October Stamp Day

Hello all!  I got some cards put together for October.  Hope you like them.

We’ll be stamping on:

Tuesday, October 15th at 7:30 and

Thursday, October 17th at 7:30.

Hope to see you there!

Vacation Here We Come

This summer we went on vacation with some of our dearest friends.  It took a bit of work to coordinate Ken’s work schedule, what with examiners wanting to come see how he was doing, but it all worked out in the end.

Our first sight seeing adventure was at Arches National Park.  We were able to find this awesome “house/apartment” to share while we were in Moab, and dropped all our stuff off first before we started sight seeing.  The kids were so happy to be out of the car while we unloaded that I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to coral them to get back in the car when it was time to go.  But I’m not complaining because the kids were really great in the car….love this picture of Mark sharing his head phones with Isaac.

Yea! We made it to the park.

Our first stop was the North and South Windows and Turret Arch.  And boy did we pick a great time to get started.  I think the thermometer in the car read between 102 and 104 the whole time we were there.  This is at the North Window.

This is “in” the window.  And call me crazy, but looking at the rocks wedged in the cracks above your head was just a bit nerve-racking….so don’t :-)!

Jessie climbed around on the rocks to the back side of the window.  She thinks she’s a mountain goat.  The other kids who wanted to follow were forbidden.  At least she found some shade!

Next we hiked around to the South Window, which was in the shade…ahhhh.  It took some convincing to get some of us to leave that heavenly place.  And on to Turret Arch.

Look at that cute baby!  He loved the backpack.

The next stop was Double Arch.  Neil wanted to ride in the backpack for this one, so I carried Isaac in our other pack, which squeaks when you walk, like the saddle on a horse, so you really do feel like a pack animal….hee hee hee.

When we got to the end all the little boys wanted to do was play in all that beautiful soft sand.

By  now it was close to 6:00 so we headed back to the house to make our spaghetti dinner while the dads took the kids swimming.

The next morning Ken and the big kids and our friends hiked to Delicate Arch.  Ken promised he’d do a little post on that part of the trip, so you can look forward to that in the near future :-).  The little boys and our friends boy stayed with me and after only a 10 minute cry and cuddle session when he discovered that his parents were gone we had a ton of fun playing chase and trying to get breakfast eaten before it got soggy.

When the valiant hikers returned everyone was happy to see them.  We repacked the cars, got our crockpot dinner started and were ready for more adventures.

We headed back to the North End of Arches and had lunch, Tuna Grape Salad and crescent rolls, while the kids tried their hands at a little climbing.  This was as far as anyone got because the next hand hold was in the sun and burning hot!

This is starting out on the Devil’s Garden Trailhead.  Look how happy everyone was despite the blazing heat.

“Dad…carry two babies!”  - Neil.

Around the first corner is a fun little hideout, get your shoes totally full of sand, place that the kids discovered – plus it was in the shade…are you sensing a theme here?

We made it to Tunnel Arch.  A nice descending hill gets you here (just the return trip is a nice ascending hill).

Then on to Pine Tree Arch.

and more sand playing, in the shade, of course. (Can you see how red Jessie’s face is…HOT!)

On the walk back to the vans we helped Spencer identify some prickly pear and a couple of other plants for his junior ranger badge and we saw a couple of lizards.  It was totally amazing how well they blended into the rock.  You couldn’t even see them until they moved.

We hiked to the last Arch of the day with just our family because our friends little guy fell asleep and no one wanted to deprive him of a nap.  It was to an Arch Ken and I had never been to – Sand Dune Arch – and I can’t say that I could come up with a better name even if I tried.  The two really great things about this arch is it is a short trail! and it’s hidden back between some rock fins so it’s almost completely in the shade…the perfect ending to a hot day.

Ken and the kids walked up under the Arch and took this picture of Isaac and me.  And then here’s a picture from my point of view.

Then Mark got the brilliant idea to climb on top of the arch…..

which was all really cool, until he wanted to come back down and got a little scared of the decent and his mom was afraid that he was going to fall and die…honestly.  More playing in the sand while Mark tried to figure out what to do.

Jessie climbed up to help Mark find his way back down….and he made it.

This is Spencer’s shoe full of sand after that hike and we got a video of Neil pouring more sand out if his shoe than you could have put in there if you had filled his shoe first and then put it on his foot.  Ken helped Abbie empty her shoes and put them back on too.

We stopped for a picture at Balancing Rock on the way out of the park and saw the best license plate!

Lastly we stopped at the visitor center to get Spencer’s junior ranger badge and watch a cool movie on the formation of Arches and people who discovered it.

Then we changed the window markings on our van to read “Colorado National Monument or bust.”  On the way out I just had to get a picture of us by the sign.  We took a couple so we could Photoshop either Ken or I into one of them when a very nice family pulled up behind us and said they’d take a picture of all of us, if we would do the same for them.  Ahhh…how nice!