Carter’s first day of middle school — 6th grade.

Raine’s last year of middle school — 8th grade.

August 9 – Show Low Lake

August 10 – Grandpa put up his much-anticipated zip line

August 11 – the Petrified Forest

We started our drive home from the north end of the Petrified Forest and Daddy had to wakeup on his 44th birthday in a cheap motel along Historic Route 66!

August 5 we headed out on a long drive toward Arizona to meet Sara and her family.

On the 6th we took an excursion up to Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam.

Then we boarded our open-air truck for the ride to Antelope Canyon.

Antelope Canyon is a sandstone slot canyon within the Navajo Nation. The entrance doesn’t look like much…

…but as soon as you enter, it is unbelievable. Between the four of us, we took hundreds of photos; it was incredible.

Carter with his angel wings

Raine with her angel wings

After we exited the other side, we hiked back up over the top. That’s the canyon right there; you literally cannot even tell it is there.

After the tour, we headed over to the Grand Canyon to meet Grandma and Grandpa Anderson at the Yavapai Lodge, where we were staying that night. After dinner, we hiked over to the canyon to watch the sunset while we waited for Aunt Sara and her family.

Early on the 7th, Sara and Daryn joined Daddy and I on a hike to the rim to watch the sun rise.

Once everyone was awake and packed, we hiked along the rim to the Ooh Aah Point trailhead.

The switchbacks to get down the steepest part of the rim were pretty tight!

The view from Ooh Aah Point

Addy, Raine, and Millie

Somehow Carter managed to escape our notice when took the group photo.

Once we made it back up to the top, we drove to Mather Point to look out from the observation platform.

We had a great view of the trail that we just hiked out to Ooh Aah Point.

This was the only place that we could catch a glimpse of the Colorado River down in the bottom of the canyon.

We loaded up the cars and drove to Flagstaff where we all met up for lunch before driving the rest of the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

July 18-22 we drove down to Padre Island. We did a lot of boogie boarding, seashell hunting, and wave jumping but we also visited the USS Lexington and did an escape room onboard. We drove through Mustang Island to Port Aransas and rode the ferry back to the mainland on our way home.

Today the kids had their annual physicals and here are their stats:

Raine
Height: 5’8″ = 99th percentile
Weight: 123 lbs = 84th percentile
That 3 inches she grew this year added to the 4 inches from the year before means she has grown 7 inches in two years— no wonder all her shorts show her butt cheeks!!!

Carter
Height: 4’11.5″ = 86th percentile
Weight 70 lbs = 24th percentile
He only added 1.5 inches from last year– he just can’t seem to break 5 foot– but he gained a whopping 8 pounds!!! Yet his BMI still places him in the 1st percentile.

July 2-5 we rented a lake house on Eagle Mountain Lake for a little staycation. Saturday we rented a boat to tube around the lake. It was stormy the first hour on the boat and was so “cold” that Carter put on a wetsuit to stay warm… in Texas, in July!!! That kid needs some body fat.

(Who put Daddy in charge of the go-pro?)

The military fly overs were really cool, but didn’t photograph well with a cellphone.

We wanted to go skiing for Spring Break, but also wanted to visit Grandma Dewey, so we decided to drive up to Utah in order to accomplish both.

Driving up to Brighton for our first day of skiing

Visiting Grandma at Karin’s house

Dinner at John’s house

Sunday, February 14 the polar vortex dropped down into Texas and we saw significant snow fall and historically low temperatures.

Monday, the power grid nearly collapsed — our house lost power around 5:30 a.m. and didn’t get it back until 9:15 p.m. Tuesday. Including the two subsequent short-term losses of power, we went without power for more than 40 hours while the temperatures ranged from 9° F when the power went out, to a high of 14° F on Monday, to a low of 3° F Monday night, to a high of 21° F on Tuesday, and finally a temp around 19° F when the power came back on.

Around 11:00 a.m. Monday we decided to pull out the generator to power the two small space heaters we own. We turned on our gas fireplace as well, but it isn’t really designed for outputting heat. Not to mention the 20-foot ceilings in that room are not conducive to heat retention. The three heat sources were enough to maintain a decent temperature in the house on Monday though.

Daddy dug out his old circa 1995 Sno-Tube and by some miracle it still held air. We headed over to the elementary school for some legitimate snow tubing.

Monday night we put mattresses in our room for the kids so that we could put both heaters in that room and turn off the fireplace. We each snuggled down under a pile of blankets with the portable DVD players until drifting off to sleep. Not long after 10:00 the generator sputtered to a halt and we spent the rest of the night without any heat source. It turned out that the generator froze in the frigid temps out on the back patio and we couldn’t get it restarted until around 9:00 Tuesday morning, after the sun warmed it for a while.

Needless to say, the house got COLD! It was somewhere around 40° F Tuesday morning but with the fireplace blaring and the space heaters cooking, we were eventually able to get the main living areas back up to around 50° F by the time we went to bed.

Tuesday morning I really, really needed a shower and I was not about to get naked and wet in our frozen house so I posted on the Relief Society Facebook page, asking if anyone with electricity would let us come take a shower at their home. The first person to respond was Leslie Horn, the Stake communications director who is actually in one of the Keller Wards but monitors each of the Ward pages and so had seen my post. Raine and I went to her home and showered in her guest bathroom just before noon while DJ and Carter kept an eye on the fire and generator. That afternoon, DJ and Carter went over to the Gottfredson’s home to shower. The Gottfredson’s offered us their 5 spare bedrooms for the night, but we decided to stay at our house in order to keep the heat on so the pipes wouldn’t freeze and because we didn’t want to leave Tucker in the cold. A second round of snow was coming Tuesday night so we didn’t know how the roads would be since they were already pretty snow-packed and icy.

We all went to bed early again on Tuesday night because that was the easiest way to stay warm. Carter had been watching a movie on the DVD player and then kneeled to pray and went to brush his teeth. He flipped on the light in the bathroom out of habit and swore it flickered. Sure enough, a few seconds later, everything came back on. I joked with Carter that he should’ve prayer earlier since the power came back on right after he prayed!

January 2-5 we stayed at a cabin in Beavers Bend and hiked around the State Park and reservoir.

January 2 we stopped in Paris, TX for a late lunch.

Hot tubbing (technically “warm” tubbing because Carter doesn’t like hot water) at the cabin.

January 3

January 4

Yes, he fell in

Broken Bow Lake