Celebrating the 4th in the High Country

We decided to not only get out of the house, but get out of town to celebrate the 4th of July. We headed up north where we planned to go on a hike. This time of year, it is much more pleasant to go hiking up in the northern part of AZ.

Our original plan was a hike up in Oak Creek Canyon. On the way, we drove through Sedona. Love this place and all its landscape. Sedona is a fun town filled with cool stuff.

We drove through the canyon and found the hike we wanted to do. Unfortunately, many people had the same idea and there wasn't any parking. We went to plan B, which we made up as we went. We drove through the rest of canyon up to the lookout out point to view the whole of Oak Creek Canyon.

So prepare for photo overload. The views here are awesome!

Again, that's the road we drove on that goes through the canyon.

Me and my girls.

I wished we had asked someone there to take our picture. It would have been perfect to have Randy in the picture, instead of taking it.

Kara being silly.

We were looking at the different native American jewelry that was being sold there.

After Oak Creek, we continued on to Flagstaff for lunch. We stopped at Chick-fil-a. They had someone there making balloon things. So the kids stood patiently in line for 30 minutes to get these awesome balloon creations.

After lunch, we decided to head to SnowBowl to try out some hiking over there. It was nice and cool.

In the winter time, this very spot is where people go skiing. See the lifts?! I think they give people rides during the off season. 

Can you tell the kids are game for this hike?!

We lost half our gang as we were going into the forest. So the boys and I headed back to round them up. 

Those clouds were the reason we lost half our gang. Just as we were heading into the forest, we heard very loud thunder. 

 We convinced them that it would be alright. So the rest of them reluctantly came along. 

Because of the high altitude, some of the kids had headaches. Poor things. But those that did have headaches were troopers and just kept hiking. 

It was still a little gloomy. The clouds were rolling in.  

We decided to head back after hiking in there for 30 minutes. We found out that to get to the end of the trail would take 2.5 hours. 

 We stopped for a picture before the end of our hike. We took this picture with my phone camera, which is why it isn't very clear, but I had to post it because I love this shot. It was a fun day. I love doing things with my family. 

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

Swim Meet In 118 Degrees!

It was 118 degrees today, but that didn't stop this girl from swimming. Kara did well swimming breast stroke, backstroke and medley relay. Great going Kara!!

We're finally moving!

 Guess what we've been doing for that past week?! It's been a long time, but we are finally able to move into our house.

 It's been fun watching Jace run around in the "big house", as he calls it. He has never seen this house.

 I don't enjoy moving, but my awesome husband has made this one of the easiest moves ever.

The big plus that we've been enjoying is the backyard. It does need some watering, but we'll fix that soon enough.

Happy Father's Day!!

Happy Father's Day Randy!!Randy is a great dad, always being a great example for them. He is always trying to teach them things and being there for them.

Can you see where they get their craziness from. We love our dad!!!

Camp Legacy

This week Leigh and Tiana headed up north on Monday June 10th to 12th for an experience of a lifetime.  Camp Legacy is for girls in the church that are 16 years and older. It's a fairly new type of camp. I had never heard of it until we moved here and this is the first year that our stake is doing it.

 Leigh and Tiana went to Camp Legacy. What can we tell you about it? Nothing really. 
Why? It's all part of the experience.

 I will say the last day of camp, us parents got to go up and meet with the kids.

 We had heard that they had spiritual ups and downs. We all, including Leigh, couldn't understand all the secrecy behind this camp. 

 Leigh had been called to be a zone leader at the camp. She was in charge of the spiritual well-being of the girls in her cabin. She went to meetings leading up to the camp. She prepared devotionals for the girls. 

 After meeting up with the girls, we all gathered together for a testimony meeting. The meeting was spiritual awesomeness. 

The girls shared the experiences that they had during this camp. It was wonderful!! You could feel the spirit. You could tell the girls learned so much, and had grown so much spiritually. 

This was Leigh's zone. She had a companion zone leader as well. It was so nice that in Leigh's cabin, Joanne Gundersen, our YW's president and Michelle Ponzoch, our 1st counselor in YW's, were there to share in this neat experience.

After listening to everything that happened at Camp Legacy, I can understand all the secrecy. I can understand why many adults wanted to go and be apart of the experience. We were asked not to share what happened only to preserve the experience for our other children. They have a separate camp for the boys called Aaronic Priesthood Camp, where they go through similar experiences. 

If your kids ever get to go to Camp Legacy/AP Camp, go! You and your kids will LOVE it!!!

Happy Sweet 16 Leigh!!

Today was Leigh's birthday! It was not just any birthday. It was her sweet 16!! We had been trying to come up with an idea of what to do for her birthday. I finally came up with an idea and put my plans into action. A surprise birthday was planned. Actually, not just one but two surprises were planned.

We started out the morning with Cap'n Crunch French Toast, requested by the birthday girl herself.

First surprise of the day was thrown by the YW of our ward. We have a great group of girls who love Leigh very much. Payton (the cute one with pink hat to the right of Leigh) planned this whole party out. She knew that Leigh still missed her friends in Hawaii and wanted to make sure she had a fabulous day. 

All the party details were fun!

Payton had called all the YW and gathered all the party supplies and surprised Leigh. It was great!

The party was held at Sis. Ortiz's home. The weather was nice and hot, perfect for the pool.

Leigh was good and tired after all that food and swimming. She had thought that that was her party and the celebrating was done. Little did she know that we had more surprises in store.

Leigh is such a great girl and is grateful for the things that she received. While I knew she was grateful for the party, she was a little sad that her best friends from school weren't able to attend. 

Later that evening, we informed Leigh that we were going to dinner at Barro's. Leigh I could tell was just going along with the plans. Her friend Makenna had helped me with the plans we had for the evening. She helped to gather her gang of friends from school and were waiting at Barro's to surprise Leigh.

When we entered Barro's, her friends yelled "SURPRISE!" She definitely was surprised. She had thought that her friends were busy and not able to do anything with her on her birthday. As soon as she got over the shock of seeing her friends, we told her the rest of the plans. She couldn't stop smiling.

We had ordered pizza for the gang and left them behind to hang out by themselves. We made sure to take home some pizza for us. 

After the kids were done eating, they headed over and met Randy and the kids at the bowling alley (unfortunately I had to go to work). They all divided up into two teams and bowled against each other. I was told they had a blast.

After a fun game of bowling, the party headed back to our house for cake and ice-cream and more fun! We even surprised Leigh with her cake. 

She thought that we had forgotten to order the cake she likes - white cake with strawberry filling.

The kids sang Happy Birthday, blew out the candles, had cake and ice-cream and continued to party more.

They danced, played air-hockey, and played with Jace's toys. From what I heard, it had been a great night.

From these pictures, I think it was a night to remember. Even though I missed it, the best part of the night for me was reading the text I got from Leigh while I was at working saying, 

"THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! :) :) :) :) I LOVE YOU!!! I HAD AN AMAZING DAY. 

THANK YOU.  :)  :)  :)"