Shopping Day

Yesterday was a slow and easy day.

 We started our time off at the General Store checking email and sending  blog posts. Then we walked around the Grand Canyon Village and did a little shopping.  I am very happy I started going back to Curves when I did because the walking this time has been much easier and my legs have only hurt for a few minutes each morning. 

I was able to get a “I hiked the canyon” sticker and I also found a mule sticker for Mike.  We do not like putting stickers on our cars but the RV seems to be fair game.  It will be kind of like a moving scrapbook of stickers on the back wall.

I told Mike I would like to go to all 58 of the National Parks as a bucket list.  I found a book and it seems we have already been to 6 parks.

Mammoth Cave (before kids)

Hot Springs

Carlsbad Caverns

Petrified Forest

Grand Canyon

Glacier Bay 

There are a couple more that I have to check past scrapbooks to see if we were there.   We are only counting parks we have been to together.  It makes me want to start over and go back just for the bumper stickers (hee hee).  Note to self: look online to see if I can order the stickers for the parks we have already been too.

In other news:
I have been trying to keep a distance from the CTMH convention information but could not stand myself and logged into the site and read all of the exciting news. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love going to convention but this year as an entire family we decided to come to the Grand Canyon so it was my decision not to attend but having limited internet access has really helped me not go crazy that I am not at Disneyland.

Back to the news:
Five new colors – Thistle, Glacier, Flaxen, Canary, and Pixie.  I have not seen the colors yet but I know the names.  :-)
Cricut Cartridge – Artfully Sent
New Card Kits
New Embossing Folders
NEW MARKERS!

That is really all I know for now.   My pre-release catalog will be waiting for me when I get home.  Then I will be able to sit down with a cup of coffee and study the new catalog. 

One nice bonus about a house sitter is I know the catalogs  will not be outside in the cold feeling unloved.  :-)

As a reminder:  The catalog goes LIVE August 1, 2014.  I will no longer be mailing out catalogs.  You are now able to add a single catalog to your online order.  We have never been able to offer that option to customers and I am so excited about it. Why?  Well for a couple of reasons.

1.  You will no longer have to wait on the media mail option that I have used in the past to get your catalog in the mail. The Media Mail can take up to 2 weeks to deliver your catalog once I mailed it.  YOU will no longer be at the mercy of the consultant and when she can make a post office run.
2.  By ordering your catalog online alone or with an order it comes directly from corporate and normally by Fed Ex so not only will you have a fun box of goodies to play with but a beautiful catalog in a very timely fashion.

If you attend Crop Night then you will get your catalog free that night.
July 19, 2014
Time to close this post for now.  I do not want to over stay my welcome in the coffee shop I am getting WiFi from and there is only so much I can drink.
I think today will be a lazy day, My kindle is calling.

Pink Jeep Tours

Yesterday we took the Purple line (bus) into town to check out the sights.  

 The first place we stopped was the Imax theater.  Inside the lobby was the desk for the Pink Jeep Tours (Jenny wants). 

No joke 45 minutes and a $65 lunch of pizza we found ourselves on a 3 hour pink jeep going to see the sights. 

If you go to many “tourist destinations” you will find some sort of tour package some where.  In  Vegas a couple of years ago we did the helicopter tour over the Grand Canyon.  This time we did the Pink Jeeps – the tours are well worth the money because they get you into places you can not go on your own. 

Larry was a great tour guide and we were able to get some fabulous photos from spots we have not been before.  He also gave us some tips on restaurants to stay away from if we did not want to be in the bathroom the rest of the trip.  Very thankful for that.  I know I am doing most of the cooking but I left room for eating out too.

Larry even took my camera to take a cute photo of all of us in the jeep.

After the tour we went back to the campsite to meet up with Bob & Barbara (in laws) they are stealing the kids for the weekend and taking them to Flagstaff to see more family and we went to the Arizona Room for a steak dinner (prime rib in my case) worth writing home about.  It was that good.  But I am not sure I will have another half glass of wine with dinner again this trip.  After the bus dropped us off at the front of the Trailer Village, Mom and I started giggling so hard that we were having a hard time walking and poor Mike could barely keep us standing – that is what happens when I drink a HALF glass of wine.  Mom did did not have anything to drink she was just giggly.

  I think it was time for bed for all of us. 

1 RV 3 Teenagers

It has been a jam packed week here in the Grand Canyon.  The only person in our group with any cell service is Merrick and we have to go to General Store for Wi-Fi but who wants to stay in doors when you are at the Grand Canyon.

Tuesday we decided to take a walk down to the visitor center to start taking the bus system all over the park.  We took a short cut down the middle of the residential area of Trailer Village and ran right into this beauty.

By the way this photo was taken at the beginning of the walk…

 do I look like a tourist?

The walk was longer than Mom could almost handle so after lunch  I took her and Devon back to the camper for a rest and Mike and the girls stayed on the orange line and saw the sights.

On the way back to the camper Mike took this picture of the cutest little elk you ever did see.

When everyone was back at the camper the girls felt the need to decorate “the nest” while Mike and I tried to figure out how to cook since we are not allowed to cook with charcoal due to high fire danger.  BTW did I happen to mention that I brought 100 pounds of charcoal because that is the method we love to cook with while camping.  Wish I had known before we got here that there was a fire and charcoal ban and before anyone says did you ask… I called several times to check conditions before we left and no one mentioned a fire or charcoal ban. 

Wednesday:  I was ready to tackle the Trail of Time.  The South Rim trail from start to finish I think is 13 miles but Mike found the Trail of Time that was only 2 miles from bus stop to bus stop (does he know me or what). 

 What a beautiful walk! 

 For this hike we packed plenty of water and I made sandwiches and snacks to take breaks along the way.   This is when we found out the wildlife can speak English.  Mike wanted to take a water and snack break and said the word “ granola bar” and this guy popped out of the bushes.

This little guy almost crawled in my lap asking for food but he also appeared to be snap trained and backed off when I snapped.  Kaela thought that was cool.

I DID IT!

Now I am going to go to the camp store and buy that sticker that says “ I hiked the Grand Canyon”  I know it is supposed to be for the people that go below the rim but hey I hiked 2 miles on a Grand Canyon trail and that is a big deal for me.  That sticker is going on the back of the RV! 

Thursday: Laundry day! 

 You can not travel with 6 people and not have laundry at some point.  I was uber organized about this venture.  Each kid has their own laundry bag, I have a cart that stays on the camper and about $60 in quarters.  Thank goodness I packed my own laundry supplies because there were about 30 teenagers in the laundry / shower mat trying to get their laundry done and get showers too and  no ADULT in the place to corral these kids.  

Why do I mention this?  Because they were on a 23 day road trip and did NOT know how to do laundry!  I was finally able to snag a couple of washing machines and after finally getting one dryer  I was able to get my 7 loads of laundry done.  But I had to guard that dryer with my mothers life.

It took longer than it should have at a large laundry mat to get our laundry done but afterwards we decided that since it looked like weather was coming in it was a good stay in the camper and do nothing.

The rest of the day was just a rest and watch movies kind of day.

We are loving this vacation so far.   

Hitting The Road

After a year of planning the the time has come for the Great Grand Canyon road trip.  Well let’s re-phrase that… it has been a couple of years in planning but only the last year that it was set in stone. 

It was during out road trip out west to the CTMH convention at Disneyland that the first little hatchling of  a plan started.  Convention that year was wonderful and we were making our way back to Texas via Las Vegas, Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon.  We only planned a couple of days per stop because we had to get home and back to work. 

I was sitting on the back steps of RV after making our hotel reservations so I did some research and found Trailer Village – the only RV park in GC.  The full hook-ups are one $45 a night as opposed to the hotel at $100 a night.

  SCORE!