Earlier last month I mentioned that we traveled to Moab to celebrate Leta’s birthday. It was the first time both girls had ever been to that part of the state where magnificent stone arches formed over millions of years disrupt the landscape in an otherworldly orange. There is no other place on earth like Arches National Park, and my two kids got to run up to those formations and run their hands along the grainy, eroded layers.

The idea of that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to a nine-year-old who repeatedly pointed out in the days leading up to the trip, “But we can see nature in our back yard, MOM.”

I hate it when she’s right. Rattlesnakes, squirrels, mythical bobcats, and dead birds. She probably doesn’t remember the raccoon that lived in our chimney, or that one time the taxidermist who lived next door rolled out a stuffed yak onto his front porch. Please no one remind her of the three tarantulas we found living underneath a rock in a flower bed.

Luckily, a few weeks before Leta’s birthday my ad partners approached me about a campaign they were working on with a brand that wanted to encourage families to get out and spend quality, enriching time together. The concept they showed me aligned perfectly with how I wanted to celebrate her birthday, by getting out and away from the grind of our daily routines, the homework and piano lessons and multiplication flash cards, and into the majestic scenery of her home state. I wanted her to see how wildly the landscape varies along the freeway between Salt Lake City and Moab, to have her own memories of the changing desert landscape.

Yes, she resisted at first. But luckily she totally surprised me. And now we have this to remind us of that amazing weekend:

Many thanks to the teams at FM and Hyundai and to David Crowther and Casey Peterson for making this such a wonderful experience. You helped make one nine-year-old’s birthday a huge success.

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This post is brought to you by The New Santa Fe from Hyundai.