Heads up

 Anything posted after 9/3/2019 is written with a HUGE delay!  Playing catch up so some information may be missing.  

First Day of School

This year is unique.  I'm going back to work.  I'm working at the middle school teaching 8th grade math and the advanced class.  It took a while for me to decide to go for it, but after covering a maternity leave for 3 months I realized that I missed having my own classes.  Anyway, working meant that, for the first time ever, I was going to miss dropping a kiddo off at school on their first day.  Fortunately for me, Carson was willing to get up and ready early so I could take a picture with him and give him hugs and good vibes for the day.  

 Starting 3rd grade this year!

 Starting 7th grade!

 Starting 6th grade!

 My kids are so stinking cute!

Daddy did a good job documenting the drop off.  I'm still a little heartbroken that I had to miss it.

Summer bowling

 A bowling alley near us offers free bowling for kids during the summer.  I've signed up for it before but never actually gone.  This summer we were invited to go with Ty and Carter.  We went ahead and did it a couple of times.  The kids had a really good time.  I paid to play with them once and was reminded how much a don't like bowling.  I am not good at it...but that's not all...it's just dull in my opinion.  All that mattered was that the kids had fun though. 

Lake Chelan and Carson's 8th Birthday

Once again we ended up with Jen, Rene, Ryan and Ethan at Lake Chelan.  It's usually warm and we love to spend the time in the water.  

 As always we spent a LOT of time just at the lake near the campground.  It's easy access and the kids have a blast.  We don't have a picture but we bought another floating pad that attached to the other.  So we had this floating island we were playing on.  There is a floating dock there but it gets really crowded.  This one we were able to tow around wherever we wanted.

 This year Kayda chose to bring her best friend Ivy with her since there is no one to be her buddy in the group.  She introduced Ivy to Pokemon Go and they played a lot of volleyball.  Fortunately Ivy was able to keep up with Kayda's water loving habits.

Rene brings their propane fire pit along every year but this time we actually took it out!  It was really nice to sit around a fire, we've never done it before because there are no fires allowed in the park (unless they're propane).  Every year Jen has us make smores at one of the stoves but this year we got to use a fire instead... just FYI, it is surprisingly difficult to toast a marshmallow well using a propane stove.

Carson wanted to spend his birthday at the water park so that's what we did.  It gets more fun each year because the kids keep getting more independent.  We definitely go on rides together still but it's nice to hang out as adults too.  I think the all around favorite is a tube ride that has multiple pools you work your way down.  You can slide down and splash each other and bump people over the edge of the pool.

 We added a couple of new activities this year.  One was floating the Wenatchee River in Leavenworth.  We bought our own tubes and parked a car at each end.  Our friends rented tubes so we had to wait for them but it ended up being a really fun day.  It took me a while to be less paranoid about snags and such.  Eventually I relaxed and we were able to play more.

After our tubing we did a quick look around Leavenworth while we ate ice cream.

Our other new activity was renting a boat.  We rented the boat for a full day (8 hours) which, by hour 2 seemed like too much.  We stopped and ate some lunch and then the time flew by.  Unfortunately, Dillon spent a lot of the time feeling sick, despite medicine (I didn't give it to him before our day).  We got a lot of tubing in and stopped to swim in some of the deeper sections.  It's really neat to swim down 10 feet and still be able to see around you.  The water there is really clear. 

Kayda's Adventure with Grandma and Papa G

The time has come.  Grandma and Papa G want to do something special for each grandkids' 12th year.  Kayda was able to plan a trip through Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada.  She left on July 5th and got back July 26th.  Three weeks without my girl was tough but I knew she was having fun.  The following is Kayda's account of the trip (written by Kayda).

I was very nervous about the flight. It was my first time flying on my own I didn't know what to expect. It turned out fine. I got a window seat close to the front and no one took the middle seat, I was in the window seat and there was a person in the aisle seat. The flight was fine, Denver was expecting some thunderstorms so there was a bit of turbulence but other than that bit is was fine. Grandma was waiting for me at the gate so then we went to pick up my luggage. It was my mom's old bag so I didn't recognize the bottom. We sat there for quite some time wondering when my luggage would appear. Finally I realized that the bag. Had gone around three or four times when we finally got it. 

I just had to mention the mac n cheese soup. So Papa had ordered the mac n cheese but the waiter warned him it wasn't good. The mac n cheese came out and it was a bowl full of water with noodles floating in it.

I wanted to include the picture of the mountains because it was at a rest stop and I thought they were beautiful.

Don't worry there are very few named animals in here but this lizard we saw twice and we are certain it was him both times because he didn't move at all the second time we saw him so of course I had to name him so his name is Coral.

The view of the valley from one of the viewpoints.

This is window rock. It was formed from wind erosion. This was the hike that we took where we saw Coral.

The big rock in the middle is called Independence monument. This is the view point from Ottoman's trail. Ottoman actually started a tradition where he would climb Independence Monument every 4th of July so to this day hundreds of climbers will climb it on the Fourth of July.

We decided to go to Olive Garden for lunch before we went back and did Devil's Kitchen. Well our waiter was very generous with the mints. And first he gave us nine mints. He then later came back and asked us, "Do you know if its going to rain today? No, because its going to hail." He then dropped seven more mints onto our table.

This is devil's kitchen. The beginning of the hike it was well marked up until a point where we thought we had to go left when we were meant to continue up more and to the right. We ended up doing quite the extreme hike having to climb over stuff. In the end we did an extra mile. Once we finally got into Devil's kitchen it was awesome. There were rocks I could climb on it would get a really nice breeze every once in a while. Papa thought that we had to climb over a group of rocks to get in but me and grandma found a different way. We ended up beating Papa in. And of course I had to go out the way Papa came in.

On the hike Hikman's Bridge the path was shown using Cairns', so of course I had to take a picture of Grandma next to a cairn since her name is Karen.

This is a view from the hike that we saw that I thought was really pretty.

I had gone and hid behind some rocks because Papa was trying to take a photo of me. When he came and tried to find me I found a hole that I could see him and took a picture of him instead.

This is called Cassidy's arch. According to a sign this was a place that Cassidy, an outlaw, came to hide and camp out.

There was these holes on the Grand Wash hike that looked just like toilets so of course me and Papa had to do this.

This is King. We saw five bighorn sheep while we were hiking and this once reminded me of king of the hill for some reasons(don't know why I decided that instead of someone from the lion king) but I thought it was funny so here he is.

Onto Bryce Canyon. This is where we met up with Uncle Justin and Aunt Ayana

On the hike we did, the Queen's garden, I was in charge of keeping Clara safe due to the fact that she would run ahead and none of the adults had enough energy to keep up with her. The hike has two starting points. sunset and sunrise. we went sunrise to sunset but sunset has a fun set of switch backs so if you ever go I recommend going sunset to sunrise.

We went to Zion after Bryce and the first hike we did was the river walk. This is where you start at the place where the buses pick you up. You walk up the river and than walk back down. Some people confuse this for the narrows. I consider the narrows where you start at the top and walk down the 14 miles. 

You can see Papa sitting on a rock in the background. Papa had decided it would be a good perch so then he wandered out into the river to sit on it. I decided it would be great fun to splash him. I just lost a shoe in the process. Luckily some people were down river and managed to catch it.

This is red cave. It's a not very well known hike that takes you throw a red slot canyon. It is beautiful. There are two sections to it. Upper (Uncle Justin has visited twice and Papa, me and Aunt Ayana have only been once) and lower (the more visited/easier one). We spent a really long time trying to find upper red cave. We ended up doing something like 12 miles.

This was the view driving back from red cave. I absolutely love this picture. It's most likely my favorite from Zion.

This is weeping rock, a hanging garden that you can hike less than a mile to. Clara was having fun trying to catch the water in her mouth.

Of course I had to become a jr. ranger so me and Clara became jr rangers.

This is one of the times we had to repel for subway. This was the biggest one, it was about 25ft. Papa and Uncle Justin had to buy harnesses and rope so that we could do all of the repelling safely.

This was keystone falls another place we had to repel. We had to be careful where we stepped because it you stepped wrong you would be falling into some pretty deep water.

This is why subway is called subway. Subway is a slot canyon that was eroded to make the formation you can see today.

I don't know how well I am retelling this story but Grandma was telling me a story where she was waiting for Uncle Justin and Papa to come back and these three men came with packs on. She warned them that it was slippery and to be careful. The first one didn't listen and fell into one of the deeper pools. Second one thought that he could do it even though his companion just fell so he had the same fate as the first one. The third one got the idea and was much more careful than the other two managing to make it down without falling into any pools.

Me and Papa had quite the fun time with pictures this trip.

We were meant to do the narrows but my feet were shot after doing Subway and red cave. 3 or 4 of my toes had blisters. I was sad at first but it was the right move. The day we were planning on doing the Narrows we went and floated on the virgin river by our camp. There were some little rapids that I would take Clara on. She thought it was fun even though I think I got a few bruises from the rocks.

We went to dinner at this restaurant (I don't remember the name) and there was this seat with a saddle on it. Of course I sat on it most of the time but we managed to fit all three of us on it at once.

After Zion Uncle Justin and Aunt Ayana headed home and we went down to lake Powell. Our first appointment to see the Glen canyon dam was cancelled because on top of the dam was over 100 so we re scheduled for the next day. We got to go inside and see the turbines along with going on top of the dam.

After lake Powell we went to the dude ranch. When we first arrived we had stopped to say hi to the horses. One of them, his name is Crackerjack, came over and next thing we knew all of them are over by the truck. Crackerjack is the horse behind me in the picture above me.

This is April one of the half lingers. She was super sweet and really pretty.

Suzy is on the left and April is on the right

Soldier is the one in front and Bo is behind. Soldier and Crackerjack LOVED attention to the point that they would get mean to the other horses because they want your attention.

Bo

From left to right Stormy, big John, April, blackjack, soldier, suzy

Bo decided to pose for the picture as well

Me and grandma decided to groom all of the horses (except for latico who was headshy) this is after we groomed April, Suzy, and soldier.

The picture above but this was the waterfall that we stopped at and saw on our white water rafting trip.

Me and Papa. I don't have any pictures of us on the rapids because we were hanging on for dear life. I don't know about grandma but me and Papa would sometimes only be hanging by our hands.

This was the helicopter that we flew out of the canyon on. 

This was shortly after we lifted off

It was awesome flying in a helicopter. Me and grandma got to sit up front and in a helicopter you don't get the gut wrenching feeling so it was awesome.

The ranch we stayed at was called a cowboys way ranch so we took a picture in front of the gate and the sign.

Next stop was Vegas. We went to valley of fire first and then visited red rock canyon. I don't have much pictures but we saw a petrified log and hiked in 100 something heat to see some petroglyphs.

Red rock canyon my camera died so most of the pictures are done with me phone. If you have to choose I would do valley of fire I thought it was prettier.

And then of course I flew home the day after red rock canyon. It was tons of fun and I wish it could have been longer or do it again. Thanks so much for doing this for me Grandma and Papa!!