Mount Zion National Park

The beginning of the week was full of appointments and just general sickness and feeling blah.  Wednesday we we had another appointment.  The week was long, just a long, tiring, pretty frustrating week.  I am not sure what it is, but sometimes the appointments and sinus junk just gets the best of me; which I know gets to the kids too.  So we had hopes to go to Mount Zion this week, then the weather was suppose to be windy on Thursday but Friday it was suppose to beautiful so we headed up.  It was actually National Park week this past week and entrance was free...but we went ahead and got Addison her Access Pass (it is a free lifetime entrance pass to National Parks that you are eligible for if you have a permanent disability; she'll have it for her life time and when we are all together we can all get in).
There were a few frustrating moments, Addison ripped her hearing aids out on the shuttle and then we fought for almost 30 minutes trying to get them in.  In the end she won...I hate that.  She doesn't always refuse but it seems that if we are outside and there's any breeze she takes them out after a bit or somewhere where there is lots of background noise she does.  We'll be speaking to her audiologist on Friday when we have them adjusted (they still needed adjusted from her updated ABR done at the end of March...but I want to know if there's something else going on).  We found a paved path though along a river and walked and explored there.  It took us about 2 hours or so to walk the path which led us all the way back to the visitor center and then we walked to the van (which was parked outside the park; we had taken a shuttle into the park).  I must say that Noah was a trooper!  Seriously, I was tired and he walked the entire time with me!  Addison rode almost exclusively (she asked for her shoes and to get down; I'd offer to put her hearing aids in, she refused and so she sat in the stroller; not fun but I want her to know they are important and there are consequences).  Josh was in and out of the stroller throughout our walk.
It was BEAUTIFUL!  Amazing scenery, we talked on and off about how amazing God was and how much He must love us to create such pretty things for us.  I love being able to have those conversations with the kids.  Noah said God was just awesome for doing such awesome making when he made the world - out of the mouth of babes!  We are definitely looking forward to going back, hopefully to camp when Mike can join us.  On the way home we stopped at Cracker Barrel for dinner and the kids were just awesome!  I love when we can enjoy dinner together like that and it's not frustrating.  The kids even got a compliment from an older couple (my grandparents' age I'd guess) for their good behavior - for some reason hearing compliments from people of that wonderful generation carries lots of meaning - I don't think they put up with much from kids =) and I'm glad to know my kids got noticed for good things.
Here are a few pictures from our adventures - the rest are in the albums on Facebook (both "still more of April" and "April 2011 Part 4"  I've been enjoying playing with Photoshop Elements, so there are some that are much more edited than others; some that are still just some basic edits, and for the blog I'm loving some of the free storyboard actions I've found.