Camping, Take Two

Here we go again. This time we went south of the Mogollon Rim in the area of Payson.

Salt Lake City

Ok, I need to catch up a little.

At the end of June, I traveled to Utah with my dad and sister for a family reunion. As soon as we got there (as is custom) my grandmother welcomed us with "It's a party, it's a party!" and then promptly put us to work.

I don't think I sat down after that moment. Except that I did get to go to the movies with my cousin Jake and his wife Nikki. Check out his link... this is my little claim to fame that he is a guest DJ on a radio station up there.

The family reunion was great, especially because it seems to be reason enough to pull everyone together. So I was able to see just about all of my cousins that weekend.

Here are some of my favorite shots!

Camping in the Great Outdoors

Well, we decided to make another break for cooler weather up on the Mogollon Rim just east of Payson. We found a great little campsite away from everyone else where we got to relax and read. I had the book "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer which Nathaniel continued to steal from me. Luckily, I won it in a bet and got to read it.

As the sun was setting each night we could hear elk. One evening we heard a pack of coyotes not too far from our campsite. Other than the coyotes and elk there wasn't much around (thankfully, as I heard there are bears in that area), except for the occasional butterfly.

But we had a nice, relaxing, cooler (it was WARM during the day) time as we got to get away for awhile.

Sedona

The weekend of June 12th - 15th, Nathaniel and I headed up for cooler weather in Sedona, AZ. Little did we know that cooler was 92 degrees instead of 109 degrees. We'll take it! We stayed at the Los Abrigados Lodge with this beautiful view of the Sedona red rocks. We got to be tourists, lounge around, and basically enjoy the beautiful scenery. One of the days we went to Tlaquepaque (one of my favorite places in Sedona). There are shops there but I go for the beautiful architecture. It is styled after the traditional Mexican village of Tlaquepaque in Mexico.

While we were there, we went into a little Christmas shop to browse around. We have been looking for over 4 years for a Nativity set that we both like. Well, just inside the door, we saw it.

It is different, but fits us rather well.

On our last day we left Sedona and drove up to Flagstaff and walked around the NAU campus to see the new changes.

On our way to meet some friends, we passed quite a few Corvettes. We wondered what they were up to and decided to follow them. Well, first we had to turn around and find them, so Nathaniel thought about where they would be cruising to... either the road up to Snowbowl or to the Grand Canyon. We found them before they turned up the road to Snowbowl so we decided to follow.

When we got up to the top, we saw about 26 Corvettes total. We climbed out of our corvette and about 7 or 8 of the people came over. They immediately noticed that we were not part of their Corvette club (it could have been the fact that we didn't have name tags on). They were so nice and were excited that we followed them up. They were a club from Prescott and talked to us for quite awhile. They were getting ready to go up the ski lift to the top for lunch so we said our goodbyes.

Notice the little white stow away to the left.

It was great!

Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban Concert

Well, Friday night, Michele calls me and asks what I was doing the next day. I said nothing and she asked if I wanted to go to the Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban concert free. Well I had to think about it, ok not really, YES!




It was at the University of Phoenix stadium where the Cardinals play, so a HUGE venue. Our tickets were in the nose bleed seats:

But who can complain, we got these for FREE!

Both Michele and I had seen Kenny Chesney before. That wasn't the real reason I was excited. I was there to see Gary Allan and Keith Urban. Michele was really nice and bought me a Keith Urban shirt.

Keith Urban definitely put on a better show than Kenny Chesney so it made me love him even more!

I love Gary Allan because he sings a couple of my favorite songs:

"Life Ain't Always Beautiful."

and

a remake of "Best I Ever Had."

See, even from our seats, we could see pretty well (with the help of my digital camera with my larger zoom lens and crop and enlarge...

Route 666 drive

Well, now it is formally named Route 191. Must have been some difficulty with the other name. Nathaniel and I, along with his parents, took a little cruise this past weekend.

After Nathaniel purchased one of his dream cars, the white corvette:

His father started pining after his own dream car, the Shelby Cobra:

So, we found a great place that rents out cute little dream cars such as this one. The boys planned a drive on Route 666. It is a beautiful twisty road inbetween Eager and Safford near the New Mexico border. I jumped at the chance to take my camera, get out of town, and spend quality time with family.

Notice the road!

We all had a wonderful time. Here are the cruisers together:

If you can help... we are still trying to answer the age old question...

Who can't be beat? Chevy or Ford...

*SIGH*

Wow, I am terrible at this!

Happy Spring Break! I am busy working at the scrapbook store and catching up on school stuff. I am also scrapbooking a lot this week.

I will try to post pics and be better at adding to this blog!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year. As always, being the old married couple that we are, we stayed up watching movies (actually it was the Heroes TV Series on DVD) then paused it to watch the ball drop, made a toast, finished our DVD watching and went to bed. So thrilling!

I have been enjoying these last 2 weeks being off of school. Nathaniel has taken some days off to spend time with me as well. Needless to say I feel accomplished because we have gotten a lot of things done around the house.

I hope everyone is well.

Happy 2008!!

'Tis the Season!

I love December for the holiday lights, Christmas trees up in my house, and for the weather starting to cool off.

We put up 3 trees this year (only because our tallest one is 4 ft.). So we have a 4ft tree, a 3.5 ft tree and a miniscule tree.

On the 3.5 ft tree I have all of my ornaments that my grandmother made me. Every year, she give all of the cousins (and her children) a ceramic ornament that she painted. So I have one for every year that I have been alive. She also recently gave me the ornaments for the next 8 years.

I wrapped those and I am going to put one under the tree each year. Check it out!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and Holiday season!

Autism Walk

Today I participated in the Walk Now for Autism at Tempe Town Lake. I raised $281.00 thanks to help from everyone! Devine Memories (scrapbook store) walked together for Autism (we are in the red shirts). We had a great time. The walk was a 5K in beautiful Arizona November weather of 90 degrees. It was fabulous! I got to meet Luis Gonzalez (now with the Los Angelas Dodgers) and Orlando Hudson (Arizona Diamondbacks). There were out there supporting us as well!