Bison Ranch

We finally got to go and do something fun away from home as a family. We have hardly been able to travel with David because he was never able to leave his Arizona Milkman business. Now that he is working for University of Phoenix he gets days off, yiiiipppppeeee!!! We are all very excited to have him with us. I traded photography business with someone who owned a cabin in Overguaard, AZ. It took us almost 3 hours to get there and we were soooo excited to be in the mountains.

The cabin was very nice. It had two bedrooms and two bathrooms with a nice warm fire place. We ran the fire place when ever we were inside. We loved it. It was only about 50 degrees during the day and it got into the 20's at night, burrrr...

There were domino's in the cabin and the kids loved building with them. They never actually played the game:)

After we unpacked, the kids were DYING to go fishing in the pond that was located near the cabin. David got the polls all ready...

The water was low and it was cold but the kids were determined.

Alison actually got a nibble, but we had no luck.

They loved casting and then reeling in the hook. They still had a great time, but it would have been awesome if we'd caught a fish:)

Jayden tried to be very patient. He did a pretty good job.



David worked with each of the kids, teaching them how to cast and reel in properly.

Hahahaha, this picture makes me laugh. Emma was letting her line sit and apparently she was getting tired/bored. She REALLY wanted to catch a fish. Soon the sun went down and we turned into popsicles so we headed back to the cabin for dinner....Taco Soup.

The next day we headed out for some adventure. After talking with the locals we decided to go hiking and exploring. We had to first visit the Bison at Bison Ranch. This was the first time my kids had ever seen one.

He was very big and moody. David got close to the fence and he charged at him:)

What a happy family!!

Our next stop was a frozen stream. David and the kids are actually standing on the stream. The kids were fascinated by the ice and they loved sliding on it.

We then found a dead coyote. My kids found this very interesting and they stood around discussing how they thought it died.

We drove to another trail head to go and find some pictographs that were left by Native Americans some 800 to 2000 years ago.

We got a little lost looking for the pictographs, but we enjoyed the view.

Soon we realized that we had walked right past them. We just had to look up.

Doesn't he look like an explorer?

Our next stop had more snow. The kids LOVED it. The snow was only in patches, but the kids were very happy with that. Sadie was excited to make a snow angel:)

Emma wanted to make a snowman. She did a great job.

We walked a little further and we found more frozen water.

Some water was deeper and we enjoyed throwing rocks at it to see if it would break the ice. After the rocks kept bouncing off, I threw in a large piece of wood. Pretty cool huh....

We put the camera on a tree stump and pressed the timer. Nothing like a family picture in the woods.

We were searching for a sacred rock structure/cave left by the Native Americans when we ran across this. Yuck...actually...ahhhhhhhh. Where is the animal that did this to the deer? I didn't want to meet it. Of course the kids asked a lot of questions about the deer and speculated what could have happened.

We finally found what we were looking for. It was up on the side of the mountain.

We also found more pictographs here.

Then we spotted a beehive. We thought it was real cool to actually see the honey comb.

We all had a great time hiking the trails. We sure miss camping. We haven't been in over 3 years. Does anyone know what happened to our tent? We've moved twice and can't find it:)

We stopped to have a good snow ball fight.

Daddy was out numbered.

Do you like the red neck snow slide...a plastic trash bag. We found a little hill at our next stop and this was all we had in the car to slide on:)

It doesn't take much to bring a smile on their faces.

WATCH OUT DOWN BLOW....

After we got done sliding, David and the girls went to explore more. Jayden had fallen asleep in the car so I went to sit with him. I heard David start to yell in the distance, but that wasn't too unusual. Then Sadie ran to me and yelled, "Ali fell in the frozen water." Next thing I knew, I saw David walking Alison up to the car, all soaking wet.

We stripped off her wet clothes and wrapped her up in the extra sweaters and jackets in the car and turned the heater on full blast. She was embarrassed and shooken up. David took me back to the crime scene to explain what had happened.

I guess Alison had reached over to press down on the ice to see how thick it was. She pressed harder and harder until the ice gave way. By that point she was top heavy and fell forward. She was able to step forward so her head didn't go under water. She kept reaching forward, breaking the ice in front of her, until the ice was thick enough to climb on.

She got to the middle of the stream, with the water waist deep when she was able to climb up on the ice. She stood up and David started yelling, "Lay down, Lay down." Just as she started to squat the ice broke and she fell through. She managed to swim toward the side and David stepped in the water to pull her out. She doesn't remember ever touching the bottom, but everything happened so fast. She was never in horrible harm, but it sure scared her and her sisters. It was a good lesson to learn.

David is reinacting what she did. What a goof!

Luckily that was going to be our last stop of the day anyways. We drove back to the cabin to put Alison in a warm bath and to eat dinner. Emma was very worried about Alison and even cried. I love to see my kids care so much for each other. Alison didn't like talking about the whole inncodent that night, but the next day we could all laugh about it.

In fact on the way home...we pointed out every ICE sign there was. We pretended that Alison was terrified of any kind of ice...even the ice in a drink. I'm so glad that we can all be silly and have fun. We learned a lot, but we were still able to turn it into something we could all laugh about. We hope to return again sometime...