Sedona

So when I said that I didn't take any pictures in Flagstaff, I forgot that we took the small detour through Sedona to get to Flagstaff. And of course I took pictures there. Just thought I'd share a few. They are also posted on Picasa with the link under my Pictures list here. Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and wonderful New Year!

Thanksgiving 2009

Thought I better do a quick post about Thanksgiving so that I can try to get caught up on things. The weekend after we came back from the dunes we went to Flagstaff to visit some friends (believe it or not, I didn't take any pictures in Flagstaff) so I didn't get this post up right away. I started the post a while ago (which is why the posting date is not actually correct) and am finally finishing it up. Not much to say other than we had a ton of fun, as always. Thanks to Eric and his family for letting us camp with them. We all had a huge potluck Thanksgiving dinner, almost 40 people total. The riding was great and we especially loved the big group rides. We made it over to Gordon's one day to see the sand drags. The weather was great. It threatened to get ugly Saturday and sprinkled for just a little bit but then the sun came back out. All in all, another great trip to the dunes. Bonus for no wrecks or injuries!


Taking a break during a group ride




Mike deep frying our turkey

Enjoying Thanksgiving dinner

The sand drags were packed... people/cars/bikes as far as the eye could see. The drags were probably about 1/2 mile long!

Mike and Zane making a pass down the drags. They are the two dirt bikes on the right side of the picture.

Lindsey, Diana, Cade and Scott hanging out at the drags.

This is Blake riding behind the Rhino in his super cool, custom wagon.

Blake also loves to get pulled behind the quad on his sled....so cute!

Our Cabo Vacation

OMG! Where did November go?! It's already December and I still haven't posted our vacation to Cabo in October! So here it goes....
We had an amazing time in Cabo. We are so glad that Lonnie and Angie were able to make it, as we had a blast with them. We spent lots of time hanging out at the pool and making full use of the all inclusive food and drinks (okay so maybe more drinks than food). We spent 2 days fishing. The first day was kind of slow, only caught 3 dorado. But the next day was great. We caught 16 (some were catch and release). By 9:30 we had caught 15 of them then we trolled around for Marlin. We saw a couple, but no bites. Caught another dorado on the way back to the marina. The place we booked the fishing through vacuum sealed and froze the fish so that we were able to bring it home. We brought home almost 40 lbs! We'll be eating fish for a while. We had the chef at the hotel cook some up for us Sunday night and it was amazing!
We also spent 2 days diving. The visibility wasn't spectaucular, as the hurricane had just come through, but the diving was still good. Saw lots of stone fish, some eel, a turtle and lots of other fish.


Our first trip down to the beach shortly after arrival. The clouds looked cool and the weather was perfect the whole time. You'd never know a hurricane had threatened our vacation.

Shortly after Angie and Lonnie arrived on Friday we were all at the pool just hanging out

View of the arch from the fishing boat on the way out to catch some big ones!!


Steph's big catch


One of Mike's catches. Love the markings on the dorados.

My cousin Angie started to reel this one in. As you can see she is quite petite, so she wasn't making that much progress. Lonnie helped her reel it in the rest of the way. It was the biggest fish of all the ones we caught.

Lonnie caught this pretty dorado. Another good sized one.

The chef cooked up our fish several ways - fried, baked, grilled - and it was all delicious


Relaxing at the pool with drinks and a good book

Mike on one of our dives

Hanging out at the sports bar, watching football

Celebrating Angie's birthday a little early

Angie and Lonnie helped us celebrate our anniversary with a bottle of champagne.

This is Emmanuel. He was practically our personal bartender. He made these rainbow shots for us. Believe it or not, all of the shots are mixed in the same shaker and as he poured them, each one was a different color. It was so cool - and they were good!

Another bartender inside the dance club made us this version of rainbow shots - also delicious

On our last day we stopped at the fire station and Mike was able to trade a shirt.

The latest...

So, we both survived the race this weekend. We went up to Pinetop on Thursday and did a short ride in the afternoon. Friday we did a 10 mile ride on the loop that made up most of my ride so that I would know what to expect. I wrecked lots of times and have more bruises right now than I have ever had at one time. But the good thing about that was that I didn't wreck at all during the race. The weather Thursday and Friday was gorgeous and sunny. The forecast for Saturday was rain but luckily the weather held out and it was beautiful Saturday too. Thank goodness no repeat of the weather last year. The rest of our group came up on Friday afternoon/evening. Some of us went to lunch at Darbi's on Friday afternoon (love that place) for a great lunch. Saturday morning we all headed out to the race starting area. The guys' race started at 8:30 am and mine started at 9:30 am. I ended up finishing right around the same time as the guys did. So yes, it took the guys only about 1 hour more to do 21 more miles than me! But my only intention was to finish the race, which I did. I started at the back of the pack and any time someone got behind me I pulled over for them to pass because it made me nervous to have them behind me. There were about 5-7 other people that I kind of went back and forth with throughout the race so that made me feel good that I was able to keep up with a couple people. I was pretty worried at the start of the race because it took about 2 miles for my legs to warm up and stop feeling awful. I was so excited to finish! It felt like such an accomplishment. The guys all did great in their race. JC finished first (in under 4 hours I believe) of our guys. Then Eric, Jeff, Mike and Scott. I crossed the finish line between Mike and Scott. I was glad that Mike got to see me finish because I got to see him finish last year. Kristin (JC's girlfriend) and Rhonda (Jeff's wife) were our photographers since I was racing. So glad they got lots of pictures for me...scrapbook pages to come. Since the weather was so nice this year we all got to hang out after the race at the start/finish area. We hung out and just relaxed, recapped about the race and drank beer. Saturday night we all went out to eat at a great Mexican place. Sunday morning we just headed home. We would have done some sight seeing with the fall leaves and everything but our truck was having issues so we thought we should just get home. Some other time we will go back to just sight see and hang out. The area is so beautiful!
In other news, we put our house on the market last week. We are just going to see what happens since the market is so crappy. But I just want to be able to sell it so that we have the freedom to buy a bigger house before the market goes too high again. Now that everything is finished it's really nice. Kind of sad to see the realty sign in the front yard. Lots of memories and hard work have gone into this house. Patience with be the key...
Saturday we leave for Rocky Point with JC and Kristin for 4 days. Then back for a little over a week and then off to Cabo!!! Hoping to get a tan started in Rocky Point so that I don't get too fried in Cabo.
Here are some pictures from last weekend. I also put them in Picasa so they are on the link on the sidebar where our pictures are. I also took a disposable camera that I haven't gotten developed yet that I think will have some good pics on it so I will add those later.


Scott, Mike and Eric ready to start the 37 mile race

Steph waiting to start the 16 mile race

Mike coming in to aid station 3. Only 11 miles to go...

JC crosses the finish line

Mike crosses the finish line

Mike, Eric, JC and Jeff after the race

Steph crosses the finish line

So happy to be done and so proud of each other!

Haning out after the race

And some pictures of the awesome sunset we had back at home Sunday night...

PROGRESS

Well, we are getting closer to finishing all the projects on the house so that we can put it up for sale. I'm kind of sad that we are doing all this hard work and making the house nicer and then we will be selling it (hopefully). But I really hope that we can sell it and find something bigger and better. Last weekend we put rock in the backyard. Most of the yard was dirt and it was really too much dirt to do much landscaping with it. So we did rock were all the dirt was. Plus we have a little section of fake grass at the edge of the patio. We rented a Bobcat through my dad's work and it made the job so incredibly fast. We moved 10 tons of rock in just a couple of hours. I don't really have any "before" pictures of the yard, but you can see all the dirt area in the pictures of Mike in the Bobcat.



Here are a few pictures of the yard now.

We built this shed and did the tree wells to match the patio/porch. The small brown thing is the dog house. The small patch of grass right in front of the shed is just temporary. The dogs like to lay there so we are leaving there until we list the house.
There used to be a chain link fence in the back and we had the wall put in. Mike built the gates for the yard. One big one for the back (seen here) that leads to the alley and two small gates on either side of the house facing the front yard.
We built this porch and patio. There used to be 2 sliding glass doors on the back and we made the one into a window (on the right) and put a new slider on the left (did all that a couple years ago). Mike built all the wrought iron for the windows and doors. The big water tank on the left is our make shift pond where our goldfish and koi are until we get a big house and can build a pond.


Wednesday we are going to stucco the garage. Then all that will be left is to put rock in the front yard and Mike wants to pull up the asphalt driveway and pour concrete. Everything is looking nice around here. The end is finally in sight. In other news, we went for a mountain bike ride on Saturday and I wrecked and got a big bruise on my hip. My new bike has clip-in pedals and I didn't get unclipped in time and fell over. Luckily it was in a nice dirt spot with no cactus or rocks. Then we went again today and rode 13.3 miles. That is the most I have ever ridden. We are trying to get ready for the mountain bike race in October. My race is 16.2 miles long and it will be way harder than the trails I ride here. I'm just hoping to finish the race. Mike is doing the 35 mile race again and a bunch of the guys from his work are doing it this year.