Inaugurals.....

 I have accomplished a lot in the last two weeks- it's been good!  I've been bugging mom and dad for awhile to take me to the Grand Canyon.  I keep saying I'm the only kid in my class never to have been.  They keep reminding me that I've been twice already- once when I was three and once when mom was 3 months pregnant with me.  That time, apparently I even hiked from the North Rim to the South Rim.  I don't remember any of it though so I needed to go again.  We took the RV up and stayed in the South Rim RV park and it turned out to be pretty nice.  We spent Thursday walking along the rim and mom and dad spent the time telling me to be very careful because people die every year falling off the edge.  By the time we were done, I was almost too afraid to hike because I was convinced I'd be the next person off the edge.

On Friday, we got up sort of early and headed out for our big hike.  We had originally planned on camping overnight down at Indian Garden but there weren't any permits left so we just did a massively huge day hike.  We took Bright Angel down in record time.

We made it down in record time and spent awhile enjoying a relaxing lunch and kicking our shoes off.

 We finally started heading back up and that took a little mental and physical energy on my part.  I learned the huge importance of using the rest stop potties whether I needed to or not.  It isn't so much fun to really have to pee in the last mile of the hike.  Not to many places for privacy but we made something work.  Thankfully.  So overall, it was a 10 mile round trip hike and considering I have never really hiked, I rocked it.  But as the signs posted everywhere said- Going down is optional, going up is mandatory.

This past weekend, mom and I joined dad for an afternoon of golf.  This was my and mom's first trip out onto a real golf course.  Let's just the scenery was really pretty but if it were a baseball game, mom would have struck out swinging at every hole.  Let's call it a learning experience.....

Sunday has been a rainy, relaxing day.  Mom tried her hand at making English Muffins and they turned pretty good but it took a lot time.  Definitely easier to buy them!

So, to add to our animal kingdom here, we have resident squirrels.  We noticed that the bricks on our beautiful patio were collapsing in different spots do to something tunneling under.  Dad said up our trusty wildlife camera and we caught pictures of two squirrels frolicking in our backyard, just mocking us.  We were planning on trapping and relocating them but figured they probably have babies in their little den and we didn't want to be responsible for breaking up the family unit.  We'll just have to wait until we have 14 babies running around to capture them....