A couple weeks ago I had a birthday.
I love that my birthday is smooshed right in there after Claire’s (back here and here) so we can have a little hoopla to shadow over the fact I’m getting older 🙂
I’ve been wanting to hike at a place called “Flat Iron” for forever and a day.  It’s the tippy top of that huge cliff you see down there in the picture below.
…and that picture was taken part-way up so you can imagine what a hike it is…
I figured the best time to get my family to do this thing with me was to ask for it for my birthday present.  And boy oh boy they sure followed through with great attitudes and all (ok not all great, but they were pretty good sports I have to admit…this thing is not for the weak of heart).
We dropped off Lucy at Nana’s house (she’s the best… this was not a “Lucy Hike”), and headed off.

As we drove past the national park paying place Elle noted that they had actual t-shirts for sale that said “I conquered Flat Iron,” which she claimed meant we were in for some trouble.  Ha!

The light was so gorgeous that morning.

You can’t totally tell from these pics from my iPhone but we were pretty much scaling big boulders a bunch of the time.

See Claire below?

Almost there:

I could go on and on about all kinds of analogies we thought of as we climbed…and how many stages of “are we there yet?” we had.  It took over two hours to hike this puppy but oh boy was it worth it for the gorgeous view at the tippy top.

It was SO windy and chilly up there but we found a little spot protected from the wind behind a boulder to have our lunch we packed up the mountain.

(Licorice birthday treat)

And then, when we couldn’t handle the wind and cold any more we headed down…perhaps a little more precarious than the uphill battle.

I love hiking because everyone you pass is so darn friendly.

We ran across one family hiking that thing with SIX kids, youngest was four.  Yowzas.  I have since met her at my gym and I’m so glad…small world.

See that thing behind those cute girls below?  Yeah, we were on top of that sucker.

We live in a gorgeous world.

If I had time I would use photoshop to draw a little tiny arrow to show you where we were on that pic above.  See that part jutting out right smack-dab in the middle?  We were there.

All the while we were soaking in that gorgeousness, Lucy was having the time of her life with Nana.

Oh man, love that woman (and that girl too).

When we got home our neighbors had been busy with our door:

We had our own little birthday cake (max joined us via facetime).

And some nice presents.

And Dave took me out to dinner with some friends we love and took goofy pictures with me after.

We didn’t get the kid pic. til the next day.


My friends and sisters-in-law took me out for a couple birthday lunches too.  I’m one lucky girl.

Birthdays aren’t so bad when you’re surrounded by people you love and nature that reminds you of God’s love for you.

So grateful.

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17 Comments

  3. What beautiful pictures of that hike you went on! Glad it was a great birthday for you. Also, I just want to say thank you for being such a positive role model.

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  10. Happy Birthday Shawni! Hope you had a wonderful day! (I am going to have to look up that Flatiron Rock and where it is. I used to live in Phoenix and I have never heard of it. In the Superstition mountains maybe?)

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  16. You hardly even mentioned this when we were together although Claire showed me the tippy toppy peak where you were in one of phone pictures. This is pretty darn amazing! Congrats to every one!

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