GREER!!

This last weekend my family and I went to Greer. And of course it was SO much fun! We went there for "The Capital Christmas Tree Celebration." Every year there is is a tree (among many others) that is decorated for the White House. This particular one will which will be outside the White House, was chosen from a forest right outside of Alpine while you're on your way to Big Lake. It was pretty exciting to say the least, especially for this small community. They made over 6,000 ornaments, cut enough trees for the inside of the White House (there were lots) and there were outside and inside decorations that the communities had made a sent as well. It was a HUGE task to take on but this little community rallied together and did an amazing thing! They had a special ceremony where one of the senators spoke, an elementary school sang, a high school performance choir sang, the mayor spoke, the forest service spoke, and cowboy poet got up and shared a Cowboy Christmas Poem with us. This cowboy impressed me probably the most because of something he said before he began reciting his poem. He said that he was hesitant to be apart of the festivities that day, and he wouldn't have done it at all, until he found out that the celebration was for a "Christmas" tree and not a "Holiday" tree. I appreciated that immensely! I had just been talking to my family in the car prior to getting there that I hoped it wasn't going to be called a holiday tree. I was pleasantly surprised!
The reason my family went was because my dad and Bashas' had a hand in helping with the event. Bashas' has a small store in Eager and we provided all the pies and hot cocoa for the event. We also gave a sapling pine to each family that was there. It was a really neat event! I was so glad to be a part of it!

The diesel pulling this HUGE tree

This is an 85' Blue Spruce. It was a beautiful tree!

The sibs at the ceremony! Love my brothers!

Josh, Cass, and I. These two are so fun!

Grandma and I!! I love her so much!

All of us by the Spruce


It was fun having Cass with us on this trip because she had never been to Greer before and we were able to show her a lot of our favorite places there and make some fun new memories.

All the kiddos

ME!

Preston wanted me to take some pictures of him for some new facebook profile pics. I liked em!

Grand Canyon Vacation

WOW! What a fun vacation! Our family just got back from being at the Grand Canyon and exploring some areas around Flagstaff too. I went with my family and my grandma came with us as well. We had an absolute blast!

We left on Thursday and we went to Mantezuma's Castle and Toozigoot which were Sinagua Indian ruins. They were really super neat! I loved seeing how incredible the ruins were and imagining how these people must have lived. We also hiked Walnut Canyon which also has some Indian ruins we were actually able to go inside of and hike right along side. Walnut Canyon was absolutely beautiful. It was a great hike!

MANTEZUMA'S CASTLE












TOOZIGOOT










WALNUT CANYON
































LAVA CAVE HIKE- This was probably one of my most favorite parts of the entire vacation! I LOVED LOVED LOVED hiking this lava river cave! It was seriously amazing!


The light from our flashlights was reflecting off the ceiling and it looked like glitter all over. It was so pretty!


This isn't all that important of a picture except that I couldn't believe how long my hair is!




This is where the lava cave had split off into two tunnels and we went to the right and it came to this point where the ceiling went down really low. I was the only one brave enough to actually crawl through to the other side. It was quite the adventure!






Beautiful Eyes...or at least Eye Brows! :) My mom and I had our eyebrows done at a place called "Just-Stringz" and it was a crazy experience! Anyways, we had fun and were pretty happy with the results.


GRAND CANYON
















ELK- When we were leaving the Grand Canyon there were Elk in the road! It was crazy! They were'nt afraid at all! What beautiful animals they are! My dad and I got out to take pictures and they were across the street from us. We soon realized that there were some directly behind us and it scared me half to death! BUt is t was pretty neat to be so close to these huge animals.