Hoover Dam

 

We dove right into Summer crossing off our Bucket List.  We have already crossed off Jello Slip and Slide, Lake Havasu, Movie in the park and now the Hoover Dam.

 

We went to Hoover Dam.  On our drive there from Arizona we saw some gorgeous views, right from the car. 

 

We drove over the brand new bridge to get there.  They have built the cement wall so high that you do not have a view of Hoover Dam while driving on it.  But you can walk across it which you will see later on in this post.

After crossing the bridge we drove down to the dam where we had to go through security checkpoints and then we were able to drive across the dam.

Here we are beginning our hike up to the bridge.

We got to the top on the Nevada side.

We began our walk across.  See how high the wall is. The lookout side to the dam is a railing so you can see amazing views.

Like this one. 

Tommy and I were the only ones that walked the entire bridge.  The rest of them got to tired and hot.  It was 103 degrees that day.

It was neat to see the doors carved right into the rock. 

All along the bridge is a picture and sentence about how the bridge was constructed. 

As we left there and headed into Las Vegas, we were able to see Lake Mead.

Clean out day!

 

 

Or should I say clean out Summer.  I am using the Summer as a time to really get on top of things again.  I am going to take it slow.  I still want to be able to enjoy Summer.

But………

 

I have had it.

 

I moved 6 months ago, but man it feels like just barely.  I got rid of a ton of stuff then, I mean a ton.  The people at the thrift store began to know us, because we were dropping off there daily.  

 

I now live in a more open floor plan and I just feel like stuff takes over too quickly.  So I am going to do a major de-cluttering.  I have so much storage space in my house now that it is so easy to just cram something in storage. 

 

I used to de-clutter with a friend.  We would get together and go through each others homes together.  We would have great ideas together and it would be so fun.    I don’t have that luxury here yet.  So I am going to try this one on my own. 

I am going to do it room by room, starting with the front room, because that will be the easiest.  Really I am just going to be sure everything has a place and we aren’t  keeping anything unnecessary in there. 

Next I am going to work on the kitchen.  I am going to be de-cluttering my hot spots, such as there is this one counter where I stick everything paperwork, then I look at it and it is too overwhelming for me to deal with.  I have a file box to file it all in, but really I just get to lazy. The file is in the other room, with a lid on it and a box stacked on it.  I need to figure that out.  Also I am going to move our workboxes downstairs into the kitchen.  It is just to hard to put stuff away for us if they are clear up the stairs and in a closet. 

 

We are also in the process of changing how the workboxes will be set up for Tommy and Emily, Katey’s will pretty much stay the same.  I will post about that when it is ready. 

 

We are also finally getting into a Summer routine schedule.  That is helping out immensely. 

 

So those two rooms are what I will be finishing up this week and then next week I will be moving into the laundry room and storage room.  

 

Are you doing any organizing, de-cluttering for Summer?

Arizona to California along the Colorado River

 

While in Lake Havasu we rented a boat and took it through the channel under The London Bridge, then into Lake Havasu. 

We saw some pretty neat boats and light houses. (well replicas)

 

The views on the lake were great too. 

 

 

We decided to take a boat ride up the Colorado River to Pirate’s Cove in California for lunch.  That being about a 4 hour boat ride each way.  I was sure to pack activities for the kids to do.  Every one stayed pretty entertained.  Tyler and Katey turned to coloring for a while. 

Tyler even spent some time helping Daddy drive the boat.

We did stop for a swim.  Here is Emily drying off and relaxing.  Then out of the blue Emily says “Wait a minute, we left Arizona and we are going to California on the Colorado River?  That is so crazy!”

We saw the sand bar. 

We had some pretzels with us for a snack and I think somebody threw one out of the boat, because the next thing I knew we were being attacked by birds.  Let me tell you that really made for the memories. 

One even landed right on our boat.

We entered Devil’s Elbow, which is a very narrow gorge.  We are used to that seeing as how we live right by Flaming Gorge. 

We knew we were close when we saw a pirate boat.

It was just beautiful there.  It really felt like paradise.

We boated over to the gift shop and saw another pirate ship.

 

We took the Colorado River back home.

But not without stopping to go seashell hunting first.  We got some really big sea shells.  It was a really great time.   

Botanical Cactus Garden and Chocolate Factory Tour

 

We visited a the Botanical Cactus Garden at Ethel M Chocolates.  We learned quite a bit about Cacti.  There are over 300 species there. 

One thing that I thought was really neat was that we saw a Saguaro Skeleton. 

We saw so many neat types of cacti, most we had never seen before.

Katey’s favorite was the Purple Pancake. 

It was really hot that day, we spent less than an hour out there.  We would love to go back when it is cooler. 

 

We also toured the Chocolate factory.