Summer Fun

Our 2014 summer vacation started in Windsor

with a visit to Grandma &  Grandpa Chem

 We then headed down the scenic

Pacific Coast Highway on our way

to Santa Barbara

We can't go to Santa Barbara without spending

a day at the beach . . . Love it!!

Next stop . . . the Happiest Place on Earth

It's true, at 17 it was Derek's first time to Disneyland,

needless to say he was pretty excited

 We had so much fun on all of the rides . . .

Meeting some of our favorite characters . . .

Sampling Disney's famous turkey legs . . .

And really just spending time together.

So long . . . until next time!!

A Winter Break

I'll be the first to admit that there is nothing prettier

than Mt Timpanogos on a cold wintry day. 

However, by the end of January I've had enough,

 so I recently exchanged this view for this----

----Sunny Santa Barbara!

On Saturday we went on a 3 hour whale watching

tour and we were not disappointed!

Not too far out of the harbor we came across

this huge pod of dolphins

They were so fun to watch because they 

loved swimming right next to the boat

We spotted this big gray whale and followed him

around for about an hour, he put on quite the show

 

Another day the temps were in the 70's and

Jeff had the day off so in the morning we went up

 into the hills and hiked around these rock formations 

for awhile, the kids loved it.

By afternoon it was warmer so we headed to the

beach in Carpenteria,  still a little too cold to get in 

the water but the kids had a blast "sledding" down 

the sand hills

One night we hurried down to Hendrys Beach

to watch the sunset, it was amazing.

Loved my Winter Break and loved spending

time with these people!

Happy Holidays

It was a very Happy Holiday at the

LeChem's this year!

We love it when the whole gang is together, 

so we were thrilled that Jeff & Julie were

 able to make it home for Christmas 

Because really, its all about these 5 kiddo's . . .

. . . and these 5 kiddo's too!

On Christmas Eve we had to check emails from Santa 

to see who had made it on the "nice list" and who had

made the "naughty list" (sorry Diesel)

 Favorite present this year---Just Dance for the X-Box

Big kids and little kids had alot of fun with this

Nic & Derek working on their Macklemore moves

The grandkids at Gram & Grandpa's first 

annual Snowman Breakfast

We ate snowman pancakes,

played snowman games

and had lots of fun!

We enjoyed an awesome day of skiing

at Sundance

A very Happy Holiday indeed :)

A Walk Back In Time

Since Maui was out of the question (HaHa) Gary and I

 had to settle for a week-end in St. George to celebrate

 our 34th Anniversary

Saturday was beautiful with temps in the 70's and so

we decided to hike to some Anasazi petroglyphs

that we had heard about

This is looking down on the Santa Clara River

After hiking for over an hour we finally came upon

these but seriously there were no more petroglyphs to be 

found and we're like we've hiked all this way for this?!

Disappointed we headed back down the trail.

After awhile we came upon some people gathered around

a group of rocks.  Come to find out we had hiked right

past not knowing that you have to hike down off the trail

among some boulders in order to find the petroglyphs

(Perhaps the BLM could mark that more clearly?  Just saying)

Anyway, as you can see we were happy to have finally 

found them and they were pretty amazing

 

Keep in mind that the "old goats" are to the

right of the picture . . .

We decided the Anasazi must have had a 

great sense of humor!!

Even though our hike ended up being 3 hours

long we really did enjoy our "Walk back in time"!