We all went over to Kelly and Joe’s house for the 4th of July to celebrate (Dad actually had the day off).  There were several other people from the pool there as well – everyone had a great time.  It was of course Drew’s birthday as well so the boys ended up spending the night. 

Step 1 of Sam’s bed is now complete… about 9 pallets have finally been completely taken apart – took much longer than anticipated.  Also put one of the old tables from the Tie store in Baltimore down in the workshop and converted to a drafting table as well.  🙂

The boys needed some new clothes for the school year and Old Navy had a sale today, so you know Mom was there first thing this morning.  She picked up these pants for Sam not realizing they were skinny jeans.  We think he looks like a Rock star in them, but haven’t decided if they are practical for school or not.  Not sure the photos do him justice though….   🙂

So today was the last day of vacation and we are all glad to be home.   Tonight we actually to get to sleep in our own beds and sleep in as late as we want tomorrow… or at least until Mom gets us up.  On the way home we took our yearly photo on the mountain and we saw a chicken cross the road at one of the rest stops… we assume he just wanted to get to the other side.  

Well it wasn’t Late Night at the Phog (KU Jayhawk analogy), but we did have some fun shooting some hoops after dinner.  Alex ended up staying even later and played with a couple of other boys that showed up.

Yes, believe it or not we drove down to the Mojave National Preserve and went on another hike.  After today, we think the boys may have had enough of hiking though.  Today’s trip was cut a little short because nobody seemed to have strength to go on any farther except for Mom.  The trip took about 2 1/2 hours one way and the boys slept on the way down while Mom got a small cat nap on the way back.  The Mojave National Preserve actually has more sand dunes than the Mojave desert and more Joshua trees than the Joshua Tree Forest.  The only problem is that they also have no roads or at least what we would consider roads.  The areas that were paved were quite rough and then we ended up on some dirt roads (primitive roads) that were so bumpy they actually knocked off the rear view mirror.  Needless to say there weren’t a whole lot of other people out there with us, except for the group of people competing in a bicycle race… they appeared to all leave after the race.  We never made it to “hole in the wall” or the sand dunes because of the rough roads but we did get a short hike in as we were leaving – the entire trail would have led to an abandoned mine had we completed the entire 3 miles.  Other than that we did wander around some other parts of the desert, but it seems that once you have seen one part of the desert you have pretty much seen it all.  Overall we all had another fun day but we think everyone is ready to come home.

You know a picture is worth a thousand words…. well look who we saw on The Strip tonight.  🙂
The quote of the day comes from Alex… “this place makes Greenville look like a Country Club.”

This was the day before the Grand Canyon but we are just getting caught up on posting on the blog.  We took a trip to Sunset Crater just a short drive from Flagstaff and then on to Wuptaki National monument.  These photos are from the volcano.  The last time it erupted was in the 1940’s (only a very minor eruption), but the major eruption was the year 1085.  The first few photos are of the volcano cone and then the other photos are from the nearby 750ft summit that we almost died climbing up from the thin air.  We did bring home a couple of small pieces of lava as a souvenir.