Ecuador, Part 4

Phew, last one of Ecuador pictures! 

We went to church at my parents' ward (really just my mom and Cole's ward, since my dad is always traveling around to different stakes), and I'm sad we didn't take a picture outside of the church. But we were just trying to escape after things got crazy, so we forgot. But this is Tommy in their Primary with Dane and Graham.

We pulled out the Wii while we were there and Dane was thrilled to find that they had "Mariocard," as he called it.

We visited one of the major parks in Quito called El Ejido, and they had little carts for the kids to ride around. It was cute.

Then it became sad for some reason. 

My mom and I walked around a while and did some great shopping at the little stalls there. And it started POURING, so we luckily found a little picnic table under a roof so we fed all the kids while it poured and by the time they were done we were able to run back to the car.

Later that day, Cole took Tommy and I to the major historical sites in downtown Quito. That part of Quito is not in my parents' mission, but it's a World Heritage UNESCO site (whatever that means) and it has a ton of really cool old churches.

Seriously--the Notre Dame of Ecuador, right? So cool.

They built the sketchiest walkway over the arches in the cathedral that you could walk over, and then let you climb up to the top of the towers with the sketchiest stairs. 

Behind us is a hill called El Panecillo, with a Virgin Mary statue, where we went later in the week.

The clouds looked so cool rolling in!

Yeah, they literally built the world's scariest staircase on the outside of the tower for people to climb up and look at. It made me super nervous!

 Our excellent tour guide took us to the other important churches to see in Quito, but we couldn't take any pictures inside.

This is the presidential palace of Quito. On the outside of it is a plaque that says, "Here So-and-so President was assassinated." Hahaha. 

Once we got back, it was back to Parque Suecia again! 

More Mariocard parties. Lucy was even getting in on it.

Dane really got it into his head that we were going to hike into a volcano. So, we did! We visited this inhabited crater, which has a bunch of farms and people living inside, and we hiked down a ways into it. 

It was cool because when we got there, we could see the clouds slowly coming into the valley, and by the time we climbed out, the clouds were almost completely covering it. It was amazing to see the clouds coming in.

Dane was super proud of himself for hiking.

We joked that Lucy really liked Ecuador, because they don't have carseat laws, so we could take her out a few blocks from home when she was screaming in her carseat. She loooooved getting to sit with Daddy and look around.

Graham found Grandma's candy drawer with treats for the missionaries!

I took a picture of them sleeping like every other night, haha.

He finally napped! 

My parents had one of their Christmas zone conferences/parties with the missionaries while we were there, and it was fun to go to it.

They did a white elephant gift exchange and charades at the church.

We were super welcome guests, haha.

Lucy loved when my parents would hold her because she would rip off their nametags and chew on them.

This is where the boys ended up partway through the party. Sitting outside and eating food.

After the party, we all hopped in the car and drove up to Otavalo. We got there at the perfect time--the sun was about to set and the volcano looked beautiful!

The hotel we were staying at had its restaurant right on the lake overlooking the volcano.

The next morning we walked around the hotel grounds and...

found their lawn-mowing llamas!

Everyone had to get a picture with the llamas, even Lucy!

We also got to do a little paddleboat on the lake.

This picture WINS. It is so gorgeous.

Then we did the main thing you do in Otavalo--go shop at the markets. I didn't remember to take any other pictures while we were shopping there, because I was so interested in what we were getting. But the indigenous people there sell all sorts of things, mostly textiles, but lots of paintings and carvings and other things too. It was awesome, and we got a ton of stuff. Sadly, I could have kept going, but the kids were DONE after about 15 minutes (of course) so we finished it up after about an hour.

We also walked to a little waterfall just outside of town.

Graham fit right in in Otavalo.

Our last day there, we went to El Panecillo, finally. I've seen so many pictures of my parents there (they take the missionaries there once a transfer) so it was fun to see what it was.

You get a great view of the city from there.

And that night we said good-bye! But our flight wasn't actually until 1 am (sob sob) so we put the kids to bed at 7 and then woke them up 3 hours later to head to the airport. It all actually worked out just fine and everyone crashed pretty much as soon as the flight took off. 

Everyone really wanted to take pictures!

THERE we go. Our big trip to Ecuador. I felt like it was just crazy to be doing this trip with three small kids, and we obviously NEVER would have done it if we hadn't been visiting Grandma and Papa. As it was, it all really went very smoothly and was super manageable and fun. We hopefully didn't overstay our welcome by being there for almost three weeks, but we knew it was going to be our only trip down there and wanted to make it worth it! The sightseeing was cool and all, but the real reason we were there was to see my mom and dad and Cole, and that was definitely worth it.