One Fantastic Birthday!!

Yay! The long overdue post of birthday pictures is finally here!!!

We left our place super early on Friday morning, planning to head up to Blue Ridge Reservoir to swim and kayak the day away. The Reservoir is a very big lake, very deep, big rock walls...very fun.

On the drive up, it absolute poured buckets on us. When we got out of the truck, it was super cold, and some of us were thinking, "Yeah right. No way am I getting in the lake!!" Despite the horrible
unusual and exciting circumstances, we kept driving....but as we got closer to the lake, we were stopped. They told us that due to the rain, there were lots of falling rocks, and Blue Ridge was closed for the day.

Quoting the saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" we kissed the lake goodbye and headed for a nearby creek
 

There was much joking about Arizonans kayaking in puddles :)

When we first got there, it was still raining, so I wasn't able to pull out the big camera till later. These first pics are taken with a friend's waterproof camera.

We tried to see if you could ride double on a kayak....not so much :)

After swimming in the creek and playing around, we were SO COLD!! So we gathered some dry wood and built us a fire!!

I had never played with taking pictures of a fire before, so I was in heaven!!

It was so beautiful!

Dave's toes got a little chilly LOL

We pulled out the hymn books and Bibles and sang and read Psalms for a while. It was such a special time.

I absolutely LOVED how these turned out with the Bible and the fire, but I felt a little self conscious taking pictures while we were reading, so I didn't get too many.

After we thawed out a little, Mom and Jessie headed back to the creek to catch some crawdads and I tagged along with the camera.

 Fried chicken on haystring/dog leashes/whatever-you-can-find works wonders!!

We came home with 132 crawdads that we cooked and ate!!

I took a little time once the rain went away just wandering around taking pictures. It was so beautiful and peaceful...and such a witness to God's incredible creative genius!!!

This is the only picture we have of me on my 19th birthday.....guess that's what happens when you're the photographer!!

That's the smoke from our campfire you can see. It was picturesque to say the least.

 Dandy, our amazing yellow Lab came along with us. She was helping hunt crawdads, too!

"The crawdads are coming!!"

We wrapped up the day with half of us sleeping around the campfire and half of us hunting crawdads!! It was a terrific day despite the change of plans.