I just love it when visitors come to town.

Last week, June 20-27, 2009 we had a very special visitor. Ariana Baggaley came to visit us from Roy, Utah. Ari was the very first friend Paige had. They met when they were 18 months old. Her family moved in just up the street from us in Tooele. They were very good friends for four years. When it was time for us to move to Las Vegas, I thought it was important to help Paige keep their friendship a live. Thanks to modern day technology they are able to keep in touch. Paige really wanted to share Las Vegas with her very first friend so we invited her down for one entire week. It was a very busy week. We tried to do something everyday to show her the good sites we do have here in Las Vegas. First on the agenda was to take both of Paige's very good friends to the Mall to go birthday shopping since both Ari and Amity have birthdays in June. It was a lot of fun taking three girls to do some fun shopping. Below is the picture of Ari and Amity wearing their necklaces Paige bought for them.

Tuesday we were able to go down to the Ethel M's chocolate factory and walk through the cactus gardens.

Yummy chocolate samples!!! Can we have two?

After touring the cactus gardens, Paige wanted to show Ari the Bellagio gardens. These gardens change every season of the year. Going to the Bellagio is one of our family favorites because it is always so amazing what they can do with flowers and organic material.

Of course, you can't go down to the Bellagio without also seeing the amazing fountains. I could sit and watch the water all night if my family would let me but we only stay for three shows. The water is in sync with music and it flows perfectly with the beat of the music.

Ari is waiting patiently for the next show with the Bellagio behind her.

Wednesday I took the girls and Parker to play in our parks here in Las Vegas. Of course, our parks are just not any parks. Most all come equipt with water features for the kids to play in. Since we can get pretty HOT down here in Vegas it is nice to see parks to help keep the kids cool. This park we went to is in Centennial Hills right next to the new library. It is right next to the "Butterfly" park, but well hidden so it is not usually very crowded (until now since I have told everyone about it).

Wednesday night was young women and young men's youth activity for our church. They went ice blocking and got very dirty. I was not there so picture are not available of the very dirty kids sliding down hills on blocks of ice. It did sound like they had a lot of fun though.

Thursday, was a day of swimming over at my brother-in-law's home in Summerlin. Pictures below are Steven's pool we went to. He does have a very beautiful backyard to enjoy.

I didn't get pictures of Ari and Paige swimming because I forgot my camera, but here is Paige jumping off the rock cliff the week before. My brother-in-law's pool is cool!!

On Friday, we went to Red Rock Canyon and took the hike on the Children's discovery trail. We were going to take another hike, but I missed the turn and the girls didn't want to endure the

13-mile loop twice so we just went on the Discovery trial. It was fun but the temptures starting getting warm so we took off down town to go to the M&M store on the strip.

We finished up the week by taking a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon early morning Saturday. We got up at 4:30am and left the house by 5:15 am. We drove down to Boulder City where the helicopter terminal was located. We had a 7:00am take-off time. It was pretty neat to fly over Lake Mead and fly over the Grand Canyon.

We had so much fun!!!!!! Let's do it again sometime. Thanks Ari for coming down and spending time with our family.

Summer activities

Okay, I really have been bad about keeping up the blog page. I thought I could sit down and update it weekly but I have not. In fact, I have just finished downloading ALOT of pictures from my camera and have found I have left out ALOT on the blog. So here are the pictures of Meghan and me repelling at Red Rock canyon for her 4th year hiking acitivity. What fun we had. There weren't very many girls that came so those that did come had many turns repelling down the rocks. It was so fun it brought back many memories when I was in high school.