Uncle Craig's Visit

Uncle Craig went to San Diego to visit a friend and escape his cold weather. He decided to stop in at our house for a few days on the way home. We sure love having him visit! I don't have many uncles actually. And Uncle Craig never married or had kids, so we were KIND OF like his kids. He could only take so much of us, but what time he could take, he would spoil us. I always say I'm his favorite....but I'm sure that just stirs up trouble, so Craig says that I'm the "self-proclaimed favorite niece". Nice, huh? :)

 

Craig is pretty easy going. Doesn't take much to entertain. If it were me going on a trip, I would want to go and see stuff and go places and feel like I was on a trip! For Uncle Craig, he is content to walk around the neighborhood, and maybe even over to the Post Office.....read the paper, and maybe see a couple of sites that are FREE. I tried to think of where I could take him that wouldn't be too spendy....so, I thought about Gilbert. That's a fun place to go. Downtown Gilbert where it's got some historical kind of stuff. WHat guy doesn't like to go and look at old fashioned cars? Craig liked this place. It's always fun to dream, right?

 

Just a little further down the street from the cars is a yummy place to eat called Joe's Bar-B-Q. That is a yummy place and a fun atmosphere too. Doesn't that sandwich look scrumptious too? I think so!

 

Another day, Craig wanted to go out and see the old Ghost Town. I think it's called Goldfield Mine or something like that. THat's what I put on the picture anyway. He has been there a couple of times, but he really likes it there. Our neighbors accross the street tease us for taking people here. THey think it's funny that it's an attraction we show out of towners. We don't give in to the teasing though :) we still take people there because they seem to enjoy it. Here is Craig sitting inside of the church at the ghost town.

 

AFter a while, I felt bad taking Craig everywhere "free". C'mon. You gotta have something to go home and say that you did. Whenever I think about Craig, I think of his LOVE for our country. He is so into buying only American and so when I noticed that this dinner theater in Mesa was having a show called "George M" (which is a patriotic kind of show) I thought we would treat him to a night there. We have heard about this place several times but have never gone ourselves. Isn't it funny how we do stuff for company, but not ourselves. Like deep cleaning, going to more expensive entertaining kind of places, etc. I guess it's a good excuse or something.
The doors open at 5:30 to start eating. We had an hour and a half to just eat. The kids were in HEAVEN! They were able to pick out the stuff they liked from the buffet and then they went to the dessert bar! NOW that's what was heaven for them! THey went back 2 or 3 times. They kept saying what an AWESOME place that was! Maybe cuz we don't usually get so much dessert and we let them eat to their hearts' content!

 

Here we are posing in front of a HUGE American Flag! We're already feeling REALLY patriotic!

 

After all that food and then a great show, the kids were SOOO tired! They flopped down on the couches outside of the theater and wanted to fall asleep! They really loved it though. Craig was impressed too! I'm so glad we went there! THanks Craig for coming and spending some time here in warm ARizona! Pretty soon it will be too hot again, but we're glad you could thaw out here while MInnesota was FREEZING with lots of SNOW! Come again!

The Amazing Race!!!

It's always nice to have fun and very ambitious friends! Tiffany Watkins is one of those kinds of people that everyone wants to be around. She makes life fun and exciting and has lots of great ideas and energy to go with it! We were so excited when we got invited to compete in "THE AMAZING RACE!" I've always wanted to be on that show....so here it is MESA AZ style. :)

 

IF you look at the invitation, you'll see I'm really behind. I know it's mid March and I'm still talking about February. And will be for a couple more posts too. :) Here we are gathering to get started on this race. We're sizing up our competition. I'm wishing I was fit like my honey. Really, it was just so fun to see so many of our friends and were so excited to have a night to hang out together!

 

I didn't get everything...but here is one part where we were supposed to kick the football through the goal. David, my athletic man that he is, kicked it the first time! I was pretty proud of him. Then he had to run one lap around the track.....

 

...and before we could get the next clue, he had to eat a fun dip, sugar, stick and all. So here he is chewing it and Greg is demonstrating the very green tongue.

 

Here we are at Chuck-E-Cheese. This is where we started to go wrong. Of course, it's because it was my turn to do something. I never have been good at this competition stuff. I thought the least I could do was get 25,000 points at skee ball, but no. We had a 5 minute penalty. THat's where everyone passed us up...but we still had fun.

 

Here we were supposed to order 2 things from the dollar menu. Another mistake on our part. WE ordered 2 things of chicken nuggets...lots of other people came after us and ordered drinks, quickly drank and ran. THere's where we lost the 2nd half of the competition. Darn....but we were just laughing so much. It really was fun!

 

Davey was our driver. He looks so determined, doesn't he?

 

These are all the pictures Tiffany took of us as we came running into Krispy Kreme to solve a puzzle before we got our next clue. Isn't she just so creative? I can't believe I'm on this date! I want to do this again! Maybe I'll be more in shape next time. We can only hope!

 

As you can see, it was a race. Mark's back with sweat just shows how hard it was....or at least that it was a competition. It's so great to have friends like this! These are the moments and times we live for!

 

Here we all are at the PIT STOP of the race. The final....Thanks to TIffany for a great night of fun!

 

ANd thank you to all our officials who helped this all come to pass!

 

IT's a Girl's Night OUt and We're Gonna Have Fun!!!

 

Last week was Spring Break. We stayed home this year. Too many bills and I had a full week of doing hair...so we made the best of the time we had at home. Mostly the kids played outside with their friends. Abbie has been asking me for about a month to take her out for "Special Time". She was very specific in where she wanted to go. I was surprised, because we haven't been here forever...but she wanted to go "where all the fountains are!" You would think she would pick CHuck-E-Cheese or McDonalds....but instead, she wanted "Costa Vida". Woo Hoo, a girl after my own heart! I love that place and haven't been for a while. She wanted to eat outside so we could see the big fountain. IT was actually a really beautiful evening, so I was happy to sit outside too. In a month or so....we'll be dying of heat and either need a mister outside or just stay inside with the airconditioning.

 

It wouldn't be a night out with Abbie if we weren't striking poses and giggling a bit. Abbie is such a ham and really enjoys attention on her. She can be so fun to be around! She was cracking herself up with all of her poses. I love the scenery all around. Arizona really is a nice place to live. I love the shopping especially! I shouldn't, but I do.

 

After eating, we walked over to the fountain and got out 5 pennies. We were figuring out where we wanted to toss the coins and stuff. Of course Abbie was wanting to reach in and get some extra coins to toss, but I let her know that wasn't a good thing to do! Notice Abbie sitting next to her pennies to show you her coins before she makes a wish with them!

 

Now, what to wish for? How many different poses can I get with a little girl thinking of what to wish for! She let me know she was wishing for a bike and a pink scooter and then I said she can't tell me or it wouldn't come true! She was very concerned and wanted to "take it back". I thought that was cute.

 

Here we are in action. TOssing the coins hoping our dreams will come true! Abbie asked "Mom is your wish that Dad will kiss you?" She is pretty hung up on kissing and marriage and all that stuff. I'm trying to remember if I was like that when I was young. I think that I thought it was gross if my parents kissed. I don't know....

 

We walked down the whole sidewalk stopping at EACH and EVERY fountain to make a wish. GOod thing I had lots of coins in my purse that day, huh? We had to stop and pose by the gorgeous flowers that were there!

 

THis place is great, you pass by several cool stores, like Borders, an ice cream shop, Pei Wei's (SP) and places like that. WEll, around the corner is one of MY favorite spots. IT's call Paradise Bakery. It is paradise to me for sure! We got some little mini cookies in our little box to top off the night with a little somethin' sweet! Sweets for the sweet, huh?

 

We decided to count all the fountains on the way back to the car. You see us holding up 9 fingers, and that is EXACTLY how many fountains we made wishes in I think this is going to be a LUCKY year! WHat do you think? Thanks for suggesting this Fun Special Time Abbie! We'll have to do it again sometime. What a great idea!

You can Tell You're getting older when.....

 

You know, my mom always made a big deal about holidays. I don't know if it's because my mom just LOVED the holidays or the fact that there were 7 of us and mom felt entitled to spend a little money on us and make a big deal during the holidays. Whatever the reason being, I LOVE celebrating holidays! I think it's funny when I look back at pictures of when I was first a parent until now. My kids were really young and could have CARED LESS...yet that was the time that we carved pumpkins, decorated the Christmas tree, made sugar cookies with the neighborhood....you get the point! Now, when they are actually remembering specific events in their lives, I find myself too busy and tired....and then TRY and might I say TRY again....to make it somewhat of a memorable holiday. I let the kids decorate the Christmas tree, thus the reason you didn't see all my CUTE decorating on the blog....and then as you can see in this picture, I don't do cut out sugar cookies.....I do cupcakes! Much easier, quicker and send them outside to eat them! As I look through my Feb pictures, (of which I have more to catch up on) I see that I need to make a little more effort with the kids. I mean well....it's just amazing where all the hours go! I wonder how my mom did it with 7 kids! I feel SSTTRREETTCCHHEEDD to the max and utterly exhausted most days and only have 3 kids. I am sounding like "Lemuel" right now, but 's late and I feel like "unloading" if you will. With that said, it was fun and the kids enjoyed eating most of the frosting before getting it on their cupcakes and dumping 1/2 a bottle of sprinkles on each cupcake before eating them. Yum!

 

I didn't realize the kids had taken so many pictures of me talking on the phone. I guess this is the cake decorating time in the kids' eyes. Good one, huh? I'm sure I was talking about something REALLY important! :)

Mason's 5th Grade Field Trip!

You know, I remember 5th grade very well! I had just moved up to Utah from The Indian Reservation in Arizona. I can't believe my oldest son is now in 5th grade! Time is FLYING by quickly! No, that was not intended to be a pun since they went to a flying simulator place! LOL
This field trip was really fun! Mason really enjoyed it! The whole class had to memorize all the parts of an airplane (at least the main things) before they were allowed to go on this field trip! I think it took a couple of tries...but he finally got it! They were first instructed on how to fly and were able to practice in these little rocking seat looking things. I didn't realize that the littlest movement makes such a difference! I guess it's like a steering wheel....

 

After being instructed, they were allowed to go to these special computer things and try their hands at take off, and then landing! HOw easy does this look? I thought, "hmmm...I'll do it to show the kids HOW" LOL Oh my, that was WAY harder than it looked! I crashed 3 times! THe instructor came over and helped me to land safely! Now I'm really thankful each time I fly to CA that those pilots are really good at what they do! Who would've known it was so hard!

 

The next step was to get into an Airplane Simulator and feel like they were flying a plane. Well, as much as possible anyway. The little plane would move around as Mason would move the joystick and stuff. I'm not great at explaining this place. I need my hands to talk. :)

 

I love that the kids are exposed to different stuff like this...it helps them to see what their interest are! Mason flew a helicopter at the end. After it was all over, I asked him if he wanted to be a pilot! He said...nope. Oh well....at least he had fun trying, right? I think he wants to be a pediatric dentist. That still sounds good. At least he didn't say a garbage man or something. NOt that there is anything wrong with being a garbage man. I'm grateful each Wed when it's picked up!