Labor Day Weekend!!

Well Labor Day weekend was quite and eventful one for us. My parents, brother & his family, and Dave, the kids and I all decided to taked a needed trip to the wonderful cabin in Alpine, AZ. We all arrived at different times on Friday. From Safford it is about a three hour trip so if you leave at the right time the girls will sleep most of the way which makes it nice. We really didn't have much of an agenda other than Dave was going fishing on Saturday morning. We just enjoyed each others company and the nice weather of the mountains. Here are some pictures.

My cousin Trachel and her family were also there so we enjoyed spending time with them. She has four girls. Paige who is nine, Marley who will be six, Ali who will be four, and Preesley who is 6 weeks old. Marley and Ali just love Avery to death, and so they entertained her the whole weekend. It was so nice to have a little break. Ali also loved Emmabelle.

(Trachel, Ali, & Emmabelle)

It is a tradition to take a bath in the sink at the cabin. I have a picture in the sink, Avery has a picture in the sink, and now Emmabelle has a picture. For reasons unknown to me she didn't like this bath. She usually loves to take a bath, but the sink just wasn't her cup of tea I guess, but I just love her face.This is the girls and I before we left for church. That is also a tradition that we have for some reason. We always have to take pictures before we leave for church. Dave ended up not going with us to church. He stayed home to get some much needed sleep since we had some rough nights and also to make lunch. We had to leave to come back to Safford as early as we could after church and lunch so he wanted to have lunch ready when we got home from church.Grandma Mortensen is so good at keeping the humming birds happy at the cabin. It is so much fun to sit out on the back porch and watch them feed. There are always so many of them. I don't know if the pictures do it justice, but there are usually somewhere around 15 or more birds just going crazy around the feeders. They have no problem with people being out there and watching either.

Upstairs is a favorite place for the kids to play and this is one of the reasons why. The just love looking down at the living room from the loft and scaring their parents to death. We had to make sure Avery knew not to stick through the rails. I am very sure she could have slipped right through.

Avery was also able to take her first four wheeler ride. She called it a motorcycle though and in the beginning was afraid it was going to get her, but what isn't she afraid of. She warmed up to it though and really enjoyed taking rides with her daddy.The reason we had to come home on Sunday was that Dave's family was coming to Safford for a visit also. For those of you who aren't hunting buffs, Sept. 1 is the beginning of dove season and a big day in the Hartman household. Dave looks forward to this day all year. It is probably more important to him, no I take that back it is a bigger holiday than Christmas to him. So he got up at about 4 or so in the morning, that is if he really ever did go to sleep, on Monday morning and went out with his Dad, Grandpa, Uncle and two brothers. He was able to shoot his limit for the day, which is 10 birds if you didn't know, unfortunately the rest of the shooters weren't able to do as well. I think only a couple more birds came home. After they are done shooting it is tradition to go to breakfast so they invited the women to join them. Of course there isn't much selection for breakfast in the town of Safford so we went to The Manor House. I will have to say that I much prefered their breakfast over their dinner.

(Tom, John, Grandpa Hartman, Grandma Hartman, Avery, Great Grandpa Hartman, Dave, Me and Emmabelle)

We were also able to get a four generation pictures with the girls. This is the girls, Dave, his dad Clay, and his grandpa Clay.

This is Emmabelle's Great Uncle Kern. He was also there he was just the one behind the cameras, but we wanted to get a picture of him and Emmabelle. This is Grandpa Hartmans brother.

All in all we had a great weekend together with family. It is not every weekend that you get to see both sets of Grandparents and Great grandparents. It was a lot of fun. Avery just gets so excited when she gets to see her Grandma's and Grandpa's. She always says two grandma's mom or two grandpa's mom. It is just so amazing to her that there are two of someone so wonderful.

Thanks to everyone who made the weekend so special and wonderful.