As close as you'll get to a Christmas letter

We really don't enjoy writing Christmas letters around here. But we do love reading everyone else's, so I figured I'd use this blog post to link you to some interesting events of the year. Probably the biggest news of the year is that we got a pet. A cute little kitty named Jasper. I can tell you are all in shock, so I'll let you in on a little secret. It's actually our next door neighbor's cat.




That cute little thing can play for HOURS with the girls and not get tired. And the best part of all is that it goes back home to someone else's house every night.

Sadie has recently decided bike riding isn't nearly as scary as it was that one time when she went off a curb and nursed scraped knees for a week. After refusing to get back on the bike for several months, she suddenly has decided it is her very favorite thing to do outside. (After she is tired of playing with the kitten).


Sadie also really enjoys her Brownie troop activities, especially this recent one to the Stuffington Bear Factory where they got to see how stuffed animals are cut, sewn, and stuffed. They each got to make a bear which we are donating to a local fire station when we go for our tour next week!


Ashley has had a busy month with her performances in the Nutcracker. She'll do her 5th and 6th performances this weekend. Her role is "Gingerette", which means she comes out of Mother Ginger's enormous skirt. Here she is in her costume ready to go on stage. (She is second from the right)



Grandma and Grandpa C. came from California to see her perform.


Here we all are before the show:

To see more dance pictures of Ashley, you can go HERE

Ashley is also active in her Junior Girl Scout troop and recently went to an Encampment up in Prescott where she got her Archery badge.

Patrick continues his obsession with scooter riding and has mastered some cool tricks:


When he isn't riding his scooter, he's taking it apart and painting it.


He recently won an online contest when he made a commercial for one of the scooter companies. You can see that HERE. To see more of his scooter riding, complete with videos go HERE. In his spare time, when he is not scootering, he goes to school (8th grade) and especially enjoys being on the PUE TV team that puts together weekly video announcements. Video editing is definitely one of his other favorite things to do.

He continues his love of soccer and chose that sport over running Cross Country this fall. We're not sure yet whether he'll return to running in the Spring, but we hope he does and continues to lower his mile time. His personal best is 5:49.

I haven't been good about updating this recently, mostly because I've been doing several large sewing jobs on the side that take up a lot of time. That and leading two girl scout troops, playing card games with the kids ('Speed' is the new favorite), and making sure homework gets done, rounds out my days.

Casey continues working for the AZ Attorney General's Office and helps out with the Webelos den once a week. For the first time in several years he did not coach any of our kid's soccer teams this fall and enjoyed being a spectator at all the games.

If this is your first time to visit our blog and you'd like to look through the archives over on the side bar, you can catch up with some of the many other things we did throughout this past year.

Turkey Trot

Ashley and Sadie participated in their school's annual tradition: the Turkey Trot. This nearly one mile course around the park next to the school was loads of fun for them.

First they gathered by grade level for a 'warm up' Chicken Dance. This year the school mascot showed up too! Sadie wanted to look like a turkey so she wore a brown shirt and black shorts.

After the chicken dance, the P.E. teacher and one of her friends, both dressed in turkey costumes had to make sure they escaped the principal who was armed with a PAN and and SPOON! (In previous years, the principal had used a plastic fake knife to chase the turkeys, but felt that may be sending the wrong message.)

After the Chicken dance, the turkey chase, and stretching, they began the Turkey Trot!


At the end they got a High Five from a dove and a few turkeys:


Here are the girls' wonderful teachers:

Snapshot September

I have been keeping so busy that I have neglected my sad blog. When I came back today, instead of the usual background behind the photos, it told me that I had exceeded my bandwith on Photobucket. It told me like a 100 times... so I really knew! Okay internet, I'll update my blog!

So here I am, with a fresh new background to match the glorious fall weather that is FINALLY here. Yes! We can open our windows in the morning and evening and bask in luxurious 70 degree temperatures. Ahhhh!

What have we been up to here in this household of ours? Well, follow along with the photos below:

Going back to school


Updating styles


Discovering Axe (I had no idea this stuff existed until now!)

Enjoying a Visit from Dan and Gretchen and their two super cute kids, Kytalin and London :


Going to Junior Girl Scout meetings:


Auditioning for the Middle School Soccer team.

Making the Middle School Soccer team.

Going to lots of practices and lots of Middle School Soccer Games.


Baking


Going to first Brownie meeting. (Sorry Sadie, no picture)

Going to the "Patriotic" ice cream social on September 11th


Attending a Diamondbacks baseball game where the Girl Scouts got to walk on the field before the game began.



Sleeping with tons of animals


Making matching t-shirts with a friend for Spirit Week at school



Auditioning for the Nutcracker


Being Cast in the Ballet Etudes Nutcracker as a Gingerette

Wearing "Peace" pajamas to school for an earned Pajama Day


Making forts, libraries, and stores


Making Swaps for the Girl Scout Swap-A-Rama-
These are mini 'fly swatters' that the girls brought to trade


Going to skate parks


Running the Swap-A-Rama for 100 girls and their leaders- Sadie's troop was in charge.

Making Swaps:



Trading Swaps:


In between all of that, I have been spearheading the No cost fundraising at the school (Box Tops anyone?), trying to get the winter flowers in- yes, we plant flowers here in autumn, and working my side job as a seamstress. This meant measuring over 25 girls and boys in the Chandler Children's choir , and getting their performance outfits ready for the first fitting. I am happy to say that they are ready for the fitting! Woo hoo!

Also, Ashley really really wanted to make something for her 3 year old cousin's birthday, so she picked out the fabric and the pattern and helped with the cutting and sewing. This is what she sent Ainsley for her birthday!


As if all of THAT wasn't enough, all three kids started rec. league soccer teams in the middle of the month. Luckily Patrick's games are on Friday evening and the girls games are on Saturday mornings. Casey is not coaching any teams this season and is really enjoying being a spectator at the games. I only have photos of Sadie's games fo far:

(No I didn't make the banner- for the first time, another mom put this together! Love it!)


So now you know what we've been up to. Off to conquer October!

Snapshot Sunday 08-09-09

Bags of Games and VHS movie in bags ready to Freecycle
The woman who received this stuff deserves it I think! Here is what she wrote in response to my email about items we are done with:

We would totally use any of these items that are still available. My 2
year old broke her femur and is in a full body cast (chest to ankles). We
are living off of movies and everyone is soooooo bored! My 5 year old
LOVES puzzles and we are looking for items to keep them both (and me!)
from going stir crazy until the cast is removed (3 more weeks!).

I love Freecycle!

Scooter Graveyard.

Guess what tomorrow is?

Over 6 inches of hair- cut off in 3 inch increments.
Ashley usually hollers when I trim off even 1/2 inch, so to hear her ask me to chop off this much really surprised me.
It took me four tries to get it to the length that she wanted because I was so scared of making it too short.

(When we started it was below the edge of the light pink shirt)

She's still smiling! (Whew!)
She actually loves it and I like that it will be so much easier to take care of!

Road Trip: Days 5-8

Mesa Verde National Park.

From the website:

Mesa Verde, Spanish for green table, offers a spectacular look into the lives of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300. Today, the park protects over 4,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. Descendants of Mesa Verde Ancestral Puebloans include the Hopi in Arizona, and the 19 Rio Grande pueblos of New Mexico: Taos, Picuris, Sandia, Isleta, San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Nambe, TeItalicsuque, Jemez, Cochiti, Pojoaque, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Zia, Laguna, Acoma, and Zuni.

We really enjoyed visiting all of the sites there, and learning about the fascinating history of the people who lived in the cliff dwellings for less than 100 years. (They lived and farmed on the mesas above for hundreds of years before moving down to the cliffs.)

As we were waiting for one of our tours to begin, we had about a 30 minute wait so we pulled out some lunch supplies from our cooler. As I took a perfectly ripe, delicious looking peach out of a plastic bag, it slipped from my hand and rolled about 4 feet beyond a retaining fence, next to a log. There it sat, bright orange, tempting me to climb over the fence to grab it. Resigned that I would have to find something else to eat, I asked the kids how long it would stay there before an animal would find it. Not 20 seconds later, a squirrel came bounding out from under a nearby tree, grabbed that peach in it's teeth and took off down the hill.


Because the peach was half the size of the squirrel, it quickly fell out of it's mouth and started rolling quickly down the hill. It was like watching a cartoon, as the squirrel sped down the hill trying to outrun the peach and successfully catching it again in it's mouth. Yes, that perfectly ripe peach would have been a delicious lunch, but at least we got some amusement out of the tragedy.

After we wore ourselves out with 2 days of hiking through the ruins, we moved to a campground outside the park and the next day drove to a Mountain Resort near Durango, Colorado. There, we went on the Alpine slide and the kids got to go on the Bungee Trampoline and the rock climbing wall:

(If you enlarge Patrick's picture above, you can see that someone drew a picture of Wonder Bread on it. )

Patrick even found a totally cool "mountain scooter" and we saw several people riding the lift with these.

Unfortunately our day in Durango ended earlier than expected as a big thunderstorm blew in and closed down all the attractions. We drove back to our campground, which luckily had a little "clubhouse" that we were able to stay in for the worst of the storm.

After our eventful Durango day, we drove to Flagstaff, with many stops along the way to look at the handcrafted items offered for sale by Navajo Indians in booths along the road. Casey and I were on the lookout for pottery, while Ashley was looking for miniature turtle fetishes (see HERE for more information on Indian animal fetishes). Patrick wanted a tomahawk, and Sadie... well, she just wanted to buy something, anything. After about 4 stops, we all found what were were looking for, and then some.

Ashley's turtles:


Patrick's tomahawk and arrow. That's petrified wood at the end of his tomahawk.


Sadie's keychain and hair clips.


My earrings:

Our Navajo Indian pottery which we really love. Those pictures are carved in, not painted. It was worth the wait to find these gems:



As we drove a bit further, we saw a sign in the distance that said "Dinosaur tracks ahead". So we followed the sign off the highway and about 500 feet ahead was a man in the road waving us over. We saw tents with jewelry vendors not far behind him, so we slowed down. He motioned for us to pull into a parking spot next to another minivan and to "lock our cars because a lot of Highway patrolmen chase people down this road." All righty then.

After, we locked our car, he proceeded to follow us down toward the dinosaur tracks, jabbering nonstop about all sorts of things, like how it snowed the previous night. At this point, I told him that we were going to go ahead and look at the flag on the hill in the distance, though he clearly wanted to guide us a different way. Once we got out of earshot, I told Casey that I think we had our first inebriated tour guide. We got a few photos before our guide caught up:

He then took us to see some dinosaur fossils and some even bigger footprints.

See the 3 footprints in a row by his right foot?


Looking at the fossils

By this time, I had figured out the gig. We had been given a ramshackle tour and he would expect a tip at the end. Which put us in an awkward situation, knowing this man was drunk and knowing right where the money would go. In fact, as we were looking through the craft tables after our tour (while our guide hovered inches from us), one of the women walked up to Casey and told him not to feel pressured to pay him, because it would just encourage his bad habits of begging for alcohol money. In the end, we did give him a few bucks because he did show us a few things (like the fossils) that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. As soon as he had the money, he disappeared over a nearby hill and joined about 5 other men waiting for the next vehicle to drive up.

Though our guide was in bad shape, the vendors won us over with their lovely items. This is where Ashley purchased her turtle necklace and Sadie got her hair clips. Though Patrick had already purchased a tomahawk, he was still interested in the ones this boy had helped his mom make.


After all of our stops, we pulled into Flagstaff around 5 p.m. After 6 nights of camping, we were very glad to see our hotel room. Though we mildly considered driving the next 3 hours on home, we are glad that we took a break to enjoy some well-needed down time. The kids enjoyed the pool, I enjoyed the shower, and we were refreshed to drive the last leg home.