School Pictures

Here are the kids school pictures for this year. Addy is in 2nd grade, TJ is in 3rd, and Emmy is in 4th.

I'm sorry, so sorry....

When kids say I'm sorry, it looks like this. I don't even remember what they were apologizing for. Is that supposed to be me as Cinderella???

Good Grades

Each one of the kids works really hard at school and their report cards reflected that. So we took them to Coldstone to celebrate.

Havasupai

I have wanted to hike into Havasupai for quite awhile. Jamie and I have talked about it several times. So a couple weeks ago, I was trying to decide what to do over fall break. Jamie and I never really got an anniversary trip this year because school started on our anniversary and we went on trek a few weeks before that. So I asked him if I could get reservations into Havasupai if he would come with me. I didn't know if there was anyway I could get reservations or not. So I called and they didn't have any for the weekend but they had some during the week of the kids fall break. So I asked my mom to watch the kids and Jamie took the time off work and we went. I was a little bit nervous about the hike in because I had never hiked with a backpack before and it is about 9 miles to the edge of the town. Here is the view from the top before we started.

And along the trail. The first mile is pretty steep switchbacks and then the rest of the hike isn't too bad except for the fact that you are hiking in the bottom of a riverbed so it is really rocky and sandy. But a huge part of the hike you are down between two cliff walls and it is just gorgeous.

We were so excited to see this sign after hiking 8 miles. But it was a little misleading. We still had another mile into town and then another 2 -3 to the falls. But from this point on you can see the river off and on and it is beautiful.

Here is Jamie at the edge of town. The very first building you see is a little store. We stopped and paid $3.00 for us each a coke. It was totally worth it:)

We were staying at the lodge in Supai which is still a couple of miles from the falls. But it was nice we were able to stop and check in and drop off our heavy packs and just take a little backpack down to the falls and not have to carry our stuff all the way in. Honestly, I think we were both a little disappointed the first 2 falls we saw. We went to Navajo Falls and Havasu Falls the first day. And while they were definitely pretty, they weren't the "8th wonder of the world" that I had read about. There were people swimming in them and it just wasn't as amazing as I had expected. The next morning we got up pretty early and were back out at the falls by 8 or so and we were the only ones there we had them all to ourselves to picture and enjoy and I enjoyed them more. These pictures are from both days.
Navajo Falls: There are actually two sets of falls here. One set is called Little Navajo Falls and one is called Navajo Falls.

Havasu Falls:

This is on top of Havasu Falls looking over the edge. It was a little too high for my liking.

And then we hiked down to Mooney Falls. Mooney Falls is at least a couple of times higher than Havasu Falls and it was amazing. To get down to the bottom of Mooney falls and you have to climb through a couple of caves that have had steps carved into them and then down the sheer side of the cliff holding onto nothing besides chains that have been anchored into the side of the cliff and ladders that as you get down to the bottom are wet and slippery from the spray of the falls. It scared me to death!!! I honestly didn't know if I was going to make it down there or not. Here is Jamie after the caves and just getting ready to head down the stairs, and me on the way back up.

We made it!!

After we left Mooney we headed downstream and found these little falls and this waterfall that was actually coming out of a canyon that was perpendicular to the rest of the river. This was one of my favorite spots. We thought this was the end of the falls. We didn't see a trail further down river but we must have missed it because after doing some investigations I think there are some more falls called beaver falls further down. I guess we will just have to go back:)

We had planned on hiking out about 6. But we woke up and couldn't go back to sleep so we ended up hiking out about 4:30. It was still dark for the first hour or hour and a half, which was kind of a cool way to hike out. We tucked the flashlights on our phones into our backpacks and made it pretty good. It was kind of cool to be hiking out of that canyon and have the canyon walls on both sides of us and look up and see the stars above us. We made it out in about 4 hours. Looking down over the switchbacks.

 Back at the top.

I LOVED this trip. It was such a fun couple of days and I hope to make it back there. It was beautiful. I am so grateful that Jamie is willing to do things with me that I want to do. It wouldn't be near as much fun without him. I love this man that I get to travel through this life with.

Emmy

I took Emmy to get new pictures the other day. She is growing up to a beautiful young woman.