cove was beautiful! The weather was super calm as we drifted in the emerald waters of the cove and relaxed for a minute before heading back. We made it a mile before the wind hit which was pretty good! But that left a half mile of being blown backward. I found a small sandy beach and thought it looked like a pretty good place to just stay for the rest of my life. Fortunately, Kevin urged me onward and we all lived to tell the tale!

Since we had worked so hard and because any further paddle boarding was out of the question, we headed into Boulder City for some hamburgers! On our way back, we stopped to see the Hoover Dam and the amazing Memorial Bridge. The wind was steadily getting worse. We held on to our hats and glasses and said prayers of gratitude that our feet were on the ground and not on a paddle board!

Back at camp, we discovered our tent had been blown down, a pole sleeve had ripped and it was un-put-back-up-able. My mom and dad were only an hour away in Las Vegas and were planning on us coming the next day. Instead, we packed up camp and surprised them by coming a day early!

We had a great time staying with my mom and dad and getting to visit with them. On Friday, the girls and I went to the mall to wander and window shop. Afterwards, my sister Amy and her family and my brother Pete and two of his boys came to visit! It was such a fun time!

On Saturday, we drove to UNLV because Mariah was running! We saw her run the 1500 and then the 800. She did fabulous! She works so hard and runs so fast! It's fun that she has been able to keep competing even in college! AFter her races, we got to bring her back to Grandma and Grandpa's with us. That night we had a great dinner and then had a made-from-scratch birthday cake made special by Grandpa for Benjamin. It was super yummy!

On Sunday we needed to leave but we've been able to listen to general conference in the car. We dropped Mariah off in St. George on our way and had a picnic lunch. We are looking forward to when we don't need to leave her four hours away anymore!

We had a fun trip!