Peru Family Trip

We had a wonderful family trip to Peru.  Here are the highlights for each day:

Day 1:  Walking around the Lima Temple grounds.

Day 2:  Going to Church in Surco and visiting members of the church in their homes:

Day 3: Travel day to Puno/Lake Titcaca:

Day 4:  Visiting the Uros floating Islands on Lake Titcaca

Day 5:  Train ride to Cusco.  Morgan dancing during the entertainment show.  The train stopped along the way at 14,000 feet.  

Day 6:  Machu Picchu Day.  An absolutely thrilling day, which is worth all the effort it takes to get there.

Day 7:  Visiting ruins in the Sacred Valley of the Incas

Day 8: Ashley at the Incan fortress Sucsayhuaman, located outside of Cusco

Day 9:  Attending General Conference in Cusco and then eating at a local Peruvian restaurant with David, Roxanne and our travel agent Janny.  We ate pig's feet, beef heart, alpaca and guinea pig!

Day 10:  Meeting Taylor's mission president in their home.  What a treasured opportunity to express love to them and it made our trip complete!

Eagle Scout

Morgan received his Eagle Scout award in a ceremony last night.  We are proud of him.

Fall Break

We decided to go on an Arizona trip for our fall break this year. We started at Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona and went on a hike and enjoyed the beautiful colored leaves.  

 Morgan is rock climbing, or posing for a magazine photoshoot, not sure which.

 Rachel rock climbing  near Sedona

Montezuma's Castle National Monument.  This well-preserved cliff dwelling, built by Sinagua Indians in A.D. 1100, sits 100 feet above the valley.  It is rather impressive.

This place is called Montezuma Well.   

Walnut Canyon National Monument.   This monument features dwellings sheltered by overhanging cliffs.

 We are in an AD 1150 year old house!

 Rachel posing in a pueblo

 The trail starts at the visitor center and drops 245 steps into the canyon. Morgan ran up the stairs.  (I think twice)  It was quite the climb, but well worth the trip.

Labor Day Picnic

We went to the cabin for Labor Day and had a wonderful time visiting, playing games, hiking, and looking at the lush grass and wildflowers.  For lunch we drove to Big Lake for a picnic and also to see the Wallow Fire destruction.  Once again we sere pleased to see that the devastation wasn't widespread.  The grass has all grown back and with the Forest Service seeding and putting down straw, you can see from the pictures how beautiful the grass is.  Some areas were disheartening though.  The picture taken at our picnic lunch was right next to the Ranch's old corrals.  Happy memories in a beautiful place.

Anniversary

Doug and I recently celebrated our 28-year anniversary.  A few years ago we thought we would like to go to a different temple for our anniversary each year.  Luckily Bryan got married near our anniversary date so we got to count the St. George temple as our Anniversary Temple!  I wonder where we will go next year?  When I was young, one of my goals was to visit every temple in the world.  Like that is going to happen now.  So I revised my goal and decided on one new temple each year.

Fire in June

Our area has another wildfire raging out of control.  It started near Alpine on Sunday and the winds, dry conditions and extremely low humidity have turned our forest into an inferno.

These pictures were taken from my back porch.  Ominous!

SNOW IN MAY

We woke up this morning, MAY  19,  to 3 inches of beautiful wet snow. Morgan had a nature walk field trip scheduled today.