B and I decided to spend an amazing eight long days down in AZ the week of Thanksgiving. We left on November 23rd. Two days before, I drove Halle and Cinco down to Payson and dropped them off for a doggie sleep over boot camp for the next 3 weeks. It was awfully nice not to have to worry about them while we were gone.
As soon as we got there, we had to go pick up the boat in order to drop it off first thing on Monday morning on the other side of the valley for a tune-up. We discovered that we have an extremely strict and intense HOA, who is on constant lookout for anyone attempting to live their lives in a non-police state. Holy crappoli!! if we end up spending a significant amount of time down there, which I PRAY we do – we are going to have to get another place in a community that’s not a bunch of uptight weirdos. Ok there’s my rant.
I walked out on the trail in the sunshine almost every day. We enjoyed the time alone going to good restaurants, seeing a couple movies, visiting Dave & Shel. Master D arrived on Tuesday and the rest of the kids on Wednesday. We headed straight out to the desert to meet a photographer (Becca Johnson) to take a bunch of really fun photos to pick from for our Christmas card. I only used four on the card, so I’m going to post a bunch on here in no particular order.
We spent Thanksgiving with Dave & Shel. Shel’s whole entire family was there too so they were very good sports to host the eight of us. I think there were 35 people there. It was delicious and we always love to spend time with them! The night before we were blessed with a spectacular sunset!
Later that night, there were some crazy nerf gun wars – I wish you could see the live photos – they are pretty funny
On Friday morning Aub went back to Portland. She didn’t want to be away from Archie too long – or leave her friends (that have Goldie) stuck with the two maniac sisters for an extended period of time either. We went Black Friday shopping and I’m officially a curmudgeon – it is waaaayyy too crowded for my liking. I sat down on a bench and shopped on my phone. But Saturday the sun came out and because we are not from AZ, we can handle and enjoy the lake when it’s 68 degrees. And we are very glad to have it mostly to ourselves. It was a perfect week and we have a lot to be grateful for.
