Melsey Vaca 2010

This my friends will be a biggie! Vacations always are for me though...

One of my oldest friends (she's not old, I've just had her around for a long time!) & I used to teach school waaaay back before we had kids. This means that we both had summers off...with no kids to take care of...wait, there was a time in my life before kids? Whaaa? Sorry-I digressed! Anyway, we had a lot of summer time on our hands so we would take trips together. They were funny & some day I'm going to post pictures from THOSE trips. So, fast forward & we both started having babies & the trips stopped.

Well this year we decided to take all the kids on a trip together again...the plan was concocted & involved renting a 12 passenger van & setting up multiple DVD systems so we could all go together (We have a lot of kids-see below). Do you KNOW how much a 12 passenger van costs to rent??? We decided our iPhones would make awesome walkie-talkies, we split the boys into one car, girls in another and headed for the mountains. It was one of the highlights of my summer...we had such a good time.

This was a little over half-way there-time to stretch the legs. Please notice that my 3rd child chose to wear her snow boots...in the middle of summer...almost the entire trip.

I think because we are both former teachers, we took lots of crafty things for the kids to do-play dough, paint for rocks, markers, tie-dye shirts, color projects, journals...and I think the kids spent the majority of their time outside picking grass & getting muddy. That's what the mountains are all about!

As an early birthday gift, we took Macy & Gracelyn for a horseback ride in the mountains. Both the girls LOVED it and didn't want to leave...we have promised Macy to take her back to see Daisy again this summer!

When we were about 30 miles outside of town, Keri pulled ahead & drove in front the rest of the trip...Cannon said when they pulled into the drive, "Mommy! We finally beat Amy!" Ha!! All this time I was winning the race & didn't know it!!!