This weekend I took what may be my last weekend trip for a few months. School starts next week, which pretty much guarantees the end of all recreational activities. Anyway, we had a family reunion up at the family cabin in Pine, Arizona. It was really fun to spend the weekend with almost the whole family, especially all of our neices and nephews (we have 22)! 
All the wild blackberries were ripe, so my nieces and I picked loads of them and made fresh dutch oven blackberry cobbler. It was AMAZING! We also made apple and peach cobbler, but the blackberry was the most delicious and the first to get all gobbled up. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it all cooked, but by the time it was done it was way too dark outside!
We did lots of fun things, but one of the all time favorite cabin past times is painting rocks for the rock garden.
This was my artistic endeavor for the weekend, and my addition to the garden. Do you think I can include that in my portfolio?:) In case you can't tell, its a sumo wrestler. They make me laugh.
Oh, and we did a little antique shopping and I found some great things which I will post soon!
Isn't the cabin cute? 
We had fun cooking out and picking fresh berries. 
One of my favorite things to do in Payson is go to some of the antique shops. We got a big thunderstorm the first day we were there which gave us the perfect excuse to stay indoors and do lots of shopping! 
As you can see, it was beautiful. The turquoise color of the water was striking against the background of red rock. I will definetly be going back here. It was a major bonus that it was only about a half mile hike.
The next day we went on a hike to 
We had to hike to the bottom of this canyon. Hiking out was the hard part.
I started out in the back and was there the whole way. 
One of the most beautiful things on the hike were these blooming agave plants that just shot out into the sky across the desert. They were gorgeous.
Unfortunately the thunderstorm we had the day before made the hike pretty muddy and the water really murky. Usually 
We did a little bit of swimming mostly to cool off before we started the hike back up the canyon.
We left to hike out at just the right time. We heard lots of thunder on our way out, and as soon as we approached the parking lot to leave it started to rain. I would never want to get caught in that canyon during a flash flood (which happens fairly often this time of year).
It was the hardest hike I've done in a really long time (if ever) and I am actually really proud of myself. Of course, I can barely move today, but it was really fun and a much needed weekend off. My favorite part was not the hike, but was playing "Take Two" (a version of scrabble) with our friends. It was a great weekend!
