Jacey: Big night & a trip down south

Last weekend was a much better and much more fun filled weekend than the previous one. Friday night I was asked to watch Austin over night- all by myself. I've helped watch Keegan many times and even Austin once or twice over night but it was always when my parents were home too so I just helped but let my mom deal with any problems or if they were to wake up in the night. I was a little nervous to test my "parenting" skills, especially when Austin was not cooperative with his normal bedtime routine. He did not drink his normal bottle and only ate 1.5 oz of his rice cereal. So when he zonked out by 8:30pm I was sure I would be waking up to feed him..... 1:00am came & I woke up, but I didn't hear a sound.... 3:00am-nothing.....4:15am I'm starting to get a little concerned and have to go over and check to see if he's still breathing.....6:30am have to get up to let the dog out, but Austin is still sleeping........7:50am finally he wakes up just as happy as can be! Unbelievable! So I survived, and Austin survived. Saturday afternoon Jon and I drove down to Moab, my grandparents had booked rooms at the Red Cliffs Lodge for all their kids for the weekend and so Jon and I went down to hang out for a few days too. We stayed in Moab while the Lodge is up the Canyon about 30 mins. We met them for Sunday Brunch & Jon's Birthday at the Lodge and were able to eat with all our Aunt's and Uncle's (should have gotten a picture of everyone).

View from mom & dad's suite. It was beautiful

After we checked out the lodge we drove down and went through Arches National Park. We tried to remember how long it's been since we had been there, aside from Jon going 2 years ago, we figure it had been about 15 years. I was maybe 10-12yrs old. Right after we got into the park I started snapping pictures from my window. Everything was so crazy, pretty and thinking about how these structures came to be is mind-boggling, with the different layers and colors, etc. Given that dad was supposed to still be "taking it easy" and is still in a walking boot we didn't get out much to walk around, only did one hike, but stopped to get pictures of a few of the most recognizable structures, sorry that I can't remember all the names.

We called this the 3 Wise Men, but it's officially called something else.

This looks like a sheep/mountain goat

The Balancing Rock

Double Arch

Mom, Jon and I walked closer to the Double Arch, only took 5-10 mins

The real hike was to Delicate Arch. I still don't know who's idea it was to hike to the Delicate Arch, because there are 2 view points to go to where there is no walking necessary, but needless to say we decided to do the 3 mile, round trip walk/hike, thinking that it was only take us maybe an hour. After all we're in pretty decent shape and figured we could do it round trip in about an hour. Jon had been sick for a few days and it might not have been the best thing for him to because after we treked up the first relatively mild hill his lungs were burning. But we all made it. It took as nearly 50 mins to get up to Delicate Arch. It was uphill the whole way, walking through red sand and then slick-rock. Oh yea and it was about 2pm-warm and warm! But once we got there the view really is amazing.

The trek back to the car still took us about 40-45 mins- down hill on slick-rock is still hard!

After we went through Arches we went into Moab and walked the streets, shopped a little and ate. Hope Jon had a great birthday!

On our way home Monday we stopped to check out Dead Horse Point. Which is just outside Moab on your way home, a little out of the way but pretty cool.

Dead Horse Point looking out over Colorado River

Different view- the top of the cliff is where the top picture was taken from, so you can see the how far down it is to the bottom, it said it was 2,000 ft to the bottom.