Our First (and possibly only!) Lazy Weekend of the Summer...

This weekend has been our first chance to relax and recuperate since we got out of school.  Nate left for Boy Scout camp bright and early Saturday morning, and then John and I crawled back into bed and slept until 12:30 in the afternoon!  When we got up, Nicole was still sleeping and didn't wake up until 1:30pm!  She got over 14 hours of uninterrupted sleep.  Amanda was really confused and kept checking on all of us to make sure we were still breathing :)  I really think we needed this weekend to get back into some kind of routine, unpack, relax, and get laundry done.

Father's Day was another lazy day, where we just around and read, played games, and watched movies together.  The only thing missing was NATE!  We really need to learn how to slow down and savor life more often at our house.  This weekend was awesome!

John will be leaving on a business trip on Tuesday morning, and Nate will be gone until Saturday.  So what did we do with our first little bit of free time?  Had a sleepover of course!  We also scheduled lots of appointments for the kids to catch up on physicals and other things we've neglected over the past few months.  Our summer is going to kick into high gear again in another week when we'll be back on the move again for another road trip.

Guys Vacation: Florida Seabase Sailing Adventure

The summer has been busy so far.  While the girls were vacationing in Sedona, Arizona, the boys were enjoying a Boy Scout sailing adventure in the Florida Keys.  They left on Sunday, June 3, and drove to Orlando, Florida.  After spending the night in a hotel, they drove the rest of the way to Florida Seabase in the Keys.  They boarded the boat Tuesday night and boy were they surprised!  Their boat was called the "Spirit of Independence" and was launched in 2007, making it the newest ship used by the Boy Scouts for sailing adventures.  The boat was beautiful!

They encountered bad weather after just a couple of days on the boat, and pulled into port a day early to shelter from the storm.  Nate enjoyed time on the deck:

And in Key West:

The storm kept them at port more often than they originally intended:

They learned how to sail why they were aboard:

He read his Kindle on his bunk during his free time:

The Scout fed the huge fish right off the dock:

They had a fabulous time and came back home safely, ready for our next round of summertime adventures.  Nate is off to another Boy Scout camp this week, and John is leaving on a business trip.  The girls and I will stay home and try to get back on track!

Girls Vacation to Sedona, Arizona: Day Eleven

Today we decided to go to Slide Rock, a natural swimming hole with dips and hollows in rock.  We had a wonderful time going down the amazing rock slides, although it was a little rough on the body!  The water was shockingly cold too.

The rocks were slightly slick too.  The girls enjoyed just hanging out in the cold water.

Then they tried going down one of the slides.

The slides are all so different - some of them are very narrow and shallow (even Amanda didn't fit between the two rocks on one slide), and others are deep and wide.  This slide kind of swirled them around like a whirlpool.

 

It didn't take long before Nicole was too cold to continue playing in the water.

But Amanda continued to play.  We had a wonderful time on our last full day in Sedona.  Tomorrow we will begin the journey back home.  We will stay overnight in Phoenix tomorrow night and we fly home on Thursday afternoon.

We have had an amazing time exploring the Sedona area.  We're going to miss our family here and hope to come back soon!



Girls Vacation to Sedona, Arizona: Day Ten

Today we went out to breakfast with a friend.  The setting was beautiful and so surprising!  The tables were placed next to a bubbling stream under a canopy of beautiful lush foliage.  We haven't seen anything like it since we came to Sedona!

After our wonderful breakfast, we split up and Mom, Amanda, and I went shopping at a Arts & Crafts Village called Tlaquepaque.  They have told us how to say it several times and I still can't do it!

The girls and I took off on our own for a little jaunt to Cottonwood, Arizona for the rest of the afternoon.

Girls Vacation to Sedona, Arizona: Days Eight & Nine

Yesterday was a day of rest!  After a week of constantly being on the go, we all needed a break.  We enjoyed a nice relaxing day at home with a little bit of shopping thrown in, and then we went to dinner at mom and Geri's friends' house down the street.

Today we got up bright and early and went on a jeep tour of the Broken Arrow area of Sedona.  The jeep was bright pink, and we saw lots of Sedona from high above the city. 

We had so much fun on the bumpy road!  In many places, it felt like we were going to topple forwards or backwards in the jeep because it was so steep.

 

Our tour guide was a great photographer!

 

I took some pictures too:

The tour guide taught us lots of stuff about how the rocks formed:

And how the Native Americans used plants in their daily lives:

The girls posed for pictures: 

 

I took more interesting shots that we wouldn't normally be able to capture:

You can see Sedona way down in the valley in this picture:

These pictures were taken on top of Submarine Rock:

 

Submarine Rock was huge:

And it showed evidence of a Strike Strip Fault from an earthquake long ago.  We took pictures of that too and we will share them with the science teacher when we return to school. 

On the way back to Uptown Sedona, my girl Amanda admired herself in the mirror for me:

That's the only way I could see her when we were on the road, because she was riding shotgun with the guide.  I would definitely recommend this tour to other people visiting Sedona, but I'd recommend sticking with the early morning Jeep tour like we did.  It was already pretty hot by the time we got back to the base at 9:00am!

We had lunch at our favorite Sedona restaurant, The Wildflower Café, and then went back home to recuperate.  The girls and I fitted in an afternoon swimming session too!  Tomorrow is another day of adventure :)



Girls Vacation to Sedona, Arizona: Day Seven

We traveled to Red Rock State Park just outside of Sedona today.  We watched an amazing film about the Sedona area, and then took in the tiny museum housed with the gift shop there. 

There was a beautiful deck there overlooking the red rocks so we stopped to take some pictures.

 

Amanda looks like a princess in a tower:

We had lunch at a resort hotel in Sedona and then went back to the house to rest for a while.  The girls and I also took time to go swimming in the evening. It was just way too hot to swim during the day...

Girls Vacation to Sedona: Day Six

After spending the night in a hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona, we made our way to Walnut Canyon just outside of town.  The girls and I were determined to descend 240 stairs to see the cliff dwellings at the bottom of the stairs.  This is at the start of our journey into the canyon:

This is after about 40 stairs: 

She's still going strong!  We took a break after a few more steps (by this time Nicole was getting irritated at all the pictures!):

But Amanda was enjoying the attention :)  Shade was in short supply on this hike.

 

There were cliff dwellings all along the cliff on the other side of the canyon.  If you look carefully to the right of Amanda in this picture, you'll see some of them:



 

This was the first cliff structure we saw. 

After hiking down in the canyon, we finally found the actual cliff dwellings:

And yes, I was actually there too!  This is for you, Sis!

This was inside the cliff dwellings:

Making our way back out of the cliff dwellings.  It was a long, hot, hike back up to the top!

Amanda is pointing to the visitor's center at the top of the steep set of stairs:

Back up the stairs we go!

Resting on the way back up:

We finally made up back up!  After we cooled down a little, we went to the Museum of Northern Alabama to see some of the pueblo artifacts that would have been used in the cliff dwellings.  We are TIRED today, but it was such a great experience for all of us!