Brrrrring on the Pool

The next morning, I took a chai and a blanket out to the back patio area. The boys took a plunge in their pajamas! It was 50 degrees and the pool is NOT  heated. They all had a great time splashing around in the morning sunshine though :)







After they got dried off and we finished a delicious breakfast, prepared by Mark, we headed to church with our friends--the early service. Which meant we still had time hike the White Tank Mountains before lunch. It was some sort of free regional park admission day, so the trek was free! As we drove in, I recognized the landscape, forever seared in my mind as the place my dad led us "off trail" for some "real hiking" . . . only to come eye to eye with a rattlesnake on a ledge shaking its tail in warning. We all learned to fly that day as dad shouted, "Back on the trail! Back on the trail!" What crazy memories pop up when you least expect them!







Buck checked for rattlers before he hugged the cactus--some people hug trees, others . . . ;)











This was certainly our warmest and sunniest day in Arizona, so it was a good day to look at the petroglyphs along the trail, and to climb up to where the waterfall would be IF it had rained recently (which it hadn't--but was about to!!) Can you spot the petroglyphs on the rocks? Pretty cool how they were carved out, but so mysterious . . . why these pictures? Why these spots? What do they mean? Basically, nobody knows. We encountered a lot of signs that said, "Eh, nobody knows." Ha!



But we do know that we like In-n-Out Burger, so that is where we headed for lunch. Chocolate shake--yesssss! Afterwards, the kids hopped back in the pool--all seven of them are somewhere in the picture below :) Mark made us carnitas for dinner (again, YUM) and then we roasted marshmallows over a duraflame log that night. I'm not sure it is safe to roast marshmallows over a duraflame log, because the 'mallows kind of turned black and sooty, but both of our hosts are nurses, so they wouldn't do anything to harm us, right? :)


The kids hopped back in the hot tub to finish out their super awesome day . . . which included more singing, theatrics, and hilarity than we've been part of in a long time. Of course, the kids loved it! They get along as well with my friends' boys as their mama and I have for decades :) Since Buck and I introduced Mark and Jen all those years ago in California, we're basically family, so the kids are all basically cousins. Pretty much.