Halloween 2012

Brian found all sorts of neat carvings this year...

Zachary's preschool Halloween party- yet another year beating to his own drum. We were lucky to get the cape on!

Slick Rick from the 60's

Artemis Fowl

SWAT

Cataloging the loot.

I am grateful we are to the point where they will find things in the house and make their own costumes up in a day's time, or in Zach's case just walk around in your shorts and t-shirt and "Trick or Treat" This year they came home with 3- 100piece puzzles, a little odd.

Fall Break

I am grateful Brian's parents are so easy going, we called on a Sunday and asked if we could come out on Tuesday We didn't have much going on and Brian was working all week...this was a bit more tempting

 

Matthew after jumping in the pool, brushed his foot against something and this is what we found. Scorpions. In the pool, in San Diego. Mind you, we have yet to find one in our house in Arizona. They were all a bit reticent to get back in the water. After some serious scouring of the bottom of the pool, they eventually got back in.

We headed to Sea World one day, and thinking it would be easier for us all to get around, we rented a wheel chair for Brandon and they all had a grand time pushing and racing the wheel chair.

The Dolphin Show had changed significantly since we had last been there....

...consensus from the looks on their faces...not impressed.at.all.

Matthew got brave and sat in the soak zone by himself...again the Shamu show was so-so. Maybe it is because they are getting older or they have seen it a few times, or now the laws state people can't be in the water, whatever the reason the show was "just ok"

Now feeding the sea lions was a different story. We stopped about 15 minutes before the park closed and we purchased 4 trays of food, the attendant handed us close to 25 trays of food. She explained all the food has to be given out by the end of day, so we could take the remaining trays. Score for us. It is much more fun to feed a lot of fish to the sea lions than just 3 little floppy fish in your 1 tray!

Andrew had a hard time touching the fish!



I'm not sure how he ended up sans clothes, but given the amount of sucker that was on his body by the time we got home, it was probably a wise choice.

 

Zachary Turns 5!

Five years old. Ninjago, Spiderman and a Dream Light were on the birthday want list. We had orange, orange rolls for breakfast (the frosting needed to be orange!) and all he wanted to do on his birthday was to walk around Discovery Park and find Kai ( he named the goose after the Ninjago character) and go watch the workers at the Temple. Easy to please kid!

 

 

The birthday cake he requested was a Ninjago spinner, which was easy enough. The colors were a different story. My gold turned out chartruse and the red turned out pink. It was a bit more feminine than we were hoping for--at least I don't think his discriminating eyes noticed as much as mine did.



The Birthday boy at the Temple



Kai. He loves to look at him from a distance, but if he is out of the water Zachary is high tailing it away. Once we saw him get angry and start honking and going after people, hence the arms length adoration.

October 2012

General Conference

Matthew receiving his Weblo award

The knee starting to get better, just getting that ugly yellow look!

Young Womens Softball: the last game the Young Women play, they play against the Bishopric and their leaders.

Andrew played on a wonderful team this year- the boys are so fun to watch, the majority of them can pass and are not so concerned about keeping the ball for them selves so they really play the whole field.

Red faced Andrew. Andrew doesn't have an internal governing device so he just play HARD, all of the time!

Sidewalks and Trees being put in on the Temple grounds.

Another Sunday afternoon project, train tracks that went all over the loft and into the bedrooms. Whatever keeps them occupied all morning is fine by me. We have the late church this year-- we actually change times in August, with the start of school. With four wards in our building right now we have wards starting at 8, 10, 12 and 2. We have the 2pm slot, so we finish at 5pm. On top of that, the YM have to clean up, so we don't get home until around 5:30!

September 2012

 

 

One of our favorite summer activities is to float down the  Salt River. The Johnson's are almost always our partners in anything outdoors! Originally everyone liked to paddle down in the boats, but over the course of a year most of the kids like to be in the tubes. The boats carry the little ones- Zachary, Katie and Chloe, food and all the extra things the kids start out with but don't really want to carry themselves. Someday I will get a picture of Brian and Brian in their matching swimsuits- But above is Brian and Steph Johnson.

Fishing down at the Barn is another favorite Saturday activity. Its not Matthew's favorite thing to do, occasionally we can convince him to come. For some reason this particular morning they boys were pulling them out left and right. Most of the time they don't ever catch anything.

I love this picture of everything spread out on the sidewalk.

My peach helper!



Troop 608 Court of Honor: Peyton Jeffers, Chet Carroll, Brandon, Stevie, Isaac Smith, Pierre, Bro. Miner, Bro. Carroll

Coolidge Welfare Farm Assignment: Each September our Stake has an assignment in Coolidge( south of us) at the Welfare Farm. This Saturday we were asked to pull the plastic irrigating tubes out of the ground. We thought it would be fairly easy, and some were, and others were ridiculous! The pipes which were close to the surface were easily pulled up, but those that were 6-10 inches down were TOUGH to pull out. We drove home exhausted our arms, legs and backs were aching.

Preschool trip to the Basha's grocery store. I love how to them this was extremely exciting!

Brandon played on the Benjamin Franklin Soccer Team this fall. This game played at Power Ranch Elementary was suspended due to the dust storm/haboob which rolled in. When we moved here in 2005, we never heard the word haboob. A dust storm was just called a dust storm. Now, though we keep hearing this word haboob. I think someone wanted a more fascinating was to say dust storm!

These crazy one size fits all uniforms! Brandon was swimming in his all season.

The accident: The last Tuesday in September Brandon had ridden his bike to church. At 8:40 I was sitting downstairs in the front room on the computer, and I hear a crash, a really bad bike crash. Then I hear brakes and then I hear Brian's car screech into the driveway. My first thought was a car hit a biker, then it was Brandon got hit, and then it was Brian hit Brandon. It was Brandon lying in the street right at the corner in front of our house. How many terrible things run though your mind- plenty!! Brandon was racing home on his bike and somehow lost traction zooming around the corner. Brian had been following him home in the car. This is what the leg looked like. After an MRI there was nothing broken and no major nerve damage. Though today in 2014 as I am writing this, Brandon still has an area on the inside of his knee that he has no sensation in. It took a good 6-8 weeks to heel. He was in this robo leg for about a month.