Therapy

 

It has been a hard couple of weeks, I'm not going to lie.  With Doug in gone and all that has happened I felt the need to get out of the house, and out of the area for a day, so on the Saturday of General Conference I loaded up the kids and we took a day long drive to see the leaves through Cedar Canyon on SR 14.  It felt good to heal our hearts and spend some time together as just us, with no friends.  We were all tired, sad, discouraged, stressed, and whatever else you can think of. 

We started about 9 am from Hurricane and made an always needed stop in Cedar City at the IFA there.  It is one of our favorite stores, and were able to get a few things on clearance that we had looked at during the summer.  Shopping is very therapeutic and paying $3 for something normally $20 is even more therapeutic.  We also grabbed some treats for our trip and headed back onto the road.  SR 14 has been closed for about a year due to a mountain slide and recently reopened to through traffic.  The "fall flowers" through the canyon were about a week away from their peak but we were still amazed at all the beautiful colors.  This is my favorite time of year, it includes the cooler weather, the color changes, wearing sweat shirts, jeans and boots again, and the feeling of peace I feel when I take it all in. 

Mady drove from Hurricane to Cedar City.  She is getting better, but I still am nervous.
She did great on the freeway though.

Cody is feeding Mady crackers and cheese.  We discovered Laughing Cow cheese
that is less fat and calories, and they like it!!  How nice of Cody!!

After our stop at IFA, we headed into the canyon.  It was so beautiful!!  We took our time
and enjoyed all the colors.  The trees were in various stages of peaking, with a lot of
yellow and a little red. 

Mady is in charge of the camera. 

A picture of the leaves through my sunglasses.  My glasses made
the colors pop out!

Another very pretty setting.  Mady and Cody took the pictures while I drove. 


 

Having fun with the camera sure made some nice pictures!  

 

Mady picked a flower and it was very pretty, but didn't last long without water.

We had a passer-by snap a picture of us at the peak of the drive.  Cami was
grumpy and wouldn't get out of the car.  It was so nice to get away!!

We stopped at Mount Carmel Junction and had lunch at the Thunderbird restaurant before heading home through Kanab.  The kids were getting a bit rambunctious by then and were a little loud in the restaurant, but it was good to laugh and joke around together.  We listened to General Conference the whole day, and when we got home Cody went with my dad to the Priesthood session.  Sunday morning we gathered at Grandma and Grandpa Winn's for the morning session of conference and had lunch with them.  The kids didn't even complain when they had to watch the entire session that morning.  Little did they realize that they listened to every session of conference.  It ended up being a nice weekend and a very good release for us.