Recently

Well we have been busy most of December too! Colbys parents came to visit the first weekend in December, of course, it was the coldest weekedn we have had so far!
We took them to the Mesa Temple Christmas lights and to a Christmas festival in Peoria!

Yes we are both wearing our winter coats, thats how cold it was!!
It seems like we constantly have something going on, but everything has been poorly undocumented!!
We had a fire in the backyard the other day because the weather was so nice! We trimmed all of our trees and bushes and have enough wood to last us a while!!

One thing AZ does not lack of is beautiful sunsets! They always amaze me!!
Another thing that I love is all the fruit trees! Every where you go you will see trees filled with oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruits! They are so pretty!

Dont they look delicious!
Oh and for good measue and because they havent been on the blog in a while,
Krone - and his new sweater and really bad bed head!

Kazzi looking innocent as usual

We are so excited for Christmas! We are heading up to Vegas to celebrate! It will be nice to spend it with family!

We love the great outdoors!

Well this past weekend was pretty much the last weekend before all the mountains here start to get snow, so we decided to take advantage and go on one last camping trip! We headed up to Chevelon Canyon Lake on the Mogollon Rim. It is what is called a primitive campsite, meaning no water, showers, bathrooms, and you have to hike down 3/4 a steep, very steep hill to get to the lake. We enjoyed watching the stars and eating our tinfoil dinners and went to bed early so we could head to the lake early the next morning.

We bought these awesome kayaks a couple weeks ago that turn into backpacks, which is cool because we can take them anywhere and Colby can fish from them, etc. The only negative is you are carrying 40lbs of extra weight on your back. We spent about four hours out on the lake and then we had to head back up to pack our things and get home before it started to rain.
I thought , knew i was going to die! I felt like we were climbing straight up and that we were never going to get back to the campsite...Poor Colby, there wasnt much he could do (obviously he couldnt carry both kayaks!) except watch me huff and puff and wheeze all the way up this mountain, in my defense it was 7000+ feet and the air is a lot thinner than it is in Phoenix. We eventually made it...somehow! and I survived with only sore legs!
Anyways, other than the awful hike, it was a wonderful little camping trip!! Colby caught 10 fish, but didnt keep any.

 The closest to fall I will see around here!

Dobbins Point

Tyler  & Claire had mentioned a cool spot that you could see the whole valley from called Dobbins point so we decided to check it out this past Saturday! it was pretty cool.
After you drive 5 miles or so up a windy mountain road you end up at the top where you can see all of the East and West valleys. I wish that it would have been a little clearer out and not so smoggy but it was still gorgeous and cool to see none the less! We were able to make it up just in time for the sunset!

A storm was rolling in! The storms here are awesome because of all the lighting! Its one of the only "free" forms of entertainment that we have found that AZ has to offer!! :)

Tubing

This past weekend we went on another adventure! Its so hard to want to do anything outside here because it is so hot outside, so it seems like you have to drive a couple hours to somewhere cooler or sweat it out! But good news! It is supposed to be in the 90s/70's starting next week! We CANT wait!!!
We found a happy medium and drove about an hour to the Salt River to go tubing. It was still 110 outside but the water was cool enough that you didnt realize how hot it was!
The sucky part of doing things with water is that I cant bring my camera! So all the pics are from other websites.

It was so pretty, the river goes through a national forest with mountains surround you. We were also probably some of the only ones who werent intoxicated. We floated down the river for about 4 hours and saw about a dozen wild horses and even a bald eagle (my first one!)

 just imagine Colby Tyler Claire and Me in this picture

 The wild mustangs

some of the views, probably in the spring or winter

So we decided to invest in some inflatable kayaks! They should be here tomorrow and we cant wait for more adventures out on the lakes/rivers!

What have we been up to?

**Sorry for crappy camera pics**
Well August has really flown by! We started it off by heading up to Vegas and hanging out with my family! We enjoyed going shooting out on the dry lake bed and going cosmic bowling.. among other things! Im glad that we are so close to them now!

I was able to stay for the week and hang out with friends that I haven seen in a couple of years! It was so great to catch up and see everyones babies/toddlers!! For some reason we didnt take any pictures together though!
Colby has been attempting to fish and finally was caught some catfish at a local pond. It wasnt what he wanted but it was better than not catching anything at all!!

I have been working from home since June and have been keeping busy! I usually have two stalkers surrounding my desk at any given time.

We've been enjoying our pool and trying to go out and explore! We went to a pretty cool car museum a couple of weekends ago and this past weekend we went up to Sedona with the Coltons to explore. We went to Sliding rock state park where we froze our butts off in the ice cold water! We did some cliff jumping (not claire), I surprised myself and jumped off without much hesitation, but was shocked by how cold the water was. We hadnt tested it out before hand! Colby & Tyler braved the 40 foot jump, but once off the 25 was good enough for me!  We slid down the creek and went "hiking" upstream. It is absolutely gorgeous up there!

the cliffs we were jumping from.

The rock slide

We are planning on going camping sometime in the next couple weeks and cant wait to explore more of the AZ mountains and lakes! Colby cant wait to fish, I cant wait to take pictures.. :)

Well thats a quick little update! I cant get my SD drive to work or else I would post some other pictures, but I will just save them for next time!