Hiking Adams Canyon

The other day I gave Max the option of going swimming or hiking and he chose hiking. So we packed up and drove to Adams Canyon, a great little hike not to far from our house. On the way there, Max kept telling me how excited he was. The conversation went something like this;

Max: "I'm so excited to go hiking mom! Are you excited to go hiking mom?"

Mom: "I am excited to go hiking Max! I love hiking! Do you love hiking?"

Max: "I love (nub) hiking mom!"

He was giggling and dancing in his seat. Of course when we actually started hiking he wasn't to interested. We had only walked about 100 yeards when he started asking me for the elevator "alligator". I tried to explain to him that there are no elevators on the mountain. He had it in his head that he was getting a ride up and he is one stubborn boy, so of course I ended up carrying him.
The trail starts off with maybe 1/2 mile of switchbacks. They are west facing so its hot and sandy and hot. Once we got to the top of the switchbacks Max wanted to walk so we hiked and hiked. He was a champ. We made it about half way up the trail and he loved it. He just held my hand and walked, climbed, jumped and ran. We had a great time! We played in the river, looked for deer, saw lizards and hornets, spiders and ladybugs. It was a great hike!
I love this picture
Playing on this rock
Cute
Relaxing
Snack Time
Mom and Max

The Dark Ages

So, I don't know if you've noticed but I haven't really posted anything since the end of April. I think that was a while ago. I swear I have a good reason. May was really busy. June was ridiculous, let me just say that Nate spent a total of 4 nights at our house in June. July was the recovery from June and then my computer died. And I mean dead, it wouldn't turn on. I figured that wasn't going to be an easy fix. I put off taking it in for a while because I didn't want to know how bad it was. It was bad. Apparently there is a reason for those power strips. My computer had a power surge and fried the whole thing, the power source, the motherboard and the hard drive. I basically had to get a whole new computer. Which is fine because it was under warranty until the end of August. That was really close. Its not fine because I, like an idiot, didn't back up any of my pictures. They are all on the fried hard drive. Fortunately the guy that fixed the computer thinks the data is recoverable, unfortunately it is going to cost a lot of money. So the moral of the story is A): back up all of your important information. B): Put your computer and other essential electronic devices on a power strip. I've definitely learned my lesson.

Anyway, I'm back from the dark ages of no computer and hopefully soon I will have some pictures to post. :) Luckily, I had never taken the time to delete pictures off my camera so I still have all of the pictures from the first of June until now ( roughly 1000 pics) on my camera.

Happy 27th Birthday

So it was my birthday on Saturday April 25th. I share my birthday with one of my best friends that I have known since I was 13, April. We decided to go away for a girls weekend with some girls we grew up with. My parents have a condo in St. George they let us use. Thanks so much Mom and Dad!

So we left friday afternoon. Four of us live pretty close to each other (April, Brittany, Alyson and me)so we all drove down together. Katie lives in St. George so she just came over. Rachel lives in L.A., she flew to Vegas and rented a car. Thanks everyone for making time in your busy schedules for some fun girl time. We had a blast. We went to dinner, went shopping, stayed up all night (really until 5 am) talking and laughing. Saturday we woke up and some of us exercised while Aly made breakfast for us. Thanks Aly, it was delicious. Then we all went to see Grafton Ghost Town about 40 minutes outside of St. George. Apparently it was where some of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed. It was really pretty. We had a good time. After that we stopped at a little souvenir shop on the way home and looked around for a while. We stopped on our way into St. George and did a little shopping at the outlet mall. Then it was time for dinner. We went to Benja Thai and Sushi. It was delicious. We all enjoyed it thoroughly, even Britt who didn't like Sushi until then. She had just never had good sushi. They even brought us out a birthday dessert of sticky rice with fresh mango's and a sweet sauce over the top. It was really yummy. Then of course it was back to the condo to play games, talk, laugh and stay up all night (only until 3am). We drove home sunday. It was a blast. Thanks for a great Birthday weekend getaway girls. Thanks for the many years of friendship and here's to many more!

While the weekend was great, I was also very excited to come home. Nate had been in Chicago the week before. He came home friday at 11:30am and I left around 1pm. So we didn't get a whole lot of time together. I got home sunday around 5:30pm and he left for Chicago again monday morning at 9:30am. That was really hard. I felt bad just sitting on the couch crying as he walked out the door but it was all I could do. So he is home now and he doesn't have to leave again until June so HOORAY! He is so great for letting me get a way for the weekend, even when it cut into our time together. It was a much needed break. Thank you so much Nate. I love you!
All of us Girls
Lounging on the couch bed after a long day of travel
Aly, April and baby boy
Katie and Rachel haven't seen each other in 5 years
Friends
Grafton Ghost town church
reading the sign
this lady was born and died on the same day, it also happens to be Katie's birthday
he and his wife were killed by Indians
random tractor
Its a good thing these two didn't live back then
Walking
April sat on a cactus, YIKES!
She met a new guy while we were there
He was hitting on us too
Watching a movie
Eating popcorn
Trying to ride in a car that is WAY to small. After I got in I discovered it was broken. I was pretty disappointed.
This guy got a lot of action from us, a kiss from April
a nose pick from Britt
All of us after dinner, it was really delicious! And it converted Britt to Sushi, yeah!

Weekend fun

We have had a very busy April so far and it looks like it is going to stay that way. These pictures are all from Conference Weekend, the first weekend in April. I know it was a while ago and it was probably going to be even longer before I posted anything but Thanks to Juli here it is.

Unfortunately Nate's Grandma passed away on March 30th in the Seattle area. We love you Grandma Bowser! Nate flew up on April 1st and spent a great 5 days with his family. I really wanted to go but just couldn't work it out. Max and I stayed home and missed him a lot.

We were able to have some fun while he was gone so that was good. My brother and his family drove in from South Dakota that weekend and we spent a lot of time with them. Saturday my brother, different brother, blessed his cute little girl. It was very nice. She is so adorable. So we spent the majority of the day with them, doing the blessing, then lunch. My sister in law's mom did an easter egg hunt for all the kids that were there. It was a lot of fun. The kids had a blast. Max didn't get it at first. When he got the concept of finding an egg and putting it in his basket he did great. It took him until the end to figure out that there was candy inside the eggs. He REALLY liked that. After all the eggs were found she brought out a big basket full of toys and let all the kids pick one. There were guns, trucks, coloring books, lots of good stuff and Max picked the glittery baton. Of course, he uses it as a stick and loves it! Oh well, He wouldn't be persuaded to play with anything else.
Saturday night, while all the boys went off to the Priesthood session, all the girls and the kids went to Kangaroo Zoo. Its this great indoor playground made of blow-up toys and slides. The kids LOVED it! We ended up staying for 2.5 hours and Max threw a big fit when we left. He had a blast. He thinks he is a big kid, he just gets in there and makes his way up the stairs and down the slide no matter how many big kids are jumping around and climbing over him. I was a nervous wreck for a while but he does just fine. He is determined but pretty layed back about it, he'll wait his turn. He is such a good kid. Actually this last friday when Nate got home from the airport Max begged us to take him there again. He asked all day long and we ended up taking him again on friday, spoiled little boy! Anyway, it was fun. Enjoy the pics! Hope you all had a great weekend as well.

Random pictures

Happy Daylight Savings! I thought I would celebrate by staying up late and adding some very random pictures to our blog. These are a few of the things we have been doing the last 2 weeks. It was been very busy and very exciting around the Peck house. My youngest brother got his mission call to Columbus, Ohio spanish speaking. He leaves May 2oth. We are very excited for him. Congratulations Rob! My mom took her nursing boards and PASSED!!! We are all very excited and proud of her and all her hard work. Way to keep it up. You are an great nurse and an amazing person. We love you mom! I took Max hiking on the 27th of February, just up Adam's Canyon. He walked all the way up by himself. We only made it to the top of the switch backs, but he had a blast and it was great to get out. The only way I could get him to leave was to tell him we would come back tomorrow with daddy. So we did. Saturday afternoon we went for a family hike. Again, Max walked all the way up (and got carried down) and loved it. We saw lots of animals on saturday. 12 deer ran by about 50 feet from us, some birds, dogs, horses. Max really liked all the animals and wanted to go get the deer. Nate and I had a hard time explaining to him that there was no way we were going to catch up with them. I'm really excited for some warmer weather so we can go hiking more. We also got much needed book shelves. I am so excited. They don't have any books on them yet but I'm working on it. The rest is just some random pictures of Max being his normal adorable self. We have been very busy and having lots of fun. Its been GREAT!