St. George for Thriller!

O.M.G! I have been SO excited for this trip, it's not even funny! So backstory: Thriller is one of my favorite Halloween time traditions. I've gone pretty much every year (minus when I was very sick and pregnant with Cara and maybe one or two other ones that I had whatever reason - probably financial - to miss it) and it really just brings the Halloween Spirit out! A couple years ago I made plans to go with Stace and noticed there was a sign on the stage saying it was the very last performance and they wouldn't be continuing. I was SO sad because I had been telling Larry I was excited for the year I could take all our kids and make it part of their tradition, so seeing this sign broke my heart! The two years we didn't go after that felt so weird. Every time I heard the Michael Jackson song my heart strings tugged a bit. It was never the same.

Queue to this year when I got an email from Odyssey Dance Theater saying they were bringing it back. I thought it was spam or a joke because it had only  been a couple years, why all of a sudden? Then I saw a sign or an ad saying it was going to be playing in St. George. I immediately went to the Tuacahn website and saw it was real and bought tickets. I was unsure about it being after Halloween, but I'll take what I can get. Plus I wondered if that one did well enough, maybe they'd bring it back all over. Of course, it was later that I saw they WERE bringing it back all over, but I had already booked the Airbnb and got our tickets and didn't want to go through the trouble of cancelling everything. Plus, I thought it would be fun to have another mini getaway this year before I'm out of commission for my surgery in a couple months.

I had hoped it would be warm enough we could even swim while we were down here, but checking the weather as I got closer I realized that was probably not going to happen. I looked up some fun parks/hikes/places to go before we left and made a list for when we had down time (I didn't want to fill the whole trip with stuff, but wanted a list for when we didn't have anything to do). Luckily, the Home Depot workshop was this weekend so I signed us up for that at the very least. 

The drive down went pretty smoothly, we left a little later than I had hoped, but we made sure to do bathroom runs before we left (a must when traveling with young kids). We stopped at Carl's Jr for dinner, where Cara lost another tooth! When we got to the home, the kids loved running around it (they love being in new homes and exploring everything and this one had a little room under the stairs that they were obsessed with).

Saturday, we were able to do the workshop (a man who looked like Santa even gave us an extra kit for Pierce, who was actually hammering all on his own!). We then hit up Denny's for breakfast (that place continues to disappoint though). We went back to the house and did puzzles, played card games, and they played in the "yard", so it was some real fun family down time. During nap time, I took the girls to a playground (that ended up being way smaller than I thought/hoped when I looked it up) and then we also stopped by the cutest little mom and pop candy shop (and spent WAY too much money). 

After nap time, we decided to check out a hike I had found on one of my Utah pages. We got there and hiked about  half way up when I realized we still needed to eat dinner and get ready for the dance. So we took a picture next to a rock that looked like a turtle head, I told the kids "let's pretend that's what we came to see" (rather than the petroglyphs I had originally wanted to show the kids). We hiked back down and realized the easiest plan was head back to the Airbnb, eat our leftover pizza, then have Larry take me and the girls to the theater and him and Pierce could go do something fun and they'd come pick us up after. He ended up taking Pierce to an arcade, but, unfortunately, that place closed down when we were just at our intermission. So, they went out for ice cream to kill time and then headed to the theater and put on Bluey on the tv for him to watch (poor Pierce was so exhausted, we didn't get out until 10 PM...WAY past any of their bed times).

Lucy is clearly thrilled haha

As for the performance, for one it was outside and VERY cold. Luckily I had the kids bring their coats, but I totally left mine in the car and only had a hoodie. Luckily, Lucy is very sensitive to scary things so I had her sit on my lap to help keep me warm (it even started cold raining while we were there, so I was very glad we had hoods!). I was nervous she'd be too scared of the performances or the girls would get bored quickly, but to my very happy surprise, they handled it all so well. No one was scared, Gwen got a little antsy about it being so long, but they all lasted and they LOVED it. I teared up at the opening performance just because it was so exciting finally being there with most of my kids and getting to show them this cool dance event. They laughed at Bubbles the clown and really ooh'd and aah'd at the dances. Lucy kept pointing out the ballet-type ones. We all were amazed at the aerial ones (we agreed they were the favorite ones). And THEN they ended with fireworks and it was the most amazing way to end it. It did start a tiny fire on the mountain that the girls became obsessed over, haha. 

Overall, I'm SO excited we got this chance and I so look forward to taking them again next year (but much closer to home) and, one day, bringing Pierce and having us all go as a family! So, once again, happy end of Halloween time, onto just regular Fall time!