subway

and as much as i talk about food, i'm not talking about the restaurant chain...  i am talking about the Subway hike through Zion National Park.  my friend bill had permits to go and invited me along, and since i have never hiked the subway, i was all about it.  now, we didn't hike the whole thing, but we hiked about 9 miles round trip.  only our feet got wet, and i may have fallen down once... but as bill is a landscape photographer, we made it about taking pictures, and i'm glad we did because it is a beautiful place!  thanks bill, for taking me along!  you see a lot of different things while on this hike.  the formations are pretty great.  here are some of the pictures that i got  :)

{four}

today i started out the day knowing i was now a mother of a FOUR year old - EGAD!  wow.  i have a four year old...  time really does go by so stinking fast.  so today we celebrated!  well first, i woke him up with a birthday song and him breaking through the streamers across his doorway (thanks pinterest).  he tried to crawl under them and then, after some prompting realized that it was to go through and not under haha.  i did get it on video and it's pretty hilarious.  he picked out a ding-dong for breakfast and after watching him in the primary program for church not being able to hold still - maybe okaying the ding-dong wasn't a great idea.  oh well .  he provided some good entertainment for us.  when we got home from church he was so patient to wait to eat his cupcakes until his cousins got here and we ate first.  we had some good bbq grub and opened presents and then when the cousins left we did a bath with glow sticks (also thanks to pinterest).  ended the night watching his birthday express thomas movie.  it was a pretty good day overall.  although he could have probably used a nap, but he is still going strong (it's 10:20 pm - with NO nap).  i'll share some pictures i took of him throughout the day.  wow.  he's four.  

so excited to be four!

 how old are you jorel?

 cupcakes!

 cousins!

blowing out the candles

  presents!

 gator golf from his cousins

 chocolate mustache! 

 glow stick bath

havasupai

i had a cool opportunity to go hike in the grand canyon in the havasupai tribe lands and for work!  so all expenses paid, i just had to spend the trip with a bunch of teenage girls :)  but it was well worth it.  10 mile hike in and 10 miles out - which was a bit more difficult since the last mile and a half are pretty much straight up the side of the grand canyon and it was only 100 degrees!  havasupai means people of the blue-green water and boy was that water beautiful.  if you want more information on what this place is, you can check out http://havasupaitribe.com/ but i will share with you some pictures that i took but they really don't do the place justice! those of you that have been there before will notice how different it is since after the big flood a couple of years ago - i had never been so it was all new and beautiful to me.  ps i can't post pictures of the girls because of confidentiality reasons, so there are a lot more pictures, but only a few that i can share. 

the start of the hike - you can kind of see the trail going through the canyon

 our camp site right next to the water

 havasu falls

 light painting - i actually tripped in this picture hence the trail of light at the bottom, i'll have to tell you the story sometime...

 a little ways down from mooney falls

 mooney falls

 rock falls

 rock falls