Week of Celebrations

This last week was a week of celebrations for the Gwynn family.

On June 30th my mom celebrated her very special 80th birthday. I was so, so sad that I wasn't able to be there with her but she had a lovely day with Roy, Paul, Juan and Sam. I stole this cropped pic from Paul's Facebook page and think she looks so beautiful in it.
I can't even begin to express what my mother means to me. Some of my earliest memories are of her encouraging me to do anything I wanted to do, and the love and support she's given me throughout the years, especially during my worst moments have been more than I could have asked for.
Mom, if you're having a good day and are able to get on the internet and see this blog (Ha ha!!), I want you to know how much I love you. You have been an inspiration to me and have helped me to be who I am today.

The following day, July 1st, was our granddaughter Katelynn's 7th birthday and we all got together to celebrate that and Independence Day as most of the kids have Monday's off work but have to work Thursday. It was great to have everyone there, but boy, was I tired by the end of it.

Cousins!!!

Joshua age 11 weeks with his Aunt Heather. He is so cute and getting so big...almost 12lbs last week!

The lovebirds. Married 6 months! Aaahhh!

Daniel was so busy at the bbq while we were all enjoying ourselves inside. It was super, super hot outside anyway, but to be cooking as well! 

Not sure if the toothless birthday girl can smile any bigger. (Time to get her hair cut ready for school I think.)

Big cheesy grins run in the family. Is that chocolate I see around your mouth Christopher?

Joshua loves to smile and laugh at his mammy!

Let the eating begin!

 We really wanted to do fireworks, but technically its illegal on July 1st, so we stuck to lots of big sparklers instead. Even the big kids had fun!

So that's 3 celebrations, right? Well there was another one that was spent very, very quietly at home without fuss or drama. On July 4th Brent and I celebrated 32 years of marriage. I can hardly believe how time has flown by. We were 18 when we met and thought that anyone who was 30 was an old fogie, and now look at us. Anyway, we have our moments, but we're still very much in love, so that's saying something after all these years. Happy Anniversary sweetheart!

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Vacation Day 3

So far today I have planted my Provence lavender, got Brent to put up the flagpole ready for next week and attach my weather beaten wooden US flag to the wall next to the front door. We worked on and off in the garage today reorganizing cabinets and stuff, but it was way to hot and so I went inside, read a book and took a nice long nap. Just what I needed. I don't really feel like doing anything more and so I won't!

The Ride from Show Low

Brent and I have always loved looking at the countryside and Arizona is no different. I remember the first time I went through the mountains here and saw the rugged beauty of it, I was overwhelmed. I still am. It's very beautiful, but very harsh.
On the ride back from Show Low today, I took a few photos. The first three just show the trees that live in the cooler climes here in the north.

Rocks covered by trees.

Can you see the old rusted car at the bottom of the photo? I zoomed in pretty good to get this shot as the car was a few hundred feet down this ravine. Who knows whether it was pushed down there or was as a result of an accident. Scary stuff.

I love the way you can see the vertical layers on this rock.

Brent has a thing about caves. He's always looking to see if he can spot them, and here are some beauties.

Lovely view here. You could actually get down among these rocks here and Brent did, but I promised I wouldn't post the pictures! Wink, wink!

I believe this is the Salt River which will eventually end up running through Mesa and into Tempe.

And a zoom in of the above shot.

The Arizona Lavender Festival

The weather forecast today for Phoenix was 119F and so Brent and I decided to skip the heat and travel about 187 miles north east to go to the Arizona Lavender Festival. That's a very long drive, I hear you say. Well, it is, but we have been otherwise occupied for a few years now and haven't really been out of town, so we enjoyed the ride.

We arrived at the Red Rock Ranch at about 10am and the weather was notably cooler.

We went to the gift shop first which can be seen to the far left of this house and we scooped up some 

lavender plants (complete with Yum Yum fertilizer), some essential oil, a cooking with lavender cookbook and a very pretty lavender mug with built in infuser. There were tons of people crammed in there as a cooking demonstration was about to begin, but we decided we already had our book, so we headed on outside.

Love this closeup of the door, it looks so pretty.

This picture is of the side of the house and it just looks so neat with those trees in front of it, rather like a bit of Provence.

Here's some close ups of the lavender bushes.

This is a field where you could go and pick your own lavender. I chose to buy my own plants and hopefully I'll be picking my own next year! 

A lavender field with fantastic shaped red rocks in the background.

This is one of the experimental sections where they grow different types of lavender and see how they come on. The plants were quite tiny. The owner, Mike Teeple, came out and gave a talk about how he bought the land 22 years ago and really, accidentally stumbled on how well lavender grew here at this high altitude. They have some of the best and purest lavender in the world here and I bought nine plants in all, a mixture of Provence and Grosso, so lets hope I don't kill them off!

For more information, go to http://redrockfarms.com/

What happened in May?

Christopher turned 5 and got a brand new bike and scary shark bike helmet!

Joshua kept on growing. He developed a nasty rash on his face. The doctor didn't know what it was, but it's gone now.

Katelynn continued to love to eat donuts and Sophie loved  to wait for any leftovers! We also continued to paint the house. This is the kitchen in its before state!

Katelynn got lazy on a trip to Target. Poor Granddad!

Joshua enjoyed snuggles with Granddad.

Cousin Danielle came to visit and loved holding baby Joshua.