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!

Day Trips

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff needed to go to Show Low for work. He goes to all the Home Depots in his region to ckeck on the Tuff Sheds that are on display at the Home Depots. Show Low is a couple of hours East of here in pine forest, so we made a day trip of it with the kids. These are pictures of a very large canyon that we drove through.

Yes, we actually drove down to the bottom of this. You can kind of see the road.

Then we stopped to take some pictures.

Pictures don't quite give the actual view, but it was a huge, deep canyon.

I don't have any pictures of Show Low. Not much to see there, I guess, but it was a lot cooler there.

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Then this past Friday we went to Yuma. For the same reason, to check out the Home Depot there. It was hot! Yuma is in the other direction--3 hours West of here and right on the border of California, again Jeff took all of us for another day trip. Then, in a moment of craziness that we are not able to satisfactorily explain, we decided, what the heck, we are halfway there already, let's keep going west and hit the beach in San Diego. Yep, no clothes, no plans, no idea how to get there and no change of underwear, just like that, our day trip turned into a 2 day trip.

These are the sand dunes just outside of Yuma. This is like the sandy desert you see in movies with the camels out in the middle of no where.

Derek and I were fascinated with the fact that you could see the actual Mexican border fence. It's the dark line at the end of the sand here. We followed it most of the way into San Diego.

We had to go through two border patrol check stations both going and coming.

Remember, this was a last minute decision. We had no towels for the beach, no change of clothes, nothing to go that far. So, just outside of San Diego, we stopped at a Walmart and bought towels, sunscreen and a swimsuit for Jeff because he had long pants. Anyway, the lady at Walmart was just making conversation and could tell we were either going swimming or to the beach. So we asked her which beach would be the best and how to get there. She suggested two places, but the one was easiest just to stay on the main highway and just keep driving until you can't any more.

Here we are at the beach. We made it. This is a great picture.

I must admit though, I was freezing. I had to wrap the towels around me to keep warm.

It was very relaxing.

Jeff and the kids were wet, sandy and very cold.
As we were driving in, we passed "hotel circle." So, we just went back to that and found us a hotel. I should have gotten a picture of that, but I didn't think about it. It was a nice hotel. Other than we didn't get the a/c turned on until about midnight. Partly because the kids were so cold and we didn't try to figure it out until no one could sleep. Jeff and I had a hard time sleeping on the pull out bed. We have bruises from the springs poking out. We chose that bed because it was seperated from the other beds by a sliding door, so we thought it might be best since we were all either sleeping in our underwear or our same clothes that we had worn and got wet in the ocean.

Anyway, the next morning we had decided to just go see the beach one more time (not get wet or anything, but just to see it again). I suggested we go see the other one that the lady at Walmart suggested. It is Coronado. We didn't realize it is an island. So this is a picture of the big bridge we drove over (not a picture of a taxi). It is very, very high, it has to be for large ships to go under it.

This is from the bridge looking back toward San Diego.

Jeff and the boys were fascinated with the air craft carriers and all the boats in the harbor.

This is looking toward the island.


This is a small beach on the island. In the center of the picture the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is facing us, there were also quite a few other navy ships in port, the boys were very impressed. The island was beautiful. I wish I would have gotten pictures of all the little shops and things. It was very pretty and nice.

Again, a picture of a big boat. I let Derek and Nicholas take a couple of pictures.

This is just looking across the bay. It really isn't as far as this picture makes it look.

Here we are on the dock (dirty, 2-day-old smelly clothes and all)

Then we decided we better head back over that bridge (in the background) back to real life in Gilbert. It was a great trip!

Samantha's Shiner

This is what she gets for trying to wrestle with her brothers.