Anniversary Part 2-Blazin M Ranch

After the train ride we headed to a wild west show and dinner. We had a few hours to kill before the dinner bell sounded so we decided to throw some horse shoes.

Adam was bad so I put him in Jail!

Why is it that it takes a silly wood cutout for me to finally get a smile out of Adam?  Really?

Once the dinner bell rang, we were inside for yummy food served on tin plates!  (Sorry forgot to take a picture)  I think Adam's favorite part was the flying biscuits!

After dinner there was a cowboy show.   We were both pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the musicians.  You never really know what to expect, but these guys were phenomenal!

It was a lot of fun and I hope some day to take my grandparents - if we can ever get them to come down here!  I know my Grandma would love it because the main singer was a crazy good yodeler!

Anniversary Part 1 - Verde Canyon Railroad

For our anniversary this year, we took a train ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad! The weather was beautiful and it was fun to be out in the open air learning about the history of the Verde Canyon.   We saw some Native American Cliff Dwellings along they way and even a Bald Eagle's nest with a little baby inside!!

From the Mouth of Brycen

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thank you so much for letting me stay the weekend with Uncle Adam and Aunt Abbey!  It was so much fun!

The first thing we got to do was play outside in the sprinklers

Where is that water coming from?

It's starting to get even higher!

Oh boy now its really fun!   I can even catch a drink!

Aunt Abbey went swimming with me after the Sprinkler too - I mean really, sprinklers and swimming in the same night! WOW!   She couldn't take any pictures, well cause she was in the pool with me, but trust me we had fun!

The next morning I woke up bright and early at 5:45 and they asked me if I wanted to go ride a train!  Of Course I did!!!  So we hopped in the car and drove to Enchanted Island - what a great name for a park!

First we checked out my height.. I'm getting pretty tall Mom!

Then Aunt Abbey rode with me on the Carousel!   The horse was awesome it went in circles AND up and down!

Here we are ready for the train!  So exciting, well until....

  Hey what is that noise!   

Seriously, guys that is disturbing.   

Uncle Adam tried to tell me it was just the train whistle, well if thats what it is I think they should get rid of it!   Not fun!

Next I climbed into this brightly colored car with a steering wheel!

Aunt Abbey was worried I would be scared, but it was the most fun!  It spun around in cirlces and I got to spin the wheel too!  I laughed and smiled the whole time.

Then Uncle Adam took me on the Carousel! 

Up and Down we went!  This time I was sporting my Suns hat that Uncle Adam gave me... It was a little big, but I wore it anyway because I knew how excited he was for me to have it.

On our way back home we had to stop for some groceries.  I got so excited when I saw we were going to this place!

Did you know that they have one of these by Aunt Abbey and Uncle Adam?  I think its my favorite store and you know why?  Because they have TWO walk in refrigerated sections!   And Uncle Adam took me in both of them!

After Costco we went back to the house and took a nap and then we got to swim again!   Yeah!

After a busy Saturday, we all managed to sleep in until about 6:30 on Sunday.  Then it was time for church!  Aunt Abbey got me all dressed and even helped me put my backpack on!

Aunt Abbey really wanted to get a picture of me in my Sunday clothes (thanks for packing my boots Mom!) but I kept tricking her and pretended to take her picture with this sweet watch I found!

I had her laughing so hard she couldn't keep the camera still so all the pictures came out fuzzy!

But somehow she tricked me and managed to get one good grin in!

We had a great time at church, they have a Nursery at their Church too!  And we played games, colored and best of all we blew bubbles!

When we got home I was all tuckered out and took a nice nap.  I stayed in my room for a good 2 hours, I think Aunt Abbey and Uncle Adam may have taken a nap too because it was awfully quite in the house!

When I woke up we had snacks, played games, watched a movie and guess what else she let me do?!

Clean the floors!  You know thats my job!  Apparently Aunt Abbey didn't know that was my job, but I let her know and took over the cleaning.

She says I did a great job!

Well, that's about it!  You can send me to stay with them anytime you need to because they are the best and really know how to treat a kid! 

(p.s... I hope you had fun on your vacation too, though I am sure mine was WAY better!)

A well played Family Home Evening (out)

Monday night Adam got a call at 5:45 from a certain friend. we pretty much knew what that meant immediately - free tickets to the Diamondbacks! So we hurried our way thru dinner and made a few calls to find another couple to go with and scooted out to the door to pick up the tickets and head to the game. Look how great these seats are! Yep, can't pass those up. Plus the D Backs had been playing pretty good the last few games. And lucky for us, they put on a great show and won that night too!

Here we are enjoying the game! Don't mind my flat hair! I had just gotten a hair cut and did not have time to fix it if we were going to make it to the game on time!

Thanks friend for the tickets!

Sedona

My parents came to visit last weekend and it was so good to see them! Between eating lots of sweets, watching Celtics and Suns games, the highlight of the weekend was a trip up to Sedona. Ever since I went through Sedona the first time, I knew my parents would love it and I was right! We did some shopping in town, but what I really loved was checking out a few native american historic sites. Our first stop was Montezuma Well.

It was really cool, its a natural well where some native american tribes lived several hundred years ago. At this site, you can still see lots of cliff dwellings. Here are my parents looking down into the well.
My parents looking out over the well. Their was a path down that led you down past more dwellings and up close to the well.
This is up close to one of the dwellings. Its hard to see from the picture, but this "doorway" leads into a very large living space.

The cool part of the site was how close you could get to everything.

Adam my mom and I at the bottom of the well.

Here Adam is checking out the "drain" of the well. This water goes out of this spot at a rate of 600 lbs a day! The ancient residents of this area built a 1 mile ditch to irrigate their crops and it still works and thrives today! It was nearly overflowing when we were there.

Every time I turned around, my mom was climbing on something!

Yep, as soon as I walked away, turned back around, my mom was halfway up this tree.

The other place visted was V Bar. This site was sooo cool! It's a cliff covered in about 1,000 petroglyphs. They have someone on site that tells you all about them and what they know about some of the symbols.

One of the walls of the site was used for their Calendar. There were special rocks that allowed shadows to be casts on the sides of the rock and when the shadows hit a certain spot on the wall they would know when to plant, harvest etc. It was soooo cool!
I highly recommend a visit to this site. V Bar and Montezuma Well are only a few miles from each other. It doesn't cost anything, all you need is the Red Rocks Pass for your car (Montezuma Well is Free!)

The best 2 Years!

Adam and I celebrated our two year anniversary last week! We have both been so busy and have so many things going on we couldn't plan anything elaborate. So instead we took the day off work and just spent it together. We had planned to go golfing, but the weather did not cooperate, so instead we caught an early show of Alice in Wonderland.

I thought it was great! Maybe not best all time movie, but definitely worth seeing. The colors were amazing and I love Alice, she was perfect!

After the movie, we went to lunch at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant, the Brazilian Bull.

It was our first time going to one of the Brazilian restaurants, and it was so good and we both LOVED it. They had a great lunch menu and served only 6 meats (instead of the 16 at dinner) so I felt like I could at least 1 of everything and then extra of the ones I really liked.

It was a full relaxing day! I love you Adam!