Field trips = fun?

On Thursday I took the day off to go on a field trip with Sydney and her class. We went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. I was in charge of four students. Each student in the group had a job. There was a monitor, a navigator, a secretary, and a photographer. In order for me to go on the field trip I had to go to an orientation meeting. This is what I like to call a working field trip. I had my doubts about how much fun we were going to have. Sydney (in the green shirt) was the secretary. That clip board was tons of fun for her to hold all day! She was an awesome secretary, she actually seemed to enjoy keeping track of everything. I never once heard her complain.
We saw lots of wildlife. The boys in my group loved the snakes. They had a Rosy Boa out that we could pet and learn about. I like the snakes that were behind the glass the best!

There was a man made little cave tunnel that you could walk through and climb through. The kids thought it was awesome. It was a tight squeeze for most of the adults, not to mention really dark in side. When it was lit up there were some really cool rock formations like you would see in real caves. The kids were amazed.

They each got to try on bat ears. They didn't keep them on very long. There were so many people, and the ears amplified the noise. It was really loud once you put on the ears. Sydney was a good sport and put them on so Mom could take a picture. As soon as I had my picture the ears came off.

My favorite were the Prairie Dogs. They were so cute. They played with each other, and ran around. The babies in the group looked like they hadn't been coming outside their den for very long. They were very tiny and so much fun to watch. I'm glad they don't live in my yard but they were a lot of fun to watch.

I bought the kids some ice cream while we took a little break from walking. Poor Ayom got a brain freeze immediately. It was hot out when we went to Tucson but it wasn't unbearable. There was a breeze and some shade and most of the display buildings were air conditioned. It was way better than I thought it would be.

The Otter was a crowd pleaser. He was a big showoff and ham for the camera. You could watch him swim from above and then if you walked down this tunnel you could watch him from the underwater level. We spent a lot of time watching this funny guy.

Sydney again doing something she didn't really want to just to please mom and her camera. My kids hated me and my camera by the end of this field trip! They were all good sports though.

Frogs. Ewwww is what the boys said but the girls thought they were cool. Weird huh?

This lizard was actually alive but had just gotten fed and had his heat light turned on so he was snoozing away.

Sydney had a great time. By the time we finished lunch and were back on the bus we were beat. It was the perfect day to be in Tucson in the heat. There was a breeze and the heat wasn't at record temperatures ..... Yet!

And then comes the long bus ride home. We got five miles out from the Museum and the bus broke down! I snapped this picture of Sydney and her friend Madison on our way back from going potty in the bushes. I think we waited by the road for almost two hours. Thankfully TUSD sent one of their buses to take us home. The store Family Dollar let us borrow the umbrellas. Once we were on our way we dropped them back off. They saved us!

After a long hot break by the side of the road we were finally back on the bus and back on the road heading home. Sydney has another field trip this Thursday, to Tucson, to the zoo, with her buddy who is in kindergarten. Yeah, I think I'll stay home and work thanks. Good luck Sydney, call me when you need a ride home. Hopefully it will be before 8 o'clock unlike last time!

I love the Easter Bunny!

We had the best Easter ever! The Easter Bunny brought us the best present ever! Our present came all the way from Montana!! James is home!!! Just for a short visit. He's on his way to New Mexico for training until July. We spent the weekend at Dad's house. We played games (I highly recommend the games Farkle, Apples to apples family edition, and Monopoly the card game for your next family fun night!), visited, went out for dinner, and worked around the house. I love hanging out as a family. We missed seeing Tammy and Araya and Mason but James is training for work so they didn't get to come :( Clay had to work so he missed out too. We had a great time. It was so nice to see my older brother!!

Girls love pedicures!

Yesterday we had lots of errands to run. I felt bad the girls didn't get to have much fun this weekend. I had to work all day Friday and they had to go with me. We had to be there at 7:00 Am and didn't get home until 3:30. It was a long boring day for them. Saturday was just as busy. We were up and ready early so we could get our errands done and get back home and get a few things done around the house.

I decided we needed a little fun this weekend. We went to the mall and got pedicures! The girls loved it. It was so fun to do it all together. I haven't been able to get a pedicure since last year when I went with Amy for her birthday. We were the only ones in the salon at the time so it was great to laugh and joke and just spend time with the girls. I think the girls love pedicures just as much as I do. That may or may not be a good thing! After our toes got all pretty we went to McDonald's for a quick lunch and then we headed home to get some house cleaning done.

When Clay saw our nails later that night he said it looked like the colors of the sherbet ice cream he liked to eat. Wonder why I always pick orange? It's Clay's favorite color! The girls got their housework done in record time! Time to play in the water!

I love it when the weather is warm enough to play outside in the water. My grass gets watered, the chickens get a bath, and the girls have a great time! When Dad got home it was time to fire up the grill. We had a yummy dinner of grilled chicken and steak, a huge salad and some noodles. What better way to end a fun day than going to DQ!

We call it a secret at our house. When the kids were younger we use to try to surprise them. Clay would ask if we needed a secret that night. I would of course always say yes. Once we were in the car the girls would always ask where we were going. We would answer that it was a secret. Now they hear the word secret and they're running for the car. I can't wait for school to be out. We'll have more time to spend as a family, and more days filled with fun just like this one!

3 For the fun of it!

Here are three quick little tid bits just for the fun of it. I heard about the Hunger Games Trilogy months ago from my friend Gato. I got sidetracked and busy I never got to read them. Well after everyone at work had read them but me I guess it was time to give in and do it too. Bad idea, it's like twilight all over again!! I was hooked from page one of book one. I finished book three today and cried in the end. The first book is being made into a movie and comes out March 2012. I CAN'T WAIT!! Next little story....... We had pizza tonight for dinner. Wednesday's are our special nights. After I got a call from Clay saying he would be late tonight, I decided not to dirty up a clean kitchen and order pizza. I was headed out the door to pick it up (No, we don't have delivery in Bisbee!) when Sydney says "Mom did you get the hot lovin kind"? Ummm, I busted up laughing! The what?? "You know, the thin kind that's hot and I love it" she says. Too funny, what a goofball. We had a good laugh and some yummy pizza. From now on it will forever be known as the hot lovin kind at our house. When my grand kids ask why we call pizza that I'm going to break out the blog book! Last but not least..... If you have not read this book, you have no idea what you're missing. If you haven't seen the movie either, wow you need to get to a red box ASAP! Read it, watch it, love it. We did.

I got sidetracked sorry, so on to story three. So in this book this girl has chickens and gives away their eggs. We now get four eggs a day from our lovely ladies. That's plenty for us. Today we collected eggs and discovered we had two 18 packs of eggs plus more that wouldn't fit in the carton. We have boiled eggs in the fridge already and we made egg salad sandwiches just last week. We're egged out! Time to get rid of some. We gave the four neighbors around us eggs. Hopefully they don't treat our eggs like the boy in Flipped treated the eggs that were given to him. The girls loved running around delivering the eggs. I wonder what our neighbors thought?

Spring Butterflies

Spring is finally here. I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year. I love the weather, the birds, school almost being out, playing outside. I hate the wind, schedules getting hectic, having to go to work, bugs, allergies, and weeds! The kids are loving everything about this time of year. They can play outside until almost seven, they can put the sprinkler under the trampoline and not catch a cold, they can start counting down the days left of school. Alex Thought her butterfly hair clips just "Yell Spring". They looked so cute in her braids! We love spring but we're anxiously awaiting Summer!! Bring on the heat, the pool parties, and the vacations. Sleeping in, staying up late, and no schedules is a must too!

Confetti with Colin!

While Uncle Colin was down for the MAKE youth arts festival he got to play with the girls. Every year around Easter time you can find eggs filled with confetti. Yes, they make a huge mess but they"re lots of fun!The girls had a great time chasing Colin around trying to get confetti on him. I think Colin won, the girls came in with tons of confetti in their hair and he didn't have any confetti anywhere on him. I was still picking out confetti that night before it was bath time!

The mess is still out there. I was hoping the wind would blow it away but..... Looks like I'll have to break out the broom. I made the girls play out front because I didn't want the chickens to eat the confetti and give us colorful eggs.

We missed Aunt Amy and Harry a lot but we sure had a great time with Uncle Colin. Thanks for coming and we'll see you soon!!

Alex the Author

On to the reason for the special family get together. Back in January a group by the name of Stories That Soar came to our school and asked our students to write stories. When they were done they got to put their stories into a magic box and received a piece of candy and a sticker in return. Some of the stories would be chosen to be acted out on stage as a play and some would be made into a book. Our school turned in a total of 193 stories and out of those 22 were picked to be published or performed. Alex got her book published! It was an amazing story that almost didn't get turned in. The last week they were able to turn in stories Alex couldn't find hers. She thought it was at home, I thought she had given it to her teacher. We looked for days with no luck. I let her teacher know how upset she was about the whole thing at our Wednesday morning meeting so maybe they could search the classroom. By Wednesday afternoon, with the help of her teacher, she had a story to turn in. Not a moment too soon either because the next day was the last day to turn them in! Alex wrote an awesome story titled Oh, Sally! It was about a very naughty dog who does lots of bad dog things but in the end is still loved by her owner. There was a professional illustrator that chose to illustrate Alex's story for her. She had a dog of her own and loved her story right away. She asked to meet Alex and get a picture with her. Alex (along with the entire family) was so excited and proud! The illustrator told Alex her illustrations were inspired by her own dog.

Here are just a few pictures of her book. Not the greatest pictures but it is one of the greatest books!! Alex is an amazing story teller!

I'm so proud of her and her abilities. She always says she wants to be an author when she grows up and now she is one! My little girl is so amazing!

I will always treasure her sweet little book. We gave a copy to her teacher with a thank you card and a picture of Alex. We wanted her to know how much we appreciated all her hard work and patience as a teacher. I was so grateful that so many of our family members (Nana, Papa, Uncle Will, Colin....and Daddy even took the day off!) were able to come and show their love and support for Alex. I think it will be a day she will never forget!

Alex the AMAZING Author!!

MAKE youth arts festival

This past weekend was a very special weekend. I'll fill you in as to why in a later post. We had the whole family together for a fun weekend. We went to the MAKE youth arts festival (I can't remember what MAKE stands for....). We found some of the girls art projects that were displayed. In the picture below Alex made the snail and Sydney made the picture below it. If you click on the picture and zoom in on it, Sydney's picture will crack you up! Uncle Will said it looked like she was moving and I thought she was packed and ready to go to Sea World!

There was so much to see and do and it was all free. No wonder the event started at 10 and went until 4 PM. We made it there, we did not get to see everything. We did get to make a t-shirt tote bag, The girls had a lot of fun with that.

Alex was so proud of her fish! We looked at all the displayed projects. The girls were running around trying to show us all their projects and at the same time trying not to miss out on any fun activities. I'm not sure what the rest of the family thought of the TRUE BISBEE event but I had a good time!

Just like my Dad!

I am so much like my Dad! What does a hammer have to do with this? Nothing really. Growing up my Dad worked in Tucson and we lived in Benson. He had a good 30 minute commute on I-10. He would find some pretty amazing things on the road. He always stopped to pick them up. He brought home moving blankets, ice chests, tools, tires, toys, you name it. We were even pulled off to the side a few years back waiting for my mom to catch up and he had me pop the trunk so we could put a whole exhaust/muffler thing in!

So the other day we were headed to school early in the morning and what do we see in the middle of the road? Yep, you guessed it, the hammer. We locked the brakes up, flipped a u-e and picked that bad boy up! The girls thought I was nuts, Clay thought I was a dork, and I thought Oh man, I am soooo like my Dad! (Clay liked his new hammer though!)

White chicken = white eggs, right?

At one time we had three chickens and a beautiful rooster. Well, the rooster found his very loud voice one day, so we decided he needed to go to a new home. His new home turned out to be Papa's house. From there he ended up right in the jaws of a coyote and he was never heard from again. We couldn't have an uneven number of chickens for our family, everyone needs their very own. Papa sent us home with one of his chickens since he had just gotten about 20 of them from a friend. Our little ladies didn't take to kindly to the new chicken. We finally had to lock them all in the coop for a few days and make them get along. They still bicker at dinner time but the white chicken is very fast so she gets plenty to eat.The cold weather came around and the egg laying production slowed down a bit. The white chicken is younger than our chickens. Our chickens have been laying for sometime now. We never got white eggs so we thought the white chicken was still to young to lay. Now I had heard, from a reliable source that white chickens only lay white eggs. We checked daily and still no eggs from our white hen.
Yesterday when I threw out some bread for the chickens, I noticed that the white chicken wasn't acting like she usually did. She didn't want to eat much and she was moving around pretty slow. If you know me, then you'll guess what I did all that day. Yes, I WORRIED about the darn chicken. When we got home from school the kids checked for eggs and did their homework. When Dad got home from work he went outside to play so naturally we all followed him. I had noticed the white chicken had been over in a corner of the yard most mornings when I went to check on the chickens. After worrying about her all day I went looking for her.

Where did I find her. Sitting on her HOARD of eggs! We must have found 20. Are they white?? NO. So much for a RELIABLE source, Dad! We had no idea how old the eggs were or which one had been laid that day. The girls collected all the eggs and we disposed of them. Now we know where to look for her eggs and we can stop looking for white eggs! I no longer have to WORRY about the white chicken. She's laying eggs like a chicken, she's as healthy as a horse, and as always she thinks she's a dog!