Some are better than others....

Rachel really likes to take pictures with my phone. When I was deleting them this morning to make space for some new podcasts, I discovered that she'd taken over 150 last week. Here's a sample of her work:

It was a great Birthday!

I had a really great birthday. I love birthdays. Some people say that will change, but for now, I enjoy celebrating my life. Rachel and Tyler were so nice to plan a dinner gathering and to buy this yummy cake. Yes-I ate some!
The best part was recieving this gift from Tyler. He bought me the new Kindle. It holds up to 3,500 books. It is perfect. I do like to read, but I also read a lot of research papers and text books to prepare for my wellness classes. This will be great to own these books now rather than running to the library and usually paying late fees for keeping too long. Plus, they wont overload my book shelf. I can keep them all in the palm of my hand. These Kindles are so new that they are just now shipping them out -hence the cardboard cutout below. I should be getting mine Tuesday. I can't wait!

Arkansas Family Reunion

Packed and ready to roll. Tyler took a picture to remind him how to put it all back together for the ride home. We had a ton of stuff to haul to the reunion.

We spent several hours stuck in traffic on I-70 in Colorado, but the scenery was amazing. I didn't mind a bit that we only drove about 10 miles an hour for 2 hours, because the mountains were breath taking. I kept wanting to sing, "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver.

Although the canyon was beautiful, I thought much less of downtown Denver. I still think Colorado would be a great place to live but outside Denver. This is the view from our hotel in Denver:

We spent nearly 15 miles driving on dirt through an area where the Colorado Dept. of Transportation decided to remove the entire road while widening the existing one. It annoyed Tyler like crazy which was a little funny.

Other than the hotel's waffles, Texas was mostly awful. It was just bland and hot.

Goodbye mountains:

Once we got to Arkansas, we stayed in this cabin built in the 1930's by the CCC. It housed our family and my sister's family as well as all the family reunion events. It was tight, but having the AC saved us all.

The lodge at Petit Jean State Park:

View from the lodge:

It was so HOT and HUMID, but the landscape on the trails was amazing. This is why Arkansas is the "Natural State."

Letterboxing:

Because it felt like we were in a forest fire (it was steamy hot), this was a fast S'more session.

Pinata:

On our drive back home we passed through Bentonville, AR.

This building that looks like a tin can factory is actually the headquarters for the largest corporation in the world:

Sam Walton's original 5 & dime:

We stopped at the LDS visitor's center in Independence, MO and drove by the Kansas City Temple site. We saw the Community Church of Christ's (formerly the RLDS church) temple and conference center. Their temple's structure was neat.

Wesley enjoying a few minutes out of his car seat while we ate lunch in Kansas City:

Rachel was pretty excited because a butterfly landed on her leg:

We spent our last night of travel in Lincoln, NE. We were pleasantly surprised at the place and it may find a spot on our list of 'places we won't refuse to someday live'

This is how Rachel spent much of the 5 days that we were on the road. She watched more TV than we want to think about:

Despite rationing miles all summer so that we'd be covered for our whole trip, just after we crossed back into Utah on the way home, the van had only 1 mile left on it's factory warranty. We told it that if it was going to explode on this trip, it had exactly one mile left to do so, but we made it home without any problems:

Family pictures from Valerie Keith Photography:

The reunion was great! It was special to have everyone together in one spot and to see how much we have grown. I love my family!