Monark - pt. 1

Boom. This is a quick post.

I have to leave for work... like RIGHT now.

But... Here's a little of Monark :)

Children's meeting pictures taken over by the big kids...

-MarLeahJoy

Avalyn

As some of you might know... I had a wreck on Thursday, the day before Monark, so I never got around to posting these before Monark started. But here's the post of Ava's third birthday. :)

 

-MarLeahJoy

A little Attitude

Ah! This little girl and all her "poses"! ;)

I think it is safe to say that she liked all the attention... :)

I'm finishing up the edits today, so I'll be blogging the rest soon.

...And then it will be Monark church camp, so it might be a good week or so before I blog again.

Happy camel day! ;P 

-MarLeahJoy

Birthday Preview

I got to spend last Tuesday evening with Avalyn again. This time for her birthday pictures. :)

It melted my heart when her mom told me that Ava kept saying "Arleah, Arleah!" when she knew that they were going to get her pictures taken again. :) I was like, "Aw, she remembers me!" :)

Maybe she just remembered me because of my little Kermit Pez dispenser! :P Haha, well nonetheless, we had a great time.

-MarLeahJoy

King of the Hydrant

 So who rules in this one? Me or him? lol ;)

Apparently Bretton thought he was the king of the hydrant... Oh! never mind! ...we were actually holding him up there. ;P

So no one is king of the hydrant, but we had a lot of fun trying to be. ;)

Sometimes it's fun to just do weird stuff. 

-MarLeahJoy

Hanging Around

...on a summer evening. 

That's what we do. 

And we got a lot of smiles from cars passing by.

I'm not sure how many texts I got from Bretton today asking me when I would post the pictures we took from Monday evening. 

So this post is hereby dedicated to Bretton...

Goodnight!

-MarLeahJoy

Along My Favorite Path

I have a real love for trees and nice shady areas. I've said so many times to my family that I don't care what my house really looks like (in reasonableness) as long as it has nice big shade trees all around it. :)

There is a road near my house... and goodness, if I could build a house right on the road, I would! I like to take the path a lot when I'm biking or walking and take it a little slower to soak in the beauty. This time, I actually ran back home and got my camera just to take some pictures around that area. Maybe someday I'll wait for a sunset and take a picture of the gorgeous path itself.

-MarLeahJoy

Independence

I'm sure by now, if you read any of my blog posts at all... you know that I am quite a nostalgic person. I love thinking about the sweet times in childhood and about the traditions we do that might seem kind of silly, but still define us. One of those traditions is all the hype that goes on for the fourth of July. I personally don't get the point of spending thousands/millions of dollars on fireworks, but I love that feeling when I hear them going off in town. Because I know that it mean that families are gathered together, sitting on the lawn on a summer evening, eating American food, and having a good time.

And that is exactly what I like to see!

I kind of celebrated in my own way with an all-american triple dip cone ;)

Granted, I only ate the top scoop because the ice cream was pretty melted by the time I was done taking pictures of it. ;P

-MarLeahJoy

Hike to the Sunset

At Mt. Nebo, there was a "sunset point" on one side of the mountain -- obviously just the opposite of the sunrise point, which was where we camped.

So in the evening, after returning from the lake, we hiked about two hours to the sunset point and made it there on just on time to watch the sun disappear. 

Sights along the trail... 

Really it was a beautiful hike, because you could always look to your right and see the hazy valley.

We chased this ugly, goofy little bird for nearly 10 minutes. He just kept trotting along on the same path we were following... so why not turn it into a photo chase? ;P

And this was the beginning of the sunset.

I believe that concludes my posts about our little camping vacation!

-MarLeahJoy

Nautical

Sunday afternoon, after finishing our biking, we were setting around trying to figure out what to do next because it was way too hot to hike like we planned on doing. From Mt. Nebo we could see this lake, and we wanted to rent a boat... but the crazy thing was, nobody rented boats within an two hours of where we were. So we just went down to Lake Dardanelle and swam off of the shore, watched other boats, and watched a storm roll in :)

I love lensbaby edge 80 swimming pictures ;)

-MarLeahJoy