It has been a crazy month. Kids have been so busy with school. I have been working a temperary job. It is all day every day and about a 30 mile commute. Mornings are early with getting kids to orchestra and soccer practice, then getting the other two ready for school, then rushing out the door to work. Which leaves Jeff to do the afternoons. He has had to run kids to dentist appointments and tries to hit all the soccer games. Then we rush to have dinner and get boys to scouts or other school events and Jeff and I are exhausted.
Anyway, I'm out in the country and took these next couple of pictures outside my work window. Lots of wild rabbits, squirrels. I haven't seen any road runners or snakes yet, but they say they are quite common.


There is a golf course right behind too and the other day we could hear the coyotes howling. There were three of them out there. This isn't a good picture. They were much closer than this looks. We have had a coyote wander along this back patio more than once since I have been out there.


Here is Nicholas playing soccer. His team is in the purple. He has done really good (from what I hear, I haven't seen him play)
Nicholas is right in front here.

And they won for the first time on Thursday. They have lost all the other 7. And Jeff missed it.

Oh, and did I mention we are still getting to 100 degrees. The mornings have been nice, about 80. We are supposed to cool down this next week to only a high of 90.

RAIN!

We woke up Saturday to a nice thunder storm.
It was remnants from the hurricane that went through Mexico.

The parks flood, on purpose, when we have rain.

So, the kids went out to play in it.

They had a nice football game going with some other boys in our ward.

Birthday Boy

Kade is 10

I couldn't get the pictures in the right order, but he got this cool robot and nice MP3 (not apple brand) but it is way nice.

He wanted a Star Wars cake. These are supposed to be the good and bad guys fighting each other. Notice the dead one. Kade decorated it himself.

My happy family!

Summer's Over

First day of school, yeah!

They're holding up their fingers to show what grade they are in, 2-4-6-8.

A sad moment

Here you see Jeff digging a small whole to bury our "pet."

French Fry, our pet scorpion, died.

Not for lack of crickets.

Kade was the saddest and so we had a funeral after church and he got to put a handful of dirt on him.

Good-bye French Fry (notice my sarcasm, I don't consider a scorpion a pet)

Trip to Utah

We made our annual trip to Utah last week. It didn't start off too good. We were all piled in the van, and it wouldn't start. So, after a couple of tries, it started and we drove straight to buy a new battery. We drove all night to get there, which we will never do again. It was pretty rough on Jeff with the rest of us sleeping.

Then the day we got there Jeff's family had a campout at a place called Currant Creek up past Strawberry. But first, Jeff and I slept for about 3 hours, then had to get up to go. As we go outside, the van has a flat tire. So, needless to say, we were a little slow getting to the campsite. The road to get in was very rough and rocky. We were worried about our van, but it made it. And the boys were so tired, they fell asleep, even through all the bumps.

Then as the guys were setting up the tents, it rained on us. Not all the tents had all the parts, but everyone had a place to sleep.
The kids had a lot of fun just being with their cousins.

The lake was nearby and the kids loved the kayaks.

The rest of the trip was visiting family and Jeff helped his mom around her house quite a bit. This is just a nice evening outside, chillin at Nana's house.

The weather was great! We really enjoyed the evenings since it was 116 degrees the day we left Arizona.

Then, coming home, we had car trouble again. About 150 miles outside Phoenix, our air conditioner went out. We were rather hot for quite some time. After a while, it started to smell and then make a terrible noise. (we blew the compressor, or something, which got so hot it melted something next to it and had pieces of metal all inside). A rather expensive trip.

It's always nice to go, but it's always nice to come home too.

4th Celebration

Happy 4th of July! Jeff was very patriotic and decorated the house with flags.

Then some neighbors down the street coordinated a parade for kids to decorate and ride their bikes around the neighborhood, but I couldn't get my boys to do that. Instead they joined in on the neighborhood water fight.
What a way to cool off when it was about 100 at 9 am.

And, in the end, they even got Jeff.

Later in the day we had some people over for a bbq and swimming, but, dummy me, I didn't take any pictures. Use your imagination (hamburgers, hot dogs, kids swimming, you get the idea)

And, yea Arizona for all the fun fireworks we can light (that's a joke) we can't even have sparklers. So, this was our excitement, "grow" worms and

pop its. Woo-hoo!

We did end the day with going to watch fireworks. They were good, they actually started on time, we saw a wild rabbit run by, and again it was about 100 degrees.

Happy Birthday to Mom today. We will see you in a week!