My apologies for the lack of recent updates! December has been a busy month for us. One of the highlights was getting to spend a weekend with our friends Tommy and Tracy and their kids at Tracy's parents' cabin in Overgaard. This was the first time either of us had really been to the Mogollon Rim, and it was beautiful. The cabin was as cozy as could be, and they even had a Christmas tree and Christmas lights up. I used to picture a cabin as pretty much a one-room little building with a fireplace where you sleep on the floor in sleeping bags, so I was quite surprised to find out that this was more like staying at a bed & breakfast with a full kitchen, two bedrooms and a loft, and two full bathrooms!
We arrived on a Friday night and stayed through Sunday morning. On Saturday the kids wanted to go sledding so we drove out to the White Mountains to the Sunrise ski resort (which was not yet open for the season) and found some small hills for sledding. Todd enjoyed pulling the kids around on their sleds and I enjoyed staying warm in the winter coat my friend Cathy let me borrow since all our winter clothes are in storage! We had forgotten what winter weather really feels like. On Saturday night when the kids were saying their prayers before bed, they asked God to send snow. Less than five minutes later it started to snow/sleet and we fell asleep to the sound of the wind howling in the chimney and woke up on Sunday to a blanket of snow outside. It was beautiful and truly felt like we had a little "white Christmas" - Arizona style!
We decided to drive home a different way, so we continued east to Show Low, where they had much more snow than in Overgaard, and Todd was so happy to try out the Yukon's four-wheel drive in the gas station parking lot that hadn't been plowed. :) We headed south from there and the snow quickly disappeared as we reached lower elevations. We drove through the Salt River Canyon which was another first for us. It was a long windy road with lots of switchbacks and a number of rocks that had fallen from the cliffs above. The canyon itself is gorgeous and looks a lot like a mini-Grand Canyon. We'd like to go back sometime in the summer to go white water rafting.
