Family Vaca

A couple months ago my parents were starting to plan their annual summer trip to Arizona (The ONLY people I know that look forward to visiting AZ in the summer). I started thinking, usually when they come to Phoenix they try to go to San Diego for a long weekend. Luckily, this year, it was not only Mom and Dad but my brother Matt as well. So here we go on the first family vacation with my family. We flew in late on a Thursday night..actually I think it was early on Friday morning by time we got in...and met the fam who had driven in earlier that day. We stayed in the Beach Cottages on Pacific Beach and you could hear the roar of the ocean from our room. We spent time relaxing on the beach, walking through Balboa Park, seeing friends and
just hanging out. Sadly, the camera didn't get out too much so here are just a few
pictures.

Snow Camping in May?

This year Melanie's birthday fell over Memorial Day weekend so we decided to escape the heat and go camping in the mountains near Payson. Not only did we escape the heat, but somehow we were also time warped back to January! When we arrived at our camp site it was freezing, rainy and the people setting up camp next to us had to leave behind hundreds of dollars worth of gear further up the Rim because it was buried in four feet of snow! We were indecisive for a while as to whether we should attempt to camp in the cold, especially considering the fire ban that was in effect. (You couldn't have set the forest on fire if you wanted. Everything was soaked!) It seemed the weather was clearing so we decided to try it for at least a night. And as soon as we paid our fees to the camp host, it started hailing and we had to take cover in the truck until there was a short break for us to set up the tent. All in all, we had a great time and were fortunate to enjoy a very rare weekend of fishing in the snow, watching the rain roll off our tent, building makeshift canopies and cooking fish over the fire (once the ban was lifted!). Check out the pictures below to see what Arizona in the winter looks like in May!