Saturday, May 4, 2024

APRIL 2024

Happy Birthday Month to these two!!!

They completed the Little Library

And it's all ready for visitors!

We even got our 'official' plaque

We had also had the final niece (and her family) from Virginia come stay with us for a weekend

We love having cute little houseguests :)

We also took our bikes out for our first 2024 bike ride

And played lots of card games

We had to wait until the last week, but finally...it was BIRTHDAY TIME
Our little flower turned 13 and now we live we a teenager :)





And she even made us breakfast, so having a teenager seems pretty great :)

Next it was onto vacation!!!
Rose and I got some fresh toes...

We filled our bellies with our final meal before leaving Pennsylvania 

Found some neat airport things

And then we were off!!

And just for memories here is Rose at age 6 on her very first flight

And then we filled our bellies with more burgers as our first meal in Nevada!!

Saturday we started on our first adventure: Death Valley National Park
Rose was a terrific hiker climbing sand dunes and even spotted a dust devil.  



We also learned about borax mining

We traveled to the lowest place in North America

The Salt Flats are 282 feet below sea level and we found some water to splash our toes in

There a sign about 1/2 way up the rocks showing where sea level would be

We were really lucky that they had recently been some rain and so there were flowers and green plants everywhere

Look at that view :)

We also saw some wildlife

And Rose became a Junior Ranger!

We had a great time and I hope Justin enjoyed his birthday :)

We stayed a little after dark to see the night sky...this picture doesn't nearly show all the stars we could see, is was amazing.

After a little sleep we were off again, this time to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. This was kind of a happy accident. I had thought we could do something else, but this place is amazing. Honestly I could just picture dinosaurs walking around this place, it felt ancient. 








Rose also follows 'the Las Vegas Donut Lady' and really wanted to get some of her donuts. 
They did not disappoint!!

In the afternoon we took a tour of the Hoover Dam.



That evening we went out to the best dinner of vacation. I had amazing lasagna, tiramisu, and wine!!

We got up early the next morning to head down the Colorado River on a kayak tour. 



We saw a very large Blue Heron

And had some duck friends

But all the Bighorn Sheep were too shy to come out....

In the afternoon we went into Las Vegas

We rode the Wheel and saw the Sphere 


We walked thru the Flamingo

And saw their flamingos

We got to the Bellagio and Rose enjoyed the fountain show 

And we went to the M&M Store

And Coke-a-Cola Store

We were not prepared for how large Las Vegas is and we did so much walking thru casinos. Rose and I have now been in the same number of casinos :) We did enjoy checking out all the bathrooms and agreed that Paris was the best. 

For our final day we took a road trip to Utah and visited Zion National Park.

Since Zion is so popular they have a tram system to get around.

We did the riverwalk hike out to the narrows

This has been a bucket list park for me and I am glad to share it with my family. 

And we adopted this little guy since I didn't get to see any Bighorn Sheep, we adopted one :) 

Then vacation was over...so we'll end the month with some of the cute Rose pictures I get from Justin when he drops her off for school







 

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