Our family is spending the winter at our cabin!

Over the river and through the woods to Grandma and Grandpa’s house they go….

Owen, Mila, and our delightful grandchildren, Hannah, Vernon, Robert, (and our littlest grand baby in Mila’s belly) arrived in Arizona this week.

We spent the week playing together and getting our family settled in their new winter home….

We turned around and found that Robert had finished up all the leftovers.

Exploring the “back forty.”

We celebrated Vernon’s 3-year birthday with cake and ice cream….and a cowboy outfit, including cowboy boots!

Howdy cowboy!

Robert enjoyed playing with the vintage wooden duck that we gave him.

No tour of Pine would be complete without hiking on the Pine-Strawberry Trail—and climbing to the top of the piles of logs….

No hike would be complete without drawing a picture of Mama and Papa in the dirt!

And of course drawing circle dinosaurs in the dirt….

Owen noted that Vernon was a cowboy in the wilderness and Hannah looked like a 1980’s Barbie in the dancing dress that we gave her….

Robert had the right idea….every good hike finishes with a nap in your Papa’s arms.

Pine is a very special little town nestled in the high desert mountains below the Mogollon Rim.  In fact, Hannah has informed us that they now live in Pine…and every other place is “America.”  We think that she’s right.  There is definitely no place like Pine—it is a country onto itself!

When it was time for us to go, there were lots of hugs and kisses.  It so hard to say goodbye to all of them.  But we will all be together in a few weeks for our Thanksgiving celebration. It will be the first time that we’ll be at our cabin on Thanksgiving.

It will be a very special Thanksgiving.  It would be so sweet if all our children and grandchildren could be with us as we give thanks for all of our blessings….but they will all be in our hearts.

We are thankful that our winter will be filled with so much of our loving family. Sean, Emily, Soren, and Sebastian are visiting us at Christmas.  And possibly, Candice, Marina, and Stella will fly down to see us.  A few weeks later, our sister Kathy will arrive.  

Then Calvin, Alison, Aryana, and Easton will be at our home in Leisure World for the first time.  And if we are lucky, three of our other grandchildren, Ida, Alden, and Wilder, will fly south and see us at Nuestra Casa.  They visit us to our cabin in Pine (with their mama and papa, Ryan and Rachelle) each summer, but have never been to our home in Mesa. 

Hopefully, even more of our family will come down to warm, sunny Arizona to visit us this winter.

This will be a winter that we will cherish forever.  We feel fortunate….all of these years together we have been blessed with family and so much love.