High Life in Pinetop...

It just so happened that my parents found themselves with an extra room in a rental property in Pinetop for the week, so my wife, kids and I got to be the lucky recipients of the vacancy.

We actually stayed a week in a cabin once before this summer already. Anna was a bit bored. So, this time we made sure we had enough activities to keep her from feeling that way. I was perfectly fine doing nothing and relaxing. But I had fun being busy, too.

Our place was more of a townhouse than cabin, but we called it a cabin anyway. The "cabin" is in a complex with a main office connected to a game room (complete with pool table, ping pong, checkers, Foosball, etc), a weight room, a Jacuzzi and there's always fresh popcorn on tap. They also had bikes to rent.

Anna is actually riding a bike that my parents brought. Maia loved the bike she borrowed.

My dad brought up his inflatable kayak and we took it out for a spin a couple times in Rainbow Lake.

 Of course, we couldn't have come this close without visiting the Snowflake Temple. I was shocked at how far in the middle of nowhere the Snowflake temple is. If I hadn't known better, I would think I was in the wrong place up until I saw the Angel Moroni in the distance.

 While we were at it, we took a small detour to the very small one-horse town called Woodruff. It's about 30 miles out of Snowflake. It's remarkable to think that people actually still live there. Especially when you see the types of homes there...

My favorite part about this home is that I saw a new satellite dish mounted on the other side. 

 My grandma is from Woodruff. No offence to the residents, but it's just a bit too slow for my speed. I am sure grandma can honestly say it's a nice place to be from, but probably not in.

On our last full day, we drove out to Sunrise, the ski resort. It's summer in Arizona, so you can imagine that we did not ski. The park is open with activities like sledding, and riding the ski lifts to the peak for the view. We did the latter only. It was still surprisingly cold. We had to break down and pay way too much for hot cocoa at the lodge at the top.

And, just like that, the whole week passed us by. It went so fast, I felt like we barely got there when it was time to go home. This time, we keep Anna busy enough to avoid boredom. The only problem is that it worked too well. Now that we are back home we are all bored of our regular life...

That's all of us except Benji, who took this untouched photo. Not bad for a 2 year old, eh?