Steve's Sabbatical

The company that Steve works for gives it's employees a sabbatical every seven years. So this spring Steve got to enjoy 72 straight days without work. What a HUGE blessing!!!! Steve totally deserved it after working there for 14 years, but I should still personally write to Intel to thank them.

My previous two posts already tell about the trips that we took while Steve was off of work - Disneyland, a cabin in Pine, and a cabin in Greer. We took full advantage of the kids' spring break from school to get out of town. But, what those posts did not tell you about was all the great days we had here in town:
*at least 10 hikes at different mountains nearby, with at least 6 different friends and family
*two big hikes with friends up in Sedona and the Grand Canyon
*at least 5 days relaxing at our favorite family park
*many times for Steve to relax on the patio at his favorite coffee shop, reading good books
*countless light saber battles, and times to play with the doll house with Allie
*a huge task of landscaping the backyard
This was a perfect time of year (from mid February to late April) to enjoy living in Arizona. It was absolutely beautiful! Here are some photos of all that fun:

Our first adventure was a not-so-long hike with all four kids. The trail is called Telegraph Pass on the South side of South Mountain. We need to keep doing this, so that we make it farther each time. The whole trail would be 2.4 miles, but I'm guessing we didn't even do a full mile - that's just how it goes with 7, 6, 5, and 3-year-olds along.

This is an awesome spot on South Mountain. It is on the National Trail. The trail goes on and on for like 15 miles, but we usually use this spot as our turn-around spot. We call it "Fat Man's Pass", but, in reality, a fat man would have to take the longer pass around these huge rocks. Everyone we know has fit through just fine.

This is a cool photo that Steve took on his journey down the West Fork Trail in Oak Creek Canyon with two other guys. They also did a huge hike down and up the Grand Canyon.

I have lived here almost my whole life, and I have never climbed Camelback Mountain, until now! We did the Echo Canyon Summit Trail, which is 2 and a half miles straight up a huge pile of rocks. It was a great challenge, but it was absolutely wonderful! Zoe loved it too!

Over the past year, we have found a favorite family park. The kids call it the Love Park because of this cool sculpture, but it is actually the Scottsdale Civic Center Park. There's no playground or anything, but just fun stuff to look at and explore.

The two days that I got to go to the park with my gorgeous honey, we enjoyed packing lots of fresh fruit for lunch.

Tommy was next to go to the park with Daddy. He had tons of fun filling up his squirt guns in the fountains, and chasing Daddy. What three-year-old wouldn't love this?

Even Buzz and Woody got to come along. They could keep Tommy entertained for a long time!

Then Allie got to enjoy the day with Daddy at the park. She got a great lunch at the "Red Banana Restaurant", also known as AZ 88. Notice the huge red bananas that hang over the patio - hence the name.

After lunch, Allie got to perform her very own rock concert on this huge stage. Can you spot the little Allie up there on the stage?

Life is good when Daddy has more time available for light saber battles. He has to watch out because Tommy still likes to use the force on him.

And playing Star Wars with all the characters and space ships never gets old to Tommy either. Allie is a Star Wars fan too!

Of course, Steve's sabbatical also included alot of manual labor as well. The pool build was complete the day that Steve started his sabbatical, but that left the yard in shambles, in need of new landscaping. We had never taken on such a task, so it really amazed us to learn how much goes into landscaping a yard. Here, Steve is getting the dirt all flattened out so that we could put grass there.

This photo shows the yard with the landscape complete. It has been great having lots of new pots, plants, gravel, one new tree, lighting and a mist system. And my awesome hubby did it all! Thank you, Honey!

This, along with the previous two posts, sums up our sabbatical. I call it "our" sabbatical because I was totally blessed by it as well!

Great Spring Break

We had a great time over spring break. First, our kids enjoyed some more swimming. They don't seem to mind one bit that the water is cold. It is fun to watch them.


Next, we went to Pine, AZ to stay with our friends at their cabin. Our kids had the best time with their kids. It was absolutely wonderful! Here are the boys playing a game of football. While the little boys looked like they were having a good time, I'm pretty convinced that the big boys (the dads) were having even more fun.

Just about 10 minutes up the hill from Pine, we found a ton of snow. We were not at all prepared for there to be so much snow - we thought we were going to go for a hike, but we just had fun in the snow instead.

My kiddos love hangin' out with Max and Samantha. And we didn't catch a photo of the adults, but we should have just for old time's sake. Adam and Kim are some of our best friends from college and we lived close to each other for a number of years after college. But now we don't live so close, so this time together was awesome!


I couldn't not post this photo of Tommy making his first snow angel ever.

The Tonto Natural Bridge was really cool. The hike down to it was great too.

I'm posting this photo because I love how much joy can be found in a little 6-inch wide stream. This was not necessarily on our agenda for the day, but we spent at least a good 30 minutes jumping over this stream, sending leaves down the stream and thinking about how far they fall after they reach the edge of the bridge. This is what I would call "stopping to smell the flowers", which we don't get to do on any given day.


To my knowledge, this is Macy's first time flying a kite. She was having so much fun doing it. This was another spontaneous activity - loved it!

From Pine, it was on to Greer, where we met up with Steve's parents, and sister, and two nieces. And from the pictures, you will see that we had so much fun playing in the snow there. It was still a foot and a half deep everywhere and more like 4 or 5 feet deep in shady spots. Steve created our own private "bobsled" run, so we took full advantage of it.
We were blessed with about 3 hours of falling snow. The first thing on the agenda was to catch some snow in our mouths.

Next, we had to pack some fresh snow into some perfect snowballs.

Here is Grandpa with 6 of his grandkids. The kids all miss their other 2 cousins - we wish the Catalanos could be in this photo!


Making more snowballs!

Steve and a toboggan full of girls.

Tommy is throwing snowballs too.

Daddy and Macy sledding.

Hailey and Allie kept going down the mountain over and over. They are good buddies.

I just love to watch my family in falling snow.

Flying down the hill.

One day, we went into Springerville to play on a playground. I just love that Allie wanted to play Tic Tac Toe with Grandma. Just so sweet!

Best Bro's!

You can't not roast marshmallows when you're at the cabin - even if it is inside the cabin. They were nice and yummy and sticky.

That pretty well sums up our spring break. It was great!