the rest of the trip

Saturday

It was my husband's birthday, and we were heading to the Grand Canyon. Someone told us they had been there the day before and it was completely fogged in, so we were worried that would happen to us too. As we drove the couple of hours from Page to the Grand Canyon we drove through rain and low lying clouds, so we were really doubtful. But as we turned west to get closer to the Grand Canyon the skies started to clear and we were excited that it was clearing. When we arrived at the entrance to the park the skies were clear as can be.

But as we walked up to the first viewpoint, at the Watchtower, we realized that yes, the skies were clear, but the canyon was covered in fog. These are the views we got.

It looks cool, but not when you're only there for a short amount of time and you're there to see the canyon! We thought our whole day would be filled with lousy views, but after driving into the village and getting some lunch, we set out for a tour of the canyon and the fog had lifted. I posted a few pictures of this tour here, but here are some more views. Pictures just don't do it justice, though--it's just so massive and incredible.

Sunday

Sunday morning bright at early we got up for Brian's hike. I had to drive him to the trailhead. I wrote more about the hike here and here. Here are a few pictures he took on his hike, as he crossed the Colorado River.

After he got back, showered, and rested awhile, we walked around (yes, he walked some more, after hiking for hours and hours!!) enjoying the view, waiting for our dinner reservations at El Tovar (this is El Tovar).

Dinner was nice--not as delicious as expected, but the ambiance was great and it was a fun celebration of his birthday and his big accomplishment.

After dinner we took the bus around to some places I had visited earlier in the day without him and we shopped for souvenirs.

Monday

We stayed at the Grand Canyon for most of the morning, because it was such a gorgeous day, and we decided we'd rather see more of it than Sedona, where we were heading. Here are some last minute pictures....our cute little cabin (just a few yards from the canyon!) and a last view of the canyon up at the Kaibob trailhead. But then we drove down to Sedona (through more rain). Sedona was pretty, and we had a great view from our hotel room (here I am standing on our balcony), but it still paled in comparison to the Grand Canyon. If we had seen Sedona first I would've thought it was much more beautiful. This is from our balcony too, with lots of little shops below that we didn't even have time (or energy!) to explore.

Tuesday

That morning we did a quick drive through tour of Sedona, took some pictures, and then headed down to Phoenix. Once you get close to Phoenix you start seeing lots of these:a Seguaro Cactus, which we thought was cool.

We had a long day of travel and arrived home around 1:30 AM on Wednesday morning. It was a great trip.

a partial photo recap

Tuesday

We left for the airport very early in the morning. We flew to Dallas and then to Phoenix. It was clear the whole way and I spent a great deal of time looking out the window at the changing landscape down below. We arrived in 100 degree temperatures in Phoenix. Found our rental car (a Toyota Highlander, which I loved!), and set out to find a grocery store (which we found in Scottsdale). We had to buy a cooler to keep our groceries in, since it would've cost us an extra $25 to check ours at the airport, and a cooler only cost $20 (and we had to leave it at the end of the trip with a sign that said "free" because it would've cost us another $25 to bring it home!)! We stocked up on supplies for the week and then left for Holbrook, AZ, about 2 1/2 hours away.

Once in Holbrook we found our hotel, ate dinner, and went to bed really early (it was three hours earlier out there, so our normal 10:00 bedtime at home was only 7:00 out there, but we were exhausted, so we didn't care).

Wednesday

After a very bad night of sleep, we were up around 4:00 AM (7:00 at home!) and ready to go! Of course, nothing was open, so we had to hang around for awhile first. The Petrified Forest National Park, our first destination, opened at 7:00. We got there about a half hour early, so we waited in a parking lot outside the gates. In the parking lot was this really cheesy dinosaur. Since we had nothing better to do we took our picture with the dinosaur, thinking Rachel would enjoy it (she did!).

We went in at 7:00 when they opened.I had been there when I was a kid. I didn't remember liking it very much then, and I didn't like it a whole lot better this time. We saw a lot of this.

Petrified Wood. Not very exciting to me, but my husband, the geologist, thought it was interesting, so that's why we went.

We did see a pronghorn at the top of a hill not too far away.

After driving through most of the park we entered the section called The Painted Desert. It was much more interesting. The colors were beautiful.

Next we drove a couple of hours across the Navajo Indian Reservation to Chinle, AZ. It was much like the previous night--we found our hotel, found some dinner, and went to bed early. They did have a pool and hot tub there, so we enjoyed that after dinner for a bit.

Thursday

We woke up to rain. This turned out to be the theme of our trip....rain in the desert. We tried to think of it as welcomed relief for the people who live there, but it didn't do much for our sight seeing. It was usually only a light rain, though, so it didn't keep us from doing too much.

We were in Chinle to see Canyon de Chelly.

We had the place to ourselves because it was so early in the morning and because of the rain. It was quiet, peaceful, and simply breathtaking, even in the rain. I loved it.

There are lots of Indian ruins in the cliffs, which were interesting to see.

After seeing the canyon we left to drive across more of the reservation to go to Monument Valley, where lots of western movies were filmed back in the day. It was super windy, which made it really dusty and hazy, but at least it wasn't raining! See all of the dust? And if you look at my hair blowing sideways you can see how windy it was.

We drove down into the valley (which is a dirt road, and the reason we rented an SUV instead of a mid sized car for this trip) and drove around all of the monuments. The weather cleared and we got some good pictures after all.

Next we drove to Kayenta, AZ, where we were staying for the night. It was a rough night, though--there was a storm, and the power at the hotel went out. Our a/c stopped, and I could hear every little sound going on around me, and couldn't sleep. I read with my book light while my husband slept. The power finally came back on after an hour and a half and I was finally able to get to sleep.

Friday

We left early for Page, AZ. We were supposed to have a tour of Antelope Canyon that morning (I already posted about this here). Since that didn't happen we toured the Glen Canyon Dam.

Not very exciting for me, but my husband thought it was interesting. The surroundings were pretty, though.

And since I can't seem to get this recap finished, I'll just end this here and post it, and then finish up the trip in another post soon.

graffiti

I had planned to finish up my post today on our trip, but someone spray painted our fence last night with some really horrible graffiti, so this gorgeous day has been spent dealing with that. My poor husband has been working most of the day trying to sand it off, but it's not going too well, and eventually he'll have to do the whole thing and restain it all. He's even thought about the possibility of just putting up a whole new fence, since this is taking so long and he's not really getting anywhere. What a mess.

It wasn't just our house, it was the house behind us as well, and we just found out that in another part of the neighborhood someone's house was painted with the same symbols and words--not their fence, their house. Awful.

I'm so, so disgusted, and don't know what to do.

home sweet home

We made it home very early this morning (1:30 AM). We were supposed to get back at 11:20, but our connecting flight was delayed in Dallas because of lightning, and we were waiting on the tarmack for a couple of hours. Yuck. After two hours of driving to the Phoenix Airport from Sedona, a flight from Phoenix to Dallas, and then waiting at Dallas forever, then finally flying home from Dallas, it made for a VERY long day, but we made it.

One of these days I'll do a bit more of a recap of the trip with pictures. It was a great trip, but I'm too tired for that today (I finally got to sleep a little after 2:30 and Rachel was awake bright and early at 6:30 this morning, so that doesn't make for a very rested Weed)! She just went down for a nap, so I think I'm headed for one too.

But first let me leave you with this picture.

After hiking from 4:45 AM until 3:15 PM on Sunday, my husband made it up out of the canyon--here he is just after finishing. I went out with the binoculars around 2:45 and started looking for him coming up the trail. Finally around 3:00 I thought I spotted him, but wasn't sure. As he neared the top he saw me and waved his trekking pole at me. I started crying, just so proud of him for achieving his dream. When he got all the way up I gave him a big hug ("I can't breathe!" he told me!) and we both had tears in our eyes. It was a special moment. He told me when he saw me and waved at me, it gave him the extra boost he needed to make it up the rest of the way. He had been struggling for the last mile and a half, he said--it had been thunderstorming for most of the afternoon, so he was wet and just exhausted. But he did it!! What an accomplishment.

enjoying the view

Just a few pictures....we're at The Grand Canyon--my husband is on his 17 mile hike today, so I have a quiet day to myself.

This is what it looked like when we arrived yesterday morning--covered in fog. Every so often the fog would lift a bit and we would get a view (like this one) and then it would come in again and we could see NOTHING! We were worried that the whole day would be like this.

But we didn't need to worry....the sun came out around noon! It ended up being a beautiful day. We enjoyed taking the bus out to Hermit's Rest, stopping at lots of different viewpoints in between there and the village where we are staying.

This morning at 4:35 AM my husband set off to fulfill a lifelong dream. He's hiking down the Kaibab trail and hiking up the Bright Angel trail. He hopes to be up in time for our 6:15 dinner reservations (he made them on purpose so he would have extra incentive to get out of the canyon!). He expected to be at Indian Garden, one of the resting stops, around 10 this morning, and he showed me where to look with the binoculars to find him there. I looked several times, but though I can see lots of people, I can't make out anyone--they're tiny little dots, too far away to distinguish. I can't wait to see him in a few hours!!!

rain rain go away!

Here we are in the middle of the desert of Arizona and we're having trouble with, of all things, RAIN!!!! Today, for instance, we were supposed to go on a tour of Antelope Canyon. My husband was really looking forward to taking pictures of this beautiful slot canyon. But as we were driving into town we encountered the heaviest downpour in which I've ever driven. Streets were flooding everywhere, and several times we stopped in a parking lot for awhile to let the rain subside a bit (it didn't for a long, long time). We saw garbage cans floating down the street at one point (we caught that one on video!).

We're having fun and seeing some beautiful things (I'll put pictures and more description into a post after I get home--those take way too long to put together, but here we are in the rain yesterday at Canyon de Chelly), but I really hope this rain goes away.

Tomorrow we head to the Grand Canyon, and we were told this afternoon that it was completely fogged in this morning. Oh, please, don't let that be the case when we're there!!!!

plans and preparations

We leave on Tuesday for vacation. Rachel will be with Grandma and Grandpa for the week while my husband and I are in Arizona. It's been planned forever, and my husband's been training for a year to realize his lifelong dream to hike the Grand Canyon, all the way down and up, in a day. I get to relax at the top that day, but mostly I'm sure I'll be worried about him. It's not recommended that you do it in a day, and rangers will try to stop him when they hear his plans, but he's determined to do it. He even made us dinner reservations at El Tovar, the lodge there, to encourage himself to get back in time for dinner!!

So anyway, I've been busy this week getting ready for that, but also planning the newest trip we've been talking about, taking Rachel to Disney World this fall. Last week my husband mentioned something about taking a family vacation in the fall. I suggested maybe we should take her to Disney, because of her love for Cinderella and all things Disney, and ever since it came out of my mouth, my mind has been on little else. I don't know why, but for some reason I'm thrilled about it, and it's nice to be excited about something again. I've had to restrain myself from reading all of the books and info I've found about it because I need to spend my time thinking about next week's trip! I'm taking the books with me and plan to work on it while I'm gone.

So that's what's been going on in my world this week. Rachel continues to be Rachel....dressing up in her princess garb every single hour of every single day. Now she reinacts scenes from the various princess movies she's seen. She still talks about getting married a lot, too, and I showed her the rest of our wedding pictures the other day--she had only seen the one on our piano, but I got out the whole album. She was in heaven. We have a book from the library in which a little girl is a flower girl in a wedding. She asks me to read it all the time and now she tells me she's going to be a flower girl in her Cinderella dress. Too bad I don't think anyone in our family needs a flower girl anytime soon!!! She's ready and willing!

I'll have wifi some of the nights that we're gone--we'll be in a different hotel almost every night, and some have it and some don't (sometimes we'll be in the desert, in indian reservations....wifi doesn't seem to be available there for some reason!!), but I'll update when I can.

me and my girl

Here are a few shots from Mother's Day yesterday. It's hard to get her to look at the camera--ugh--but we got a couple of good ones!

It was a beautiful day, which made me happy. We played outside, went to the park to have lunch (I had Chipotle, which I had been craving for quite awhile, but hardly ever eat--yum!), and went out for dinner. Rachel and Daddy surprised me with five new tomato plants and two basil plants. I can't wait for summer so I can enjoy them! When my mom was here last week she took me to buy flowers to plant outside. I chose a beautiful hanging basket of tiny pink flowers and a variety of flowers for my planter. Sometime I'll have to take some pictures of them. They're so pretty.

mother's day

For years Mother's Day was really tough for me. I was always happy to celebrate my mother, but I longed to be a mother myself, and it seemed to be taking forever....first for me to meet and marry someone I loved, and then for him to feel ready enough to be a father that we could have a baby.

Then Rachel came along and made me the happiest woman alive.

My first Mother's Day, 2006

But this Mother's Day is another tough one for me. For though I have my sweet Rachel, who gives me such joy and pleasure at being a mother, today I'm mourning the fact that I'll never be a mother to the little one who I'll never know.

I haven't been able to write about this yet, but after three weeks of trying to "fake" my way through this blog, I'm finding that I need to face how I'm really feeling about it. See, in March we found out that we were expecting another baby. I was elated. I'd been wanting a sibling for Rachel for quite some time. At Rachel's birthday party in April we surprised our family by giving Rachel a "Big Sister" t-shirt to share our news. Everyone was thrilled. I couldn't wait to announce it to the world, but was waiting until we saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound, just to make sure everything was okay.

But then almost three weeks ago at our first ultrasound, instead of bringing home a picture of our little miracle, as we had expected to do, we left with nothing but questions and tears. I was pregnant, alright, but the gestational sac was empty. No baby. No heartbeat. The doctor said it could just be too early, and we had gotten the dates mixed up, as far as how far along I was, though I was fairly certain of the dates. So I had some bloodwork done, which came back with positive results, and had to wait a few days to try again to see the baby. It was an excrutiating several days of not knowing whether to grieve or rejoice. At that second ultrasound we still saw nothing. It was a crushing blow. Over the next two weeks I had two more ultrasounds, hoping to find something, but each time the results were the same. It was not a viable pregnancy, and I would miscarry. It was a grueling two weeks of uncertainty, fear, and tears.

Meanwhile, my body still thought it was pregnant, so I couldn't fit in my clothes, still felt nauseous, still was repulsed by food, so that I couldn't find much of anything I wanted to eat, and I was still waking up multiple times a night to use the bathroom. There were constant reminders that I was pregnant, which, though, unpleasant, are usually made bearable by the joy of a coming baby, but which only brought pain to me and made it impossible to focus on much else.

Thankfully the distraction of Rachel helped me get through each day. She makes me laugh out loud multiple times a day, and no matter how sad I am, she helps to get me out of my pit of self pity.

Though I finally did have some signs of a miscarriage, I didn't miscarry on my own and I had to have surgery this past Friday. It's finally over now, and I can begin to move on from here. December 4th, my due date, will be hard. Christmas will be hard, since I was already dreaming of having a new baby this Christmas. But time heals all wounds, and I know that eventually we'll be okay.

I didn't really want to write about this here because I don't really want to talk about it with most people, and this just seems so public (even though I really don't know who in the world reads this, except for a few friends and family members, most of whom already know). I know there's nothing anybody can say to change anything or really make me feel better, even though I know people mean well with the things they say, so I didn't really want to make it public. But it's been rather therapeutic to get it all down in writing, and it's been hard to be "fake" and write about other, happier things, so maybe it's better that I do share here.

So today on Mother's Day I mourn.

I mourn the loss of a sweet baby I'll never know....I'll never know his or her name....never hear him or her call me Mommy...never get to kiss his or her sweet little head.

I mourn the fact that there will only be three stockings hanging from the mantle again this Christmas.

I mourn the fact that even if Rachel does have a sibling someday, which she hopefully will, they'll be far apart in age and likely won't be as close as she could've been with this sibling.

And even though it's not quite so important, I mourn the fact that I've already spent money on maternity clothes that I won't need, a pregnancy journal that I just want to pitch, and have spent significant part of the last three weeks in frustration over the waste of those purchases.


And yet I rejoice, too.

I rejoice that I have a daughter and do get to celebrate Mother's Day with her. She fills my heart with joy. I'm sad for those who I know who don't have that blessing, though they'd long to.

I rejoice that the doctor has given us every reason to believe that we can have more children without any problems.

I rejoice that my family and friends love me and have rallied around me in my sadness.

I rejoice that even though I'm sad, I don't understand, and I'll never know why this happened, God has given me peace to know that His plans for me and our family are good.

So I choose to say, "Happy Mother's Day," and enjoy my sweet daughter today, even though a piece of me wants to crawl into a hole for awhile and lick my wounds.

Happy Mother's Day....to my wonderful mom, to my dear friends who are mothers, and to me!


I may not get to be a Mommy again in December, but I'm still a Mommy to this baby.....

And I'm so thankful that she's mine.

more Thomas

My brother sent me some more Thomas pictures.....enjoy!

marriage

Rachel's been talking a lot in the last few days about getting married.

Yes, at age three.

(Because she knows it involves wearing a beautiful princess-like gown and getting a ring, both things that she enjoys!)

A month or two ago she spotted our wedding picture on top of our piano. She'd seen this picture countless times and commented on the fact that Mommy and Daddy were in the picture, but this particular time she was astonished as she gushed, "MOMMY! You wearing a big, beautiful dress!" So we talked about the fact that when ladies get married they usually wear a pretty white dress. Some other time she noticed my wedding ring and asked me about it. I told her that Daddy gave it to me when we got married to show everyone that we are married to each other.

Then a couple of weeks ago when we went to the conservatory there was a wedding about to take place. Rachel saw the bride getting some pictures taken and loved seeing her "big, beautiful dress." She saw the flowers on the tables and I told her that after the wedding people will sit down at the pretty tables and have a fancy dinner. Later that day she told me that when she's a grown up she's going to get married and wear a beautiful dress and sit down with flowers at a pretty table and eat a fancy dinner.

So yesterday she came up to me in her Cinderella gown (which she wears pretty much every waking moment, asking every five minutes, "How do I wook, Mommy?") and said,

"Goodbye, Mommy. I going to get mah-wied."
I asked her who she was going to marry.
"The man," she answered.
"What man?" I asked.
"I mah-wie Daddy!" she announced. "Daddy put on his man clothes and I wear my bootiful dwess and we get mah-wied!"
"But Mommy's already married to Daddy," I told her.
She thought about that a minute and with a smile she said, "I mah-wie Daddy, you mah-wie Daddy, we all mah-wied TOGEVER! Mommy, Daddy AND Rachel!"
She thought it was the perfect solution.

I told her that when people get married there are only two people, a man and a woman. She thought another minute and decided, "Okay, I get mah-wied when I'm a grown up."

Yes, please. When you're a grown up. (But even then it'll be too soon.) Just stay three for awhile, okay??