Friends from France, Bryce Canyon and All Sorts of Craziness!

Before I get too busy in school I wanted to blog about our time with the Lemarchands. They came all the way from France to see the natural beauties of the Western United States and boy did they see a lot! Bryce Canyon, Arches, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Lake Powell etc... They camped for 3 weeks! Reed, me, my sister Tracie and my brother Jayden tagged along on one of their excursions to Bryce Canyon and had a wonderful time then spent the rest of the weekend at my family's cabin while they continued on to Arches. Then on their way back after a couple weeks we got to hang out with them again so we ate, swam, shot guns (only one of them had ever even touched a real gun before--guns are not permitted in France) and took a tour around the St. George temple and in the visitor's center. We had such a fun time with them. I'm so glad we have kept such a strong friendship with the family ever since I lived with them years ago as an au pair. Now my family is really close with them too and they all want to learn French to be able to communicate with those of them who don't speak English.

First Off: Bryce Canyon
This was actually both Reed and my first time at Bryce Canyon and it was incredible. The really bizarre thing though was the fact that we didn't hear any English while we were there. The whole park was FULL of French people and a couple Italians haha. It's funny how Europeans and Americans both flock to each others countries for vacations yet many of us have never even seen what there is to see in our own countries :).

We started at the top, hiked down through the canyons and then hiked (or rather dragged because we were so tired) ourselves back up the canyon on the other side.      






















One theme you will notice through the pictures is that my bro Jayden really hates taking ordinary pictures so don't be surprised if ever you see something very odd in the background of the picture and realize it's jayden pretending to fall off a cliff or save the world or die or something odd like that.

 I think it's fairly obvious that by this time we are a little sick of hiking. 













Then when it was all over Jayden and I took a moment to gaze across the horizon and revel in our great accomplishment...

And Reed and Jayden taught Julien how to strike cool poses in pictures.

Up Next...FUN AT THE CABIN
Although the Lemarchands invited us to stay and sleep in their tent (on the hard ground fighting off bugs and wild beasts all night), we unfortunately just had to decline since my parents were waiting, I'm sure very eagerly, for us to return to the cabin. Since I didn't have to go back to work until Tuesday (it was the weekend of July 24th), we decided to spend the rest of our long weekend at the cabin.

We took a long fourwheeling ride out to some lava tube caves. The fourwheeling was very fun. However, you'll notice there are no pictures of me in the cave. That's not because I wasn't there but because nobody would have dared to take my picture in that moment due to the mood I was in while crawling around like a reptile in a wet/dirty/disgusting cave. However you can see by the picture taken with Reed right after the cave, it was a very unpleasant experience.

And Finally: ADVENTURES IN ST. GEORGE
When the Lemarchands came back through St. George on their way to the Vegas airport, we had a great time showing them around our home. First we brought out the slip-n-slide since none of the kids had ever played on one. From the looks of things, Reed has really been missing the slip-n-slide days himself :-).

 





















Then some of us took a dip in the pool and after that we all went to the temple.

Our final activity with the Frenchies was to take them shooting. They had freaked out a little last night when my dad showed them some of his guns, they thought he was joking and that they were really just fake guns haha. They couldn't believe we had real guns in our house and that even my little brother Jayden had shot with them before. So we all went out shooting. Almost everyone shot the big guns and then my dad let Julien and Ines shoot the little bebe gun (he would have let them shoot the other ones but Christine was just too worried).

They REALLY got excited/nervous when my dad brought out the big artillery...This was actually my first time shooting this type of a gun as well (obviously since I'm pretty sure I'm holding it wrong)

I LOVE this picture of Ines but actually it really mis-portrays her because she was loving shooting that bebe gun. She shot it for like 40 minutes until she finally hit the little circle target my dad had drawn for her.

At the end of the trip we all sat around and watched Rio together. As you can tell, the kids really miss their best friend: "Ouide".

And That's All Folks!