Summer Vacation Part 1

This week so much has happened that I am doing the first part of the blog tonight. Look for the second part on Monday.

#35 Tuesday

We rotate weekly who hosts small group and today's home is filled with sweet animals (horses, corgis, and cats) and sweeter kids. I probably say this in every blog, but I absolutely love the support and comfort I feel from these great couples.

#36 Wednesday 

Because Aaron and I are going on vacation, Lucy gets to stay with her grandma and grandpa. I'm not going to lie, I was way too upset about leaving her. 

#37 Thursday 

Vacation day #1 and we headed toward Palo Duro Canyon in Canyon, TX to primitive camp for a couple of days. Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States and it is simply breath-taking. Our camp set-up included a fire pit, a place to hang our trash, and a picnic table with a pavilion. There were several other campers in the area which was fine by me. It was a lot easier to justify the various bumps in the night which were inevitably all the serial killers that ever existed. 

It took a month of convincing, but Aaron agreed to go zip lining over part of the canyon.  Another family went and they were super sweet. The mother and son did it while the father and daughter watched. The scariest part of zip-lining was getting up there! The bridge swung with every step you took; we finally figured walking on the middle board stabilized it.

# 38 Friday

Yesterday, Aaron faced his fear of heights by doing the zip-line. I faced my fear by hiking a trail with tarantulas. Of course, I knew there was a possibility of seeing them. I didn't know they existed in Texas until I was twenty. I think people were keeping that little factoid from me. I have always had an irrational fear when it came to spiders of any shape and size. Anyway, we were hiking a trail, admiring the beauty of God's creation and Aaron (dumbly) mentioned seeing a tarantula. Crazy Chelsea over- powered logic Chelsea and I spent the remainder of the trail shaking with my hands up to my chest making popping noises with my water bottle. The whole time. Just "click" "click" "click" the entire time we are walking. On our way back to the beginning  of the trail, I'm walking right behind Aaron holding on to his shirt and... we see a tarantula. Logic Chelsea, however quiet she is thinks "hey, this isn't so bad, he is just minding his own business, enjoying the trail. He kind of looks like the hand from The Addams family." Too bad embarrassing crazy Chelsea took over and I started crying and froze and acted like the spider was chasing us with a gun. Aaron heroically encouraged the over-legged over-sized monster off the path. 

Spending the rest of the day paranoid with every glance Aaron took, we finished it off by seeing the musical "Texas." This is an outdoor musical set up in the canyon. People are encouraged to sign in and say where they traveled from. The person who travels the farthest wins a little triangle and within the fifty years of showing this, they have never had someone from within the continental United States win the award. Before the show, they fed us barbecue, had a decedent of Quanaw Parker give us some information about the Cherokee, and had a live country band made up of members of the cast.The show has awesome special effects and set, greater music, and even greater dancing. The finale had me in tears and I was definitely a proud Texan by the end of it. (As if I wasn't already.)