Grand Canyon: All the Pictures

Goodness gracious, there are a lot of pictures on my camera.  I haven't even uploaded all the scenic ones-I'll have to put that on another post.  I won't even try to annotate this very much, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.  As a quick summary:  we spent about 3 hours at the Grand Canyon and hiked about 3 miles.  We stopped for a bit at the Yavapai Scenic Point, which also doubles as a mini museum.  The views were incredible, and it was nice to get out of the cold for a bit-we actually got a little warm in that building and I was able to take off my larger jacket and just wear my lighter one for the rest of the time.  It was low 20's with the wind chill, and everything was covered in snow other than the trail-and even that was icy in multiple, multiple spots, so much so that most of the kids fell at least once (I'll take falling on the ice as opposed to falling off a cliff!). Even with it that cold though, you get used to it, and it really wasn't all that big of a deal.  The kids were absolutely wonderful.  I think they were somewhat shocked at the size of the canyon, and we only saw like, 1/20th of it!  They were great little hikers, helping each other out along the hard paths, playing with each other in the snow, and doing a great job for pictures.  I brought my tripod, and I ended up setting it up maybe four times for different family shots, and it was a piece of cake-worked so well!  I played with my longer-range lens for the last half of the hike, and loved the results it reaped!  Definitely something to experiment with more often!  The entire day was just so amazing and beautiful-we truly, truly enjoyed ourselves, and we were happy to get in our snow playtime while we were hiking-we didn't get back to the car until much later than we anticipated, so we wouldn't have had tine to stop at snowbowl on the way home even if we wanted to.  

So here are the pictures!  Peruse at your own will-there are literally nearly 70 pictures in this one reel (which is only a small fraction of the pictures I actually took). 

Grand Canyon: An Overnighter in a Great Hotel

Well, we decided mid-week to finally venture to the Grand Canyon for MLK day.  We have wanted to do this for the last few years, but I have a terrible fear of one of my kids plummeting over the edge-like, I have random nightmares about it, and in every single one, I throw myself off the ledge as well, somehow fall fast enough to catch up to the kid mid-fall, wrap my arms around him or her, and just whisper words of comfort as we get closer and closer to the canyon floor....I always wake up or transition to something else before we actually land. Even typing that makes my heart rate speed up!  We decided it was time for me to conquer my fear though, and I hesitantly agreed.....I really do love the Grand Canyon, I think it is amazing, breath-taking, and a once-in-a-lifetime image you can never quite erase from your mind.  I want to share that with the kids, and we love hiking as it is....thus I swallowed a portion of my fear and spent the last half of this week packing for what we knew would be very cold temperatures, snow, and ice. 

The drive itself took about 3 hours, and was quite fun actually!  Jackson kept yelling out "I see cactus!" until the scenery finally changed, and we had him switch to "I see big trees!"  James held the GPS the entire way and we explained to him what the term "navigator" means....I now call him navigator.  he is really good at manning the GPS, it is adorable!  We saw the first patches of snow around 5000 feet-maybe even sooner-and had a great time commenting on the growing fields of white, until that's all we could see.  Exciting!  All in all, the drive was actually great, and I am glad my kids do such a good job in situations like this. 

We managed to find the perfect hotel in Williams, just 40 minutes or so outside of the Grand Canyon.  It was not perfect in terms of having the utmost amenities.  It was perfect because it was a two room suite with a kitchenette that could sleep 8.  We have SUCH a hard time finding a single room for our family-we have resigned ourselves to needing to book two separate hotel rooms or a really large suite-both of which are expensive.  So when we found this room with three queen beds for a hundred bucks, we knew it was fate.  We jumped on it, told the kids to not expect anything special, and to just be grateful we had enough beds.  So we were pleasantly surprised when we walked in to find two completely separate bedrooms-one for the kids, and one for mom and dad-complete with tons of walking room, a jetted tub, and a kitchenette perfect for what we needed since we brought most of our food.  The beds were not the most comfortable, but it was clean, spacious, and completely worth the hundred dollars-we would come back again, especially given the proximity to the Grand Canyon.

Here's the kids' room:

 The girls shared a bed, as did the Jordan and James.  JD opted for the camping cot, and it worked perfectly in between the two queens.

 This happy little booger slept in a pack and play for the first time in ages, and even managed to sleep in the room with the other 5 kids-we weren't sure if that would work, but hallelujah-it did!

 His bed was pushed in the corner so he couldn't see the TV, and when 10ish rolled around, we had all the kids get into bed with strict instructions not to talk to, or giggle at, Jackson.  We turned on the TV really low to help everyone stay quiet, and even though Jackson talked and laughed nonstop at the kids for 45 minutes, he never tried to climb out of the bed, and fell asleep just before 11.  The other kids were out by 11:30, and it was super nice to be able to crack their bedroom door, and just relax with Jared in our room (which was the main room, so it had a good sized living space).

I should mention, after we ate dinner in our room, we all put on our swimsuits and went down to the heated pool/jacuzzi.  We were all excited-everything was covered in snow, and we were going to swim in the middle of it! The pool ended up being in this large gymnasium-style room with a vaulted ceiling, and windows exposing the snow-covered landscape outside.  We opened the doors and immediately stopped in our tracks: the entire room was fill with steam.  We couldn't see much more than 4-5 feet in front of us....at least not clearly.  The room was poorly-lit, and we wondered for a moment if we could even safely swim in this!  We decided it was an experience, and we went for it.  We swam for maybe 45 minutes in the warm water, with most of that time spent in the large jacuzzi.  Jackson was very uncertain about the whole situation until maybe the last 10 minutes, and even then, he wouldn't leave my side.  It was just crazy how much steam was in that room!  If we really thought about it, we could have deemed that room one of the freakiest places we have ever been in.  Tell the right ghost story, and it would be downright spooky!

I'll save the actual Grand Canyon pictures until another post given that I have about a million of them. :)  One last shot of all the kids piled on mine and Jared's bed waiting for swimming time!

Makes me Smile!

To remember....

When James is in a good mood, and I ask him to help with something, he will say, "Right away, sir!"  It always makes me giggle, and I tell him constantly how much I like it when he says that!  I just taught him to say, "Right away, ma'am!" instead though-may as well perfect his cuteness!

A Side Note.....

For anyone who actually reads my blog anymore, I am slowly getting Christmas loaded, along with posts from the last month and a half-such a process!  I have to admit, it is really fun to go back and relive these holiday-infused moments.  There are some things I jotted down in rough drafts so I wouldn't forget, and others I am just recalling, especially in relation to pictures.  I love the holidays-sad they are over, but already looking forward to next year.  Anyhow, I am separating Christmas activities into different posts, which may be weird, but will work much better when I eventually make the correlating book.  Just wanted to throw that out there. :)

Ballet and Tap!

 This beautiful girlie gets to start ballet and tap classes tomorrow, and she is super excited!  Karianna has developed a love for dance over the last year or so, and she has started to instill a similar interest in Sara, teaching her little dance routines and moves.  We have been looking into dance classes/costs for a while now, and finally bit the bullet to start both girls (though I'll post Karianna's pictures later).

 Switching to her ballet shoes!  Sara says she likes her tap shoes the best.

 Super flexible, just like her sister!

 And James can't miss the chance to try it out as well!  James will do the splits on command....maybe a dance class is in his future too!

The nicest part about Sara's dance class is she goes to Jennifer Roberts' studio.  Jennifer is my primary pianist, and such an awesome lady!  She has so much experience in this realm, and is one of the nicest people I've ever met.  I'm really glad Sara has her as a teacher, and has a familiar face to see each week in the dance studio.  Jennifer is just awesome.  She and I work so well together in primary-she is so good at reading my nonverbal cues to just jump in with the piano whenever I need....its kind of scary, actually, how well she knows my style! Anyhow, I'm super glad to help Sara develop her talents in this area.  Such a lovely ballerina and tapper!

Carrots!

After biking down to my mom's house tonight, we had the pleasure of taking home 3 carrots fresh from my mom's garden!  The kids were so enthralled with watching Grandma pull them up from the ground-I don't know that they've ever seen that!  James was especially excited, shrieking at the top of his lungs for each successful tug.  We rode back home, and got to work washing them off, and simply chowing down!  James was the most engaged in this process, so lots of the pictures are of him.

As a side note, I was able to test out my new roller blades tonight-woohoo! All the kids rode their bikes, except Karianna who was also on blades.  Even Jackson was riding his little bike, pushing himself along with his legs since he hasn't quite gotten the hang of pedals.  At some point, he slipped off his bike and skinned his knee a bit.  He didn't want to keep going, so I put my rollerblading skills to the test: I picked up him on one hip, loaded his bike on the other, and took off towards my mom's house.  I made it with relative ease, which I was pretty proud of, if I do say so myself!  Fun night!

Look at these funny faces!

Sara was really cold after our bike ride, and just plain old tired.  She was having a tough time controlling her emotions, but got a grip long enough to try a carrot.

Let it be known:  I STILL do not like carrots.