Let's get caught up!

So this is the exact reason I fought off having a blog for so long...how in the world does everyone else find the time to keep it up to date? Life has been so crazy and this summer has just flown by, but my kids have been out of town with my parents for the last week and a half, so I finally had some downtime today and started feeling guilty that it's been 3 months since I've posted anything, so here goes a quick recap of our families latest adventures...

Back in May the entire Burton crew headed to Sedona, Arizona for James' parents 50th wedding Anniversary. That place is truly beautiful and we packed the entire week with nonstop activities...Biking, climbing, tennis tournaments, swimming, Geo-caching, shopping and then there was Slide Rock! Slide Rock is a natural water slide, but this water was FREEZING!! Like take your breath away, think you might die, freezing! You can tell from these pictures that it was a struggle to breath while in the water, but we all had fun. This is Mathis with James and his cousin Sam.































And here's Hayden



He wasn't too excited to get in the water a second time so he started catching tadpoles in the small pools of water. Although he couldn't get the name right and kept calling them "catapults". He is so funny, he's always doing that...if he can't remember the name of something he just renames it with a word that sounds close enough for him, I never correct him because I love it when he does it, I have a whole list of Haydenisms!

Here's Mathis wearing my hat and sunglasses, is it just me or is he such a big cutie?

Sedona also has this amazing church built right into the redrock cliffs, it was very small but had amazing views.

Hayden usually hides from the camera, but he was very into posing this day.




I actually got in front of the camera once instead of always being behind it.



Just outside of Sedona there's an animal park called "Out of Africa". This is a park that mainly takes in exotic large animals that are unwanted by their owners after they get too big and are no longer cute little babies. It was even better than a normal zoo, the animals have much more open space and you get to be there when they feed the large cats big hunks of meat: a leg of a cow or an entire turkey, the boys thought that was so cool!

We got to feed a giraffe from the bus, check out the purple tongue, it was like sand paper!




Mathis being a cheezer with is cousin Elle, she's such a cutie!

Mathis and Hayden love snakes, (definately didn't take after their dad!). They got to pet two Pythons, that was their favorite thing of the entire day, James however stayed far away!





There were several Bengal Tigers.



Boom-Boom the Rhino.



Grizzly Bears.



Black Bears.



Lions, and so many other smaller animals, it was an all day event and we were exhausted by the end of it.

We also went to Montezuma's Castle, it was very close to the animal park.

Here's the kids playing tennis in the rain!

I still have many more trips and fun stuff to post, so hopefully I'll get another chance sooner rather than later!