Keeping the Tradition and Celebrating Their Success

Thanks everyone for the well wishes for Justus after his calf riding incident. Justus is getting around but gingerly. He definitely favors his leg and it’s still very tender for him.

On Monday we headed up to Lake Powell as a treat for Audrey (age 8) since she finished her phonics program. Celebrating my children’s successes is very important to me. Why not celebrate and make the most of our moments with the kids?

We were only a year late in going. 🙂 We weren’t able to go last year and promised we would do it this year but we were almost too late since the weather is starting to cool down.

 Our phonics graduate, Audrey.

This was Serenity’s trip when she was 8 and this one was just for fun and this one was Justus’s special trip when he was 8.

We felt a little silly driving up to the lake with a big boat behind us when the weather was only 54°. But thankfully it warmed up during the day sufficiently that the kids did not get hypothermia but instead thought the water was warm… until they got out of the water and then the teeth went to chattering.

Lake Powell is absolutely gorgeous with almost 2,000 miles of shoreline and is not only in the state of Arizona but Utah as well. I find the sandstone cliffs completely fascinating as I told you about once before.

But because I think they are so amazing, here’s yet another picture of a little sandstone outcropping at the top of a butte. Sand that has become sedimentary rock.

Everything went pretty well this trip. No boating problems.  The biggest issue we had were crows and what a nuisance they were! We left one day for some fun in the water and as soon as we pulled away we saw a crow walking in our camp. We wondered was there anything that it could possibly find to eat?

There was. When we arrived back we found they had eaten every single one of our hotdog buns…

…pecked their way through the zip-loc bag and ate all the cashews and then tried to start on the almonds but ran into some trouble there…

…and to top everything off, for dessert they thought our UNO card game would be tasty…

So we learned to put everything away when we left — into the tent.

To wrap this post up here are a few family shots and etcetera.

And just like that (snap!) the time has passed and my last child has finished her phonics program.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. –Psalms 90:12