Snowflake....take TWO

After taking a little hiatus from blogging, I thought I would once again attempt to document our trip to Snowflake in July.  Jesse's father grew up in that little town located in the middle of Arizona.  Every year they have a huge celebration the weekend of July 24th to celebrate when their town was founded as well as Pioneer Day (the day the LDS pioneers arrived in Salt Lake City). Jesse has memories of going to this celebration from the time he was a little boy and remembered the parade, kid races, rodeos, barbeque, and the fireworks.  Somehow in the 8+ years of marriage I have never been able to go up to this celebration due to work, church young women's camp, etc.  This year as we prepared to move across the country, I knew that if I didn't go up it would probably be years before I could make it up to the Pioneer Days Celebration in Snowflake.  So we fit it into our crazy schedules months in advance and were seriously so excited to go.  It definitely did not disappoint; I felt like there was always something to do pretty much at every moment of the day.

{taken at the gas station in Payson on our way to Snowflake.  J and I just got brand new phones and are LOVING all the fun editing options available!  For the moment we have completely abandoned our regular camera in place of the phone cameras....and yes, Miss thing knows how to strut her stuff}

{Eli with all his golden locks}

{Rubba....love the most recent battle wound right?!  Apparently he tried to jump backwards off the diving board at my parents house and didn't clear the board.  He scraped his chin down the board as he fell.  He is such a tough kid and didn't cry when it happened. Jesse freaked me out because he sent me a picture of R right after it happened and I thought he had a huge laceration below his lips.  Luckily no stitches required, just time to heal}

We drove up with our little family on Friday evening and arrived around 8:30/9pm to our hotel.  First thing we did was take the kids swimming at our chlorine infested indoor pool at the hotel.  I was at least glad that all the kids enjoyed themselves. I have to admit that I wasn't too thrilled about their super chilly pool and toxic level of chlorine in the spa. Seriously major gag point.  The next morning it was off to the children's races at the old church chapel on Main street.  It was fun to see all of our kids participate in their age race.  Eli refused to run when they said go {surprise surprise} and instead hit his head in Papa's leg.  Finally when Jesse walked out onto the grass Eli ran over to him.  He was much happier when he found out he got a piece of candy for running :)  Robby did really well, although his age category had so many children crammed in, he really could hardly run.  Afterwards he was a little bummed because he really wanted to win!  Maddie did really well and placed second in her age division and was only beat out by one of the boys.  Afterwards they were all a little confused that there was only ONE race per age division, so we had to have a few of our own on the sidelines to keep the troops happy :)

 {I refused to get all the way into the pool, and luckily with some persuasion Daddy took one for the team and  hopped in the water and played with the bigger kids for awhile}

Robby was showing off his Kung-Fu fighting skills to Nona and Papa

 Mr E absolutely refusing to run across the grass after they said "Go"

 {You can't see Robby very well in the picture, but if you look closely you can see that his hands are already in fists so that he can run "super fast" as he puts it}

{Miss M running with pigtails flying!}

After races, it was time to get ready for the main street parade.  I loved the parade! It was the perfect size for our little family and we all loved how we could sit right on the side of the street to watch.  We also enjoyed having so many family members with us....Nona, Papa, Abby, Joanna, Grandma, Grandpa and of course tons of J's cousins and Aunts/Uncles as well.  Maddie and Robby became experts at running out to collect candy.  My parents decided to come up for the celebration kind of last minute and after driving half the night to get there, they elected to sleep in a little while and came toward the end of the parade.  We were glad they were able to meet up with us at the parade and Grandma was nice enough to buy the children each a popsicle.

 {Miss M and Cody, her "Toronto cousin".  Funny thing is that these two cute kids share the same birthday, Sept 9th.  Cody is exactly one year younger than Maddie.  This fact cracks me up because M is obviously petite for her age and Cody is definitely big for his age}

 {Papa and Eli}

 {R and Abbs}

{the scene on the street during the parade...kids running everywhere to collect their precious goodies}

{Funny story:  Miss M kept dragging her grocery bag of candy on the ground, until it wore a small hole in the bottom.  Her candy kept falling out of the hole but for awhile she didn't realize it.  When she would look down at another piece of candy laying at her feet, her eyes would light up and she got this huge grin on her face as she carefully picked up another treasure and then would tuck it into her "goody bag".  After this scenario repeating for approximately 10 minutes she finally realized that it was just candy that had fallen out of her own bag.  She was pretty upset when she learned this piece of information and quite irritated that other children had also been scooping up some of her candy}

At the end of the parade the kids loved how the fire truck soaked the road with their water hose.  Literally flooded the street, it seriously took about 15 minutes for all the water to head farther down the little hill and aware from our kids feet.  Luckily we walked away with just a few muddy shoes....there were some other kids that ran out and soaked themselves in the water.  Once we were finished at the parade, we walked over to Jesse's cousins house and all kids ran wild in their backyard for awhile.  Sam and Vandee (cousins) bought J's grandparents home after his grandma passed away in 2005.  It has been so fun to see the updates/changes they have done to the place and particularly special to Jesse that someone in the family still owns the place.

We met my parents back at the old chapel grass for an authentic Snowflake barbeque complete with Beef, coleslaw, corn on the cob, rolls and of course watermelon slices.  I am not a beef eater, but the coleslaw and corn on the cob was delicious.  Did I mention the coleslaw?  Probably the best tasting slaw I have ever eaten.  Then it was back to the hotel for naps and relaxation with the children while J and his family went to the Snowflake temple to do some ordinance work.

Late afternoon we headed over to Aunt Ruth's house for an outside dinner eating, horse riding, tramp jumping, cat chasing good time.  Miss M was in heaven with the kitty cats and would carried every cat she could catch around, until they managed to escape her arms. Robby and Eli LOVED the barn in the backyard and took particular pleasure in climbing up the hay stacks and then jumping off onto the floor.  They also ALL loved riding horses.  I think it was the first time for all of them.  The only downer to this dinner was that we found out partway through that Jesse's cousin, Ron, had fallen while hiking earlier in the day and was stuck down in the canyon and waiting for helicopter rescue to come get him out.  It turned out to be this horribly long, scary evening for the family.  They finally managed to get him out early the next morning and he was transported down to Phoenix.  He injured his wrist pretty badly and required multiple surgeries, amputation of several of his fingers but thankfully he is now doing much better and has made it back up to Snowflake as he begins the long healing process.

 {Robby with his Papa}

 {Miss M and Uncle "Bert"}

 Maddie loving on another kitty 

 {Eli and Abbs...gotta love those pucker lips.  He does this whenever you tell him to say cheese}

 {Eli, Abby, and Maddie}

{Picture taking Daddy}

After dinner was complete we headed over to the rodeo.  At this point we were pretty tired and not too enthused about dragging all of the kids to a stadium and expecting them to sit.  I was so glad that we went anyways.  We all had a great time and they had some really neat things to watch: bull riding, calf tying, a musical barrel game, fireworks, etc.  The kids sat well for most of the show and ended up crashing big time in the car.  {Miss M insisted that I did her hair curly for the Rodeo, because at the Parade earlier in the day the Rodeo Queen had lots of curls in her hair and M wanted to "be just like her"}

{cute E at the rodeo wearing daddy's cowboy hat; just makes me want to walk over and give him a squeeze when I look at this pic}

{Grandpa, Robby and Maddie in the stadium at the rodeo}

{another funny/not so funny story:  After the rodeo I walked down to a large construction digger truck per the boys request and Maddie saw a little girl riding a horse.  It was obvious to me that this little girl had grown up around horses and probably been riding them since before she could walk.  M on the other hand didn't realize that and threw a HUGE tantrum because she wanted to ride a horse all by herself as well.  It was almost funny to see her kicking the dirt, stomping, pouting, and spouting off every mean thing she could think of.  She was so tired that when we finally got to the car, she fell asleep with her hand folded across her chest and a pout on her face.  Gotta love that girls spunk right?!}

The next day we took them to church with some of the family and then headed back to the Valley afterwards (the kids were so tired from the weekend that it was a rough sacrament meeting for us)