oh how Grand

In the last 2 days we have become that cheezy tv family....but it is sooo much fun :) Today Beau and I took our 5 beautiful children to one of Americans most beautiful places. The Grand Canyon! When we arrived in our tank tops and flip flops we immediately noticed a few things....

1. just because it is Arizona, dont mean its hot...its flippin freeezing

2. it looks just like the pictures, only more breathtaking. almost as if The Creator hand carved it it and hand painted it with a heavenly paintbrush....wait....He Did, they just forgot to put that on the signs :)

3. we have no clue what the heck we are doing!!!!

so begins our day....

We wake at 6am as usual, get all dressed and head to breakfast with 5 hungry little mouths in tow. due to realization number one, we are all sporting nice new overpriced Grand Canyon shirts and will be doing the canyon in style. we look at some maps and viewing sites and see so much info our heads or spinning, we have no clue what is realistic with all 5 kids or how to get anywhere. Thank goodness we found Jared. This Jared did not sport diamonds, but he was just as valuable.....he lives in the Grand Canyon (yes i know, news to me as well, 2000 people make the canyon their home) and he has an adventure bus. Really it was a jeep, but the kids found it much more exciting to ride the adventure bus.

our first stop was the Grand Canyon National Forrest or Kaibob Forrest. Jared taught us we can eat sagebrush and juniper berries, and how to identify trees with pine nuts. If we get lost in the woods now, we are set!!

Eventually we made our way to the canyon. we saw The Battleship, a rock formation that looks just like a ship parked right in the canyon. see pic above. We learned that canyon squirrels love people and will pose for pics, also learned they bite :) The canyon itself is a sight to behold. It looks just like a picture and yet a picture does it no justice. We were perched on the southern rim, and it looks like the north rim is just a few hundred feet away but Jared swore it was twelve miles across. We knew there are plenty of spots without a guard rail and in spite of the dangers we wanted the real canyon experience. Thanks to babywearing 2 kids were secure, keeping the others alive was a mere test of parenting skill. Parker fell off at one point (also see pic above)but managed to climb his way up with a smile. Aside from that we passed with flying colors and all of the fab 5 made it back safely. After 3 hours we said our goodbyes to Jared and his canyon. Thanked him for all the info and water. It couldnt have been more perfect (envision Beau and Courtney high fiving Griswald style sporting uber sunburn and fat grins)

There are some downsides to the Grand Canyon. The food is disgusting. there are 3 resturaunts and we tried em all. BLEH...We were so desperate for tasty treats that we were compelled to eat rattle snake. We can add it to the list of weird kempe eats (reindeer, deer, moose, buffalo, bison, alligator, ostrich, ostrich eggs, emu eggs) but it was by far the nastiest. All kids tried it except paxton whom we now consider our smartest lol. Hope we have better luck at the next gas station.

We are done at the Grand Canyon for now but hopefully someday we will be back. We conclude one adventure only to begin our next, on to Colorado!!!