Nay, I could not bear to eat another leg of fowl!

HUZZAH!!!  If I had more time, I would write this whole post using Old Englilsh terminology – but I don’t.  Instead, I googled some phrases and picked one for my title.  “Nay, I could not bear to eat another leg of fowl” made me think of my husband, see photo, right.

Correct, good sir, this weekend we went to thy Renaissance Fair and it was wonderful.  Now, we love going to different festivals and events.  That’s actually one of my favorite things about living here, there’s just always something cool going on.  The Renaissance Fair however, takes it to a whole new level.   It’s not just a weekend event, it’s a lifestyle.    Watch out, because if we ever win the lottery, we might just pack up and travel around the country immersing ourselves in the fine culture that is the Renaissance Fair.  We would bring Jon, Ali and their girls along too.  Maybe we would start a little Renaissance commune…all we would need would be some turkey legs and ye old ATM.  The possibilities are endless…

Ye Olde Dragon Slide

Pretzel Guy - he reminds me of a character from Beauty and the Beast

This is a guy with a bag on his head?? If you know what this is, please tell me.

They had a nice petting zoo.  Elin liked this guy.

This was a really cool blacksmith demonstration.  Notice the signs in the backround, they do perform marriages.    Sweet.

This guy's "costume" doesn't seem to have much to do with the Renaissance theme, but somehow he still fits in.

This is a picture of Jon riding a giant pony with four little girls.  To any of you that know Jon personally, you're welcome.

And here's another one for good measure.

This is one of my favorites.  Our little Amelia riding the butterfly ride all by herself.  Also, be sure to check out the guy without a shirt in the background.  Classy.

And here's a picture of Elin being Elin.  Chewing on Kitty and reaching for the camera.  That pretty much sums it up.  Olivia was here too, but she took a nice nap so I don't have any Livi pictures!

Fare thee well!!

So I took an extended holiday break…

Elin sleeping through the hike.

…yes, yes, I know the holiday season ended almost 6 weeks ago.  What can I say, other than I just got out of the habit of blogging.  I’m going to try to do better, but no promises. 

I want to write today about our new family hobby:  hiking!  Yep, we found a baby-hiker-backpack-contraption on Craigslist and hit the old dusty (and rocky and sometimes steep) trails.  I’m really proud of us because for the past two weekends we’ve ventured out to explore the mountains that we admire every day.  My major turning point was when I realized that hiking is just walking.  To me, the term “hiking” always sounded completely intimidating.  It meant scaling boulders and shuffling along the edges of steep cliffs, until I realized that it could also just mean walking.  You don’t have to start with the cliff shuffling, you can work up to that.  After two weekends, we’re not quite to the Grand Canyon North Rim to South Rim hike yet, but here’s where we are and I’m really proud of it.

Week 1:  Pima Canyon  to the Dam – 6.4 miles round trip – 850’ elevation change – approx. 3.25 hours

Week 2:  Seven Falls – 8.2 miles round trip – 650’ elevation change – approx. 4.25 hours

I put the arrow here to point out the people to give a sense of scale.

I swear we didn't plan on matching.  We're not "that couple".