On Christmas Break

From My Home and Heart to Yours:  MERRY CHRISTMAS and A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I will be taking a two week break so I can spend a lot of time cuddling with these two little ones!  I will return to a regular blogging schedule on January 6th!

Have A Great Holiday!  Amy

Our Utah Adventure: Day Three: Part IV: Bryce Canyon "Navajo Loop"

 This is a continuation of a travel series to Utah.  To start at the beginning, go  HERE.  The rest of the posts in chronological order are HERE,  HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE!

In last week's travel post we started our hike into the canyon on the "Queen's Garden Trail".  Now, you can go back up the same way you came down or you hook into the "Navajo Loop" to get back to the rim of the canyon.  We decided we didn't want to just turn around and go back, so we took the Navajo Loop Trail back.

I enclosed a map of the trails as my explanation can get complicated.  Because he Navajo Loop Trail is a loop,  if you hook into it from another trail like we did you are going to miss half of it.  We went back up to the rim via the south side of the trail because we really wanted to see "Wall Street" (An amazing trail and the best trail in the park in my opinion.   I will feature it after Christmas break).  But because we took that part of the loop back to our car, we missed "Two Bridges".  "Thor's Hammer" can be seen from Sunset Point because it is so large, so we didn't miss that.

So in other words, this post will only cover half of the Navajo Loop trail because that is all we saw.  You can always google "Two Bridges, Bryce Canyon" if you want to see what the other half of the trail is like.

Navajo Loop Trail is very different than Queen's Garden or the Rim Walk.  You are deep in the canyon, but it seems more forestry, and you can actually find a little bit of shade here and there.  I thought the contrast of the evergreens growing among the rock was breath-taking.  I also marveled how they could grow at all in such a dry, rocky, landscape.

The loop is 1.3 miles and is only open as a loop in summer because Wall Street is too dangerous to hike other times of the year.

My "boys" always like to have fun taking pictures like this.

I enjoyed crawling into this little hole, can you see me?  Boy was I covered in dust after I did this!

Here's a close up of me in the same hole.

We did see horseback riders in the distance.  Can you see them in the upper center of this picture?  I had no idea you could horseback in Bryce Canyon.  If I took this trip all over again, I would definitely do this.  It's pretty hard hiking for five days, it would have been a nice break. I believe it costs around $65 per person.

It's always nice when they put benches on a trail, and this trail had a few shady stone benches to enjoy.  My son and I spotted this one and sat down for a few minutes to rest and wait for my husband to catch up.  He usually always trails behind us as he is always stopping to take photos.  When he caught up to us he laughed and said "Uh, I don't know if that's the best place to sit.  You should see what is above you".  Unbeknownst to us, we were sitting under a gigantic rock formation that looked like it could tip over at any moment! 🤣.   You'll be able to see it in the picture after this one.

I will be taking a two week Christmas break starting next week Monday.  My Utah travel posts will resume after the New Year.

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

December Bible Journaling Pages

I am finally back to sharing some Bible Journaling Pages.  I know it's been awhile and some of you may have been wondering what happened.  The main reason I haven't been sharing is that Tuesday is the only day I post crafts.  In November I had so many fall cards to share that there wasn't any space to share my Bible Journaling pages.  And then December came around and then it was time to share Christmas crafts!  But another reason was that after I finished 1 Kings and started reading 2 Kings there wasn't much to Bible Journal about.  I don't know if many of  you have spent much time in 2 Kings but it is not a fun book to read!  It's all this king "did evil in the sight of the Lord" and then he dies and then the next one "did evil in the sight of the Lord" and then he dies, and on and on it goes with the occasional king thrown in there he actually does what is "pleasing to the Lord".  It's so hard to keep track of who's who and who did what to who, etc., that one needs a graph to keep it all straight.  Now I'm sure there's one out there somewhere, but I don't even know if I want to study it further.  I'm ready to move on to the next book...1 Chronicles, and I'm almost there!  I have just a few chapters of 2 Kings left.

Even though I didn't get much spiritually out of 2 Kings, at the same time in November I was working on a Thanksgiving Challenge with a Bible Journaling Facebook Group.  This challenge was so amazing, and filled my spiritual needs in a way just reading 2 Kings did not.  The challenge was to prepare our hearts for Thanksgiving by reading one verse on Thankfulness a day and journaling on it.  I did Faith Index Cards instead of journaling (Faith Index Cards are small index cards where you write a verse on the front, and your thoughts on the back, and then you can also decorate the front of the card.  They help with scripture memory) and I learned so much about Thankfulness and how important it is to God that we are thankful and to be thankful even when we don't think we have much to be thankful for.  During our Thanksgiving dinner I pulled out my Thanksgiving Faith Index Cards and shared them with my family.  We then all took turns reading one and then discussing what the verse personally meant to us.  It was such a special family moment, and everyone agreed that I should save the cards and we do the same thing next year.  

Now, that Thanksgiving is past I'm currently working on a new challenge with this same Facebook group.  This time it is a challenge to prepare our hearts for Christmas.  It's titled "The Book Of Luke: 24 Chapters in 24 Days".  Instead of a verse a day, we are reading one chapter of Luke a day and then we pick one verse out of the chapter that really struck a chord with us.  I am doing Faith Index Cards for this challenge as well.  

I've shared both my Thanksgiving Faith Index Cards and my Christmas Faith Index Cards in my Instagram and Facebook stories, so you can check my stories if your curious as to what they look like.  Lord willing, if I'm still blogging next year, I will share them here as well.

But now on to this month's Bible Journaling pages!

I didn't do much of my own Bible Journaling pages the past two months because I was so busy with my Facebook group challenges, but I did color in every pre-printed image before I moved on to the next chapter.

This page was colored with mostly glitter gel pens.

This page was colored with a mix of metallic colored pencils and gel pens.

This was a page I created for my "Thanksgiving Challenge" Facebook group.  I water colored the entire page being sure not to put color over the verse I wanted to be noticed.  I then used printables given to us by the page administer to decorate the page.

Another pre-printed image I colored with glitter gel pens.

Here is a page I created myself.  I was so proud of myself in how I did this page as I still feel like a novice when it comes to Bible Journaling.  I look at so many other beautiful Bible Journaling pages done by others and mine always fail in comparison.  But this one turned out pretty good for me!  I water colored the entire page then I stamped the Jerusalem image using a retired Stampin' Up! stamp called "City of David".  the Bible verse was created using a mix of stamps and my own handwriting.  I then highlighted certain words with a white gel pen.

I colored the city with a mix of comic markers, pencils, and glitter gel pens.

A pre-printed image colored with gel pens.

Here's another page I did myself based on some thoughts I had on this verse.  Not all Bible Journaling pages have to have a pretty image.  Many pretty, interesting pages can be created with just words.  After I water colored the entire page to look like water, I wrote the verse using my own handwriting and a few stickers and stamps.

This is the 2 Kings Chapter Header page.  I tried to make the whole page look like fire to echo the image of the fire in the Bible verse.  It was first colored with water colors, then I used a combination of gel pens, glitter pens, and pencils to color the images in.

And finally, another pre-printed verse colored in with pencils and gel pens.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this months Bible Journaling pages. Hopefully when my Facebook Challenges are over and I have moved out of 2 Kings and into 1 Chronicles I will have more pages to share!

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!