Monday-Tuesdays + Rambling

Today is one of those days affectionately known as a Monday-Tuesday (mostly by my Mom and I), in other words it's a Tuesday that feels like a Monday.

I've always been a fan of Monday-Tuesdays, obviously because that meant that I had a 3 day weekend to enjoy, but now that I'm a workin' woman, it means only a 4 day work week! That's pretty exciting.

It was a glorious Labor Day weekend here, Sam and I spent Friday night at home watching Super 8. I was skeptical about this movie at first, I'm really not a sci-fi fan, neither is Sam, but we both really enjoyed it, and I would recommend it for a good family movie. 

Saturday we drove up to a spot near a little city called Valle, it's on the road to the Grand Canyon. We spent the morning and afternoon with our good friends cutting firewood, getting ready for the quickly approaching fall and winter...ugh. I've already had to break into my sweaters for my early morning commute to work.

It was a hard day's work filling up our trailer with firewood, but we're hoping to keep our heating bill down by using our fireplace a lot this winter.

This has become our favorite thing ever! We've made 3 batches already, and all of them are yummy! We'll probably be using it well into the winter! I whipped up some for dessert on Saturday night, and between 5 of us, we finished the whole thing! Can you tell what it is???

And Sunday we took a drive out in the woods and discovered this beautiful place, and yes, that's a cliff, about 200 feet of vertical drop beneath us, don't worry, we made it without falling off :)

The rest of the weekend was low-key, cleaning the house, rearranging our back room (we still have boxes of stuff with no home left over from moving). I even got a little sewing done :) I found these awesome pink pom poms on clearance at WalMart of all places! So I embellished my plain blue tea towel!

The Floral and Ivory shop did really well this weekend, lots of people came and looked around, I'll be trying to add some new products this weekend, so keep your eyes out, and don't forget that the %15 off runs out on Saturday! Also, about 80% of the products are can be customized to fit you, so if you see something you like, but don't LOVE, contact me and we can design something just for you!

Memorial Weekend...Day 4...Finally.

Sorry for taking so long to finish this little mini-series of posts. I meant to have this whole thing done in 4 consecutive days, but that didn't happen. So, here goes day 4 - day 3 ended with dinner on the Cottonwood Canyon Road - and day 4 begins that morning, heading out of the canyon towards highway 89:

Our last view of Cottonwood Canyon Road, from here we hit highway 89 and drove over to Buckskin Gulch.

The beginning of the hike at Buckskin - a hot, dry, sandy river bed.We walked for about 0.25 - 0.75 of a mile in this, and I kept thinking, "This better be good!" because by this point in the trip, we haven't showered for  days, YUCK, and frankly, I'm ready for my own bed. And Sam likes to keep little details from me...like what's going to be around the corner:

BOOM. Buckskin Gulch swallowed us - instant slot canyon...the coolest one ever. The typical red rock slot canyon that Utah is known for. And we walked right in, no dropping in like the one the day before - so Kona had no problem.

I mean seriously, how freaking cool is that!? 4 feet from wall to wall, and 100's of feet above our head. Awesome.

This portion was my favorite because of the lush green trees that were growing above us, and the water that trickled down the sides of the canyon...sorry, no picture of that.

So, we hiked and hiked through these slot canyons, then suddenly, just POPPED out into this HUGE open space with this... hole....in the wall. Not entirely sure what to call it. But it's HUGE!

On red rock wall around the corner from the hole, we found these petroglyphs. How crazy is it to think that the native Indians, 100's of years ago, carved these drawings into STONE and they are still around for us to see today? I think both drawings are meant to be goats.... Sam might correct me on that.

 Kona didn't feel like having her picture taken at this moment.

The water has carved out these perfect tiny holes all through the canyon walls... almost like bubbles.

You can see here just how massive the canyon was by comparing how tiny we are!

This picture is just too cute! I wish I was in focus though! Kona knows how to be super adorable!

This is one of the narrowest spots that we walked through.

And back in Arizona, we stopped at Lee's Ferry (Marble Canyon - Colorado River. If you ever go on a Grand Canyon river trip - this is where you begin.

A California Condor that decided to present itself to us for pictures.

And done. We headed home after this picture. We hope you enjoyed our trip as much as we did!

Happy Tuesday!

An Arizona/Utah Memorial weekend Heffelfinger Adventure style...Day 1

Happy Monday/Tuesday folks! (Hopefully you had Monday off of your day job like we did) The beauty of having Monday off of work, besides enjoying a glorious 3 day weekend, is that it's now only a 4 day week! WooHoo!

Sam and I might have cheated the system a little bit by taking Friday off of work as well...Hey, we're young, in love, and we don't have any babies only have a cute pooch to take care of. Plus, we're super blessed to live in such an awesome area, the things we saw in a 4 day period, so close to home, truly phenomenal.

So we took off out of Flagstaff Thursday night with some Panda Express, our camping gear, and Kona, and drove all the way to the gate of Grand Canyon National Park. Unfortunately we got there too late to go inside that night, so we found a little campsite for the evening and when we woke up our adventures began!

Enjoy the pictures, there's a lot of them...702 to be exact, though we won't bore you to death with all of those....just the ones that my hair looks good in :)

Ok...that's a joke too. Please excuse our unshoweredness.... we we're camping :)

Above was morning #1. Every morning of our lives includes fetch with Kona...no fetching = bad day. Then a little coffee in the JetBoil. (You'll be seeing a lot of the JetBoil - if you are an avid camper, YOU NEED THIS. It boils water in .025 seconds....yes that's an exaggeration, but it's really fast, and you can hold it in your hands.) Also please note the wooden box to the right of the truck. That, my friends, is our camping lifesaver. Sam designed and built a camp kitchen box - more pics to come - but holy cow, I won't go camping without it. 

And here folks, is why you marry a man that carries an axe...ax? Whatever. Ok, it was a little tree, but we did our good deed for the day, and spent 10 min chopping and moving the tree out of the road. What a stud! He looks good with an ax...axe. 

That road led us to this hill top - known as the BallPark by the Forest Service men and women - it's a field that sits atop of a cliff overlooking the beginning of the Grand Canyon. In the middle picture, the one with all 3 of us, you can faintly see a crack in the ground to the right of us, and that, is no small hole - that's the Colorado River.

Oh, the things that you see once you make it into the Park. Deer, desert rose, and Sam...and binoculars attached to his face. He really likes to look far away. So this picture really does him justice.

 And finally the moments you have all been waiting for: the actual Grand Canyon as viewed from the North Rim. If you decide to vacation at the Grand Canyon, please, skip the tourist attractions and only go to the North Rim. the views are 100X better, and there are no tour buses full of people. There is also a hotel, and cabins, and a wonderful restaurant that served awesome french toast.

FYI: this picture of the Canyon looks hazy...almost smoky....but that's not smog, or smoke...it's dust - it was WINDY as POO the entire weekend - which caused the sky to look hazy and yucky, not the typical clear blue that it is. 

So, here's a funny story. We spent the afternoon going to point to point, looking out over the Canyon. It was beginning to get cooler, and the evening was coming so we decided to drive outside of the National Park boundaries to camp. On our way to our destination, Sam SLAMMED on the brakes and proceeded to burst my eardrums by YELLING "BADGER!" and pointing out the window. So we jumped out of the car and chased the little devil until we cornered him in this log, where he looked at us like, neener neener neener, you can't get me! hah!! (Note: it's not recommended to chase badgers, but when you want to take a picture of something that runs away from you, it's second nature to chase it.) But in the end, we got this sweet picture.

 Ahh, the famed kitchen camp box!!

And the products of said kitchen camp box.

Camp for the night. Check out the party lights! These are solar light bulbs that Sam picked up at the Overland Expo that I talked about in the last few posts.  

And our favorite game - SkipBo! Don't know what it is?? Go to WalMart and get it, you won't be sorry. Horribly addicting. (Right, Mom?)

On the road again! Heading into Utah. Don't diss the socks - it was cold, and I had shorts on. 

Stay tuned for more pics tomorrow. I don't want to drown you all in pictures! Hope you enjoyed! 

And Happy Memorial Day - God bless our troops and everyone that has or is serving for our country.