Easter!

Happy Easter!

We had a great day (except for the fact that Bailey woke us up at the crack of dawn). The kids rushed through their baskets before we went to church. To their dismay, we made them wait until after church to hunt for eggs. The rest of our day was very relaxing. We took the dogs on a walk, watched a movie, and ate way to much candy.

Sawyer and Bailey with their Easter baskets.

She got lots of face masks to use with her friends. Now she won't need to mash up random fruit I have in my kitchen :)!

Sawyer will be 16 in a couple weeks, so he got 4 giant eggs filled with 4 different dates. The dates were:
1. A movie with Cocoa Bean cupcakes.
2. Rock climbing with Jamba Juice.
3. Phazer tag and pizza.
4. Golfing the short course, and Coldstone ice cream.

Watch out ladies, cause he's armed and ready :)!

Bailey got 2 books she has been waiting to be released, and lots of fun stuff to do her nails.

Although Easter baskets and egg hunts are fun, it's nice to go to church and be reminded of the true reason we celebrate Easter. We are thankful for Jesus Christ, and the sacrifice he made for all of us. We are blessed that he overcame death, so that we will be able to live again with our families.

Going Private

I've been considering making our blog private for a long time. Now, the time has come. I mostly use it as a journal, but I enjoy having our friends and family follow our journey. I know it makes it a little harder to check, but I hope everyone will continue to follow our lives. Please leave a comment with your e-mail address, so I can send you an invitation. Thanks everyone, and happy blogging :)!

Spring Break: Grand Canyon Adventure

We had the BEST spring break! It was an awesome Grand Canyon adventure.

First, we drove to Paige, AZ, and took a smooth water rafting trip down the Colorado River. We took a bus to the base of the Glen Canyon Dam. We had to drive through a 2 mile, pitch black tunnel to get there. Bailey thought that was really cool. We boarded our rafts right at the base of the dam, and headed down the river.

This is a view of the Glen Canyon Dam, and bridge from the raft.

This is the Colorado River where our float started. It was gorgeous the whole way.

Here are my boat buddies enjoying the long awaited sunshine. We had other families on our boat too. There was this really annoying 9 year old boy (when I say annoying, I am not even kidding). Bailey has this problem with wearing every thought she is thinking, in the expressions on her face. I kept having to tell her to knock it off, and look the other way. I though for sure she was going to push the kid over the edge before the float was finished :)!

We stopped for lunch part way down the river. We walked to a cliff that had all kinds of petroglyphs on it. These were my favorite.

The float ended at Lee's Ferry, and then we took the bus back to Paige.

This is Horseshoe Bend. We floated this part of the river. When the float trip was done, we hiked out to the overlook. It was amazing on the river, but even better looking at it from above.

I love this! Mark couldn't even stand up for a picture. He doesn't do so well with heights. He got much better though, by the time we were done with the Grand Canyon.

Sawyer didn't have any problem looking over the edge.

Me and Bailey.

Then it was off to the Grand Canyon! I was so excited. I've wanted my kids to see it for a long time.

After stopping for our sign picture, we toured the Hermit's Rest Route. This is a stretch that you can only do on a shuttle bus. We stopped at all the lookouts along the way. The day was clear, and the views were spectacular.

This is a view from Pima Point.

Mark and Sawyer

There were signs everywhere telling you not to feed the wildlife. But when Bailey opened her bag of sunflower seeds, this little guy about crawled up her pants. How could we not share? He was so friendly, that some other people were petting him. He followed us around like a pet dog.

When we got to Hermit's Rest (the end of the shuttle bus route), we did a frustrating 5 mile hike. First we tried to get to Dripping Springs. The trail got a little scary, so we turned back less than a mile from our destination. It was like a little goat trail, with a HUGE drop off into a canyon. When we got to a point where you had to climb over a rock, we decided to turn back. Then we went another way toward Waldron Basin. It wasn't really anything to see. It wasn't a bad hike, we just wished we would have picked a different one instead.

We did have this great view at the beginning of the hike though.

After the hike, we went to a few more viewing areas that we could drive to.

Sawyer is at Yavapai Point. It was one of my favorite stops.

What would a trip be like without Bailey giving us this pose? Gotta love her!

Sawyer and Bailey

Since we were a little disappointed with our first hike, we decided to try one more before our day was done. We went to the Kaibab Trail head, and hiked down to Cedar Ridge. This hike was AWESOME, and definitely made up for the last one.

This is Bailey standing at Oooh Aaah point. It totally lives up to it's name!

See how much braver he was getting :)!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip. The sun was setting, and everything looked gorgeous. Plus, I really kind of like these guys :)!

We made it to Cedar Ridge, but as you can see from the picture, we were quickly running out of sunlight. It was not a trail we wanted to hike up in the dark. Bailey was already getting a little nervous about being out there in the dark, so we quickly headed back up. They say that how ever long it takes you to get down the trail, it will be time and a half or double the time to get back up. Not in this case. We were losing light fast, so we flew up the trail. We made it up 10 minutes faster than we made it down. Bailey can book it when she's motivated by something that scares her.

Our last day in the park was AWESOME! We got up early to do a 12 mile hike on the Bright Angel Trail out to Plateau point. This has got to be one of the coolest hikes I've ever done. The trail was incredible, the view was incredible, and our final destination was even more incredible! We hiked 6 miles down the canyon, and across a plateau to a cliff that looks directly over the river.

Here they are at Plateau point.

This is the view from the rocks.

If you look behind us, the top of that canyon is where we came from.

The hike back out was hard, but the kids were troopers. We knew that rain was coming, so we did that fast too. The rain started right at our last switchback. We all LOVED this hike.

We drove out of the park along Desert View Drive. We stopped at all the lookouts along the way. It was raining our whole way out, and that gave the Canyon a whole different look.

It was cloudy and hazy, and that gave the canyon a kind of eerie look.

We saw the Canyon from the river, from the rim, and from within. It was amazing. We hiked 20 miles in 2 days, and I LOVED it. I would love to go back and do more hikes someday.

Fun Stuff!

There has been lots of fun stuff happening around here!

I had a wonderful get-away for my traditional Red Lion scrapbook weekend. I look forward to this weekend all year. I have been working a lot lately, so I was VERY excited about it this year. I love hanging out with friends and scrap booking all weekend long. I got 20 pages done, which I was pretty proud of.

Here's all my pages!

Bailey got her hair trimmed from Colette. Bailey always get excited to see what fun style Colette has in store for her. This one was so cute!

Front view

Darling back view.

Bailey loved it! She wanted to have it like that for school the next day. I knew that I wouldn't be able to duplicate the style in the morning. Bailey asked if she could just stay up all night so it wouldn't get messed up while she slept. I said no, so she slept sitting up in her chair all night. She cracks me up! Her hair looked great for school the next day though! I have never been a girly girl, so I'm so glad I have very talented friends that can help Bailey out in this department :)!

Falls Valley had an AR challenge, and at the end of it, Obert Skye (author of the Leven Thumps series, and Pillage series) came to Falls Valley for an assembly. If you were in the top ten boys or girls for AR points you got to get a signed poster, and meet the author. Bailey was one of the top ten! It was pretty cool. Obert Skye did a great assembly.

During the assembly

Bailey receiving her poster

Obert with some of the top AR readers

Here's Bailey getting her books and posters signed. I was teaching her class that day, so it was fun for me to be there for all of it.

She thought it was funny that he wrote, "Foo to You" in the book.