Payson Vacation

To celebrate Julian's 30th birthday this year, I decided to surprise him with a weekend getaway to Payson to enjoy the mountains and a change of scenery from Phoenix.  I wanted to do something fun as a family and I knew that Julian wouldn't want a party so a nice cabin in the woods sounded perfect. We drove up to Payson (about an hour and a half away) and we celebrated with some delicious Nothing Bundt Cake bundlettes (basically cupcakes).  The kids were huge moochers while Julian was trying to enjoy his dessert :)

The next day we decided to go to the Tonto Natural Bridge, which is a beautiful naturally formed travertine bridge that you can hike down to.  The hike was beautiful though it was pretty steep, which wasn't the easiest with Clare strapped to my back and Grayson riding on Julian's shoulders.  Grayson is obsessed with maps so he spent a lot of time trying to be our little navigator.  We kept asking him to tell us what he saw and asking if he saw the trees, rocks, etc.  His response was to keep his nose in the map and talk about the compass :)

Once we got to the bottom and he could safely run around, he finally started paying attention to his surroundings.  He was trying to skip rocks, run across a bridge, check out the stream, and really just run everywhere.

Clare fell asleep in the Ergo on our hike back up.  It was really cool to see such a beautiful natural structure!

We also spent time near the stream that was across from the house and it was really cute to watch Grayson and Julian exploring together!  I absolutely love watching my boys bond!  Clare really wanted to chase them but with the uneven, rocky terrain, she was struggling to keep up.  We had such a nice relaxing trip and we were so happy to be able to celebrate a great husband and father!