Family Vacation - sans kids (aka the adult getaway)

We got together with all the adults on my side of the family, including my parents, for our every-other-year get together without our kids. This year was kind of pulled together last minute, but it was perfect. My brother Scott has a neighbor with a cabin he offered to us to use up north of St. George, UT in Pine Valley. The weather couldn't have been better, and the food, as usual, was a highlight. As was the lack of children (meaning we can nap anytime we want, sleep in anytime we want... the list goes on!!)

We just took it easy (dream come true after several very busy and stressful weeks for me and Paul) most of the time. Me & Paul had Jennie & David drive up with us on Friday after a half day of work. Let me just say, road trips are like, a hundred times better without kids! It was a blast. Traffic was horrible getting out of Phoenix so we didn’t get to the cabin until 2:30 am (I can’t remember if that was UT time or AZ time though ;) ) but we didn’t mind much.

The propery was on.... I don't know.... an acre? Not sure what that is but it was big, and green and beautiful.

Here's some pictures...

A real lilac tree out front. Lots of deer around so all the foliage is caged up.

We took a little hike (that didn’t get us very far) on Saturday morning, played some games, ate lots of food + twizzlers, cinnamon bears & other junk food. We walked a couple miles to the center of "town" to the Pine Valley Chapel. Apprently it's one of the oldest functioning church buildings in the world. It was an awesome building, and it was fun taking a tour with all of us there. That night we watched a total Bowler classic, “Joe vs. the Volcano” which was, of course, fun. Sunday morning, we miraculously got 14 adults & a couple little girls showered and ready for church with only 2 bathrooms at the cabin. We went to church at the chapel we had toured (where we were close to attending the largest Memorial Day weekend attendance of like 614 people, most of which sat on the lawn outside.) My parents left after church to visit my Grandpa, so it was just us kids. That night after discussing our Myers-Briggs Personality Types, we played a bunch of silly games which is always the funnest part of our little family gatherings. We get to act the way we feel, which is like a bunch of teenagers, and none of our children know about it.

Playing telephone pictionary.

It's an absolute staple for fun times with us "adults".

Hi Mike!

Wendy & Scott reading more about their MBPI's and getting ready to play another round of the Adverb Game (which was an absolute riot.... if I'd been drinking milk, I gaurantee it would have come out my nose.)

Trying, very hard to get a semi-serious good picture of me and Paul since none others were taken the entire weekend. Oh well.

We played some new awesome games from Jeff’s fabulous repertoire of group games. And we played sardines which was super cool. We played in the cabin at first, with all the lights out, and I wish we had captured a photo of 17 full grown adults stuffed under the stairs in a little closet, or 13 people in a small bathtub (poor Paul stuck on the bottom!) We all sucked up the cold (it wasn’t that bad actually) and moved sardines OUTdoors, and the best part of that was the ridicously long time it took for us all to find Jeff when it was his turn to hide (he's a true mountain man). He was IN a pine tree…. People had walked around, looked in, and even crawled UNDER the entire tree and didn’t see him. We searched the entire acre lot of the property at least 5 times, each nook and cranny and still some of us never found him. It was ridiculous and we talked about it for the rest of the night.

Monday we headed back and enjoyed a nice relaxing drive home.