Petroglyphs

The first weekend in May my sister came down to visit us. Mom also took vacation and came over from Phx. We visited the Petroglyph National Monument about a mile from our house. It was really neat and of course we're tying it into history next year.

It was a fun little trip!

Grand Canyon

We visited the Grand Canyon over Mother's Day weekend. It was a nice trip although the kids weren't really as impressed.

Grandma and the kids.

That's all I'm posting. Most of the photos look the same. Big hole in the ground LOL.

Bedrock City

20 miles outside of the Grand Canyon is a little theme park called Bedrock city. Of course we had to stop! I mean who doesn't want to have a Yabba Dabba Do time?!

All of these were out-takes. This was the best one....

Pebbles, I mean Hailey driving without a license.

Hannah making friends with Betty.

The gang taking the car for a spin.

Our Fishin' hole

Memorial Day weekend.

We caught 1 trout, 5 crawfish, wicked sunburns, and the stomach flu but we had a good time:)

Last Sunday when we went fishing, we also visited the Jemez Indian Ruins.

This was a giant underground Kiva. A Kiva is an outdoor oven. There's more to it than that such as it's supposed to be sacred somehow but that's all I know:) Anyways the kids actually got to climb down into this one.

Family pic!

This was a rather large ruins compound. This was about 1/4 of it....

Anyways, this was a fun day and we're going to tie this in next year to our history.

Birthday X 3

My baby turned 1 on may 3rd. Jake's birthday was 1 week before and Auntie Rikki's birthday was 1 week before that so we did a group birthday this year:) The theme was luau/beach/pirate. I made hawaiian chicken w/rice for dinner. You get the drift....

Hailey's sandcastle cake. Very simple, but I WAS doing 3 cakes in one day...

Hailey "wearing" the family birthday hat. Still not sure what to do with her cake.

Jake holding his sunken treasure chest cake. He loved it:)

Jake putting up with-err wearing the birthday hat and Brandon singing HIS rendition of Happy Birthday.

Auntie Rikki holding her cake.

Auntie Rikki being very polite and putting up with our traditions....

Symphony and sickness

Ok, so last night we had our much anticipated date night at the symphony.

We started our night by meeting up with Michael's former boss and his wife at one of my favorite restaurants here called Caffe Boa. We went there about 2 years ago for Michael's office Christmas party and I had the most wonderful chicken saltimboca EVER. I've been wanting to go back ever since, and finally got my way convinced him that last night was the night to go back, especially because we are moving soon. Oh my WOW. It was just as yummy as I remembered....

After that, we raced to the symphony. Michael is a talker and he we lost track of time. My review of the symphony itself, is that they did a great job. Some of those people, especially the pianist and the lead violinist in particular, really take their jobs SERIOUSLY. I mean the pianist put everything he had into each 3 or 4-note spurt that he had and that lead violinist couldn't keep his bum on his chair. They really got "into" it. We, on the other hand, could not have been more bored to DEATH. I'm sorry. I've gotta' be honest here. The first symphony was about unrest, completely dark, slow, and depressing. And it was an hour long folks. The second was about a man's love for his beloved. It had nice periods of uplifting and lovely waltz's, but ended in the man's execution with fleeting thoughts of his beloved throughout these depressing and dark periods. That too, was an hour long. Seriously, we will probably never go again. LOL

I did enjoy wearing my coat though! I'm glad I didn't wear my tall heels and just wore my kitten heels as we had a nice little walk from the parking garage to symphony hall. All-in-all, it was a nice evening. I told Michael we probably would have had a better time just hanging at the restaurant longer with our friends. The symphony was a waste of time and money. Oh well, now we can say we've been there!

Now, on to the sickness part. Michael woke up with a head cold this morning and a pounding headache. I woke up with an "almost" migraine and nauseous because of it. I've gotten headaches all week. I have been able to knock them down with 800 mg of ibuprofen, but they come back. Anyways, we stayed home from church today. We pretty much lazed around because we felt crummy. My headache is pretty much gone but I can tell it's still hovering and ready to come back at any moment. You know the kind...


The weather has FINALLY cooled down around here. It's down in the 60's at night, 70's during the day. It's starting to feel like fall! We actually had to turn on the heat this morning to take the chill off of the house. I know Becky is soooo laughing at me right now up in Washington! What is it, like 35F up there???

Our Thanksgiving

Yesterday we had Almerry and her family over. A co-worker of her husband's. And another co-worker of his and his wife and daughter. Clear as muddy water you say? The details really don't matter. What matters is that we had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving. The food all turned out great. I didn't have to cook it all. Almerry brought some food and helped me once she got to our house. We ate dinner. We visited. We ate pie. We played Cranium. We visited a little more. What a great day:) So many things to be thankful for and I'm gonna' bore you all with a short list, K?

#1) A wonderful Heavenly Father who loves me more than I'll ever comprehend and never understand W-H-Y???

#2) A wonderful Husband who loves me also. I don't understand that either but he swears he does...oh, and he's really patient with me too.

#3) My children. ALL of them. I'm learning more everyday just how thankful I am for them.

#4) My friends. I don't have alot like some people, but I sure have good ones!

#5) My church family. I'm really, REALLY gonna' miss my church family!

Oh, I could go on and on-health, food, housing, etc. but like I said, I won't do a long list.....

Black Friday

This morning Michael slept through his early wakeup call. We weren't able to snag 2 of the 4 gifts we were going to get for the kids. We made it too late. Oh well!

I did however meet my friend Almerry at Joann's and got some REALLY cheap (I mean inexpensive, yada-yada) fabric. I single-handedly knocked out 9 Christmas gifts at Joann's today for about $21 with tax. Cool huh? I've already gotten 2 of them done for Hailey. Here's the pic to prove it....
One of those no-sew blankets and a snoedel (snoo-duhl?). Basically lots of soft, snuggly, cozy goodness just for her:) Albuquerque has SNOW this time of year. Did you know that!? I haven't seen snow in like 3 years...anyways their gifts this year will be warm and snuggly to prepare us for NM. I'm also getting the kids each a stuffed animal from Becky that you warm in the microwave and send to bed with them...

Everyone else that I didn't quite know what to get something for are getting "Blessing Pillows". I got the idea from here. I, of course can't afford $35/person for those so I'm making my own. Joann's had flannel on sale for $.97/yard today so I totally took advantage of that! I'm advertising her site here though because I think hers are so great and I sortof feel guilty for using her idea....

After Joann's we headed to a quilt store in Mesa. It was a really nice store. I was impressed. Not that thats saying alot but I'm really, REALLY snobby when it comes to quilt stores. Either they "have it" or they don't. It's THAT simple people! I couldn't really tell you what the *it* is, but some just don't have it....

Tonight, me and Michael played Cranium with Hannah and Brandon. It's really an adult game but we worked it and we all had fun! This was the game that we played yesterday with all the adult guests at our Thanksgiving dinner. I guess I'll have to go ahead and write up a post about that next. Huh?!

Wool Contest Photos

I listed all of the people that I know personally that were there yesterday. Liane (far left) is my friend from church-she is a fellow homeschool momma. She crocheted a beautiful poncho and won first place in her gategory. Her daughter Emily next to her sewed a really beautiful grey dress that has pink trim and won first in her gategory. Lane, won first place in her gategory and sewed a really cute 2-piece outfit. I think she made her own pattern even. Her sister is Courtney who sewed that really cute purple plaid skirt-she won 2nd in her and Hannah's category. Then there's Hannah, she didn't place this year but she had lots of fun! Next is little 'old me! I won first, there was only one of me in my category. Then there's my good friend Almerry. She's the state director of the competition. She didn't have anything to do with the judging! The judging was done by 3 indendent ladies. They have degrees in fashion and either teach or own their own businesses.

Me, Hannah, and Almerry

(This is the outfit I'm wearing to the symphony next weekend.)

Saturday November 10th, 2007

Today we went up to an arts and crafts festival up in Fountain Hills. We had plans to also check on our geocache that we placed up there, but we were too tired once we got done with the fair. Our geocache is about 1/2 mile up a mountain walking trail....here are some pics from our day!

Hailey riding in the sling and actually liking it:)

Hailey taking a nap about half-way through.

Heading back to the car. Me and Hailey bringing up the rear as usual.

The lake before the fountain went off.

The fountain....

Hope you had a great Saturday too!

(P.S. I just noticed the date stamp is wrong on our camera LOL)

It's never boring around here!

In case you were ever wondering...

We went to leave the house around 4:00pm to run some errands. Took the large stroller out of the back of the van so we could put the smaller one in and look what I found..

Yes, that's a black widow with 2 (TWO!) egg sacks. I decided to run to Walmart and get the industrial-strength bug killer that we ran out of to handle such PESTS. This is *only* number 6 of the females that we've found in the garage or outside the house this year, we've also found and eliminated (umm, KILLED) 4 males.....Ok, so off to Walmart we went!

Whilest we were looking for the industrial strength bug killer we stumbled upon the venus flytrap display. Can anyone say SCIENCE PROJECT! We've already fed it some porkchop....

After Walmart we ran home to apply the bug killer, that's when I snapped her picture. I really wasn't very close that's why it's so blurry. I zoomed in as far as I could so that I could stay as far away as possible!

After that, we headed to the mall to check into the price of ear-piercing. It was a hard decision for me, but hubby wanted to have it done while she was little. I *am* a little traumatized by it, she might be too. She was more mad than anything that she was being held down. She started screaming just because the lady was trying to mark her ears with the marker. Isn't she cute though!

Back home we got all the kids ready for bed and IN bed. The dog went in our (and Hailey's) room to snoop around. I went up stairs to bring him back down and brought Hailey back down with me. One of the kids (not naming names!!!) left their shoes on the stairs and I fell down the whole flight with Hailey in my arms. For the life of me I don't know how *she* didn't get hurt. Praise the Lord though! We would've kept going except I stopped us by going head first into the wall on the landing.

So, how was your evening!?