Our Trip to Mesa Verde

We went to Mesa Verde a few days before the kids returned to school. What a remarkable experience.  We will return again and again, until we have gone on all the tours. You can easily spend a week here.

These ruins are untouched, they haven't been rebuilt.  Amazing. 

In front of us is about an 8 foot drop. The roof had caved in.

 

We all got to climb down into a kiva.

It was dark, and pretty cramped.

  Hiking back out, we had to squeeze through some tough spots.

And there were a lot of ladders. 

 Nothing like jumping for joy.

 This was a picture we took as we left the park.

And a few minutes later....

Home Sweet Home

After almost nineteen years of moving from state to state, our family has finally settled down! We have moved into our new home, our boxes are unpacked, and now we are figuring out where to put furniture, and what to put on the walls. 

We now have a lot of lawn, and so our kids get to add lawn mowing to their chores.

 I think the moving company was paid by the box. The entire bay is filled with empty boxes!

 For Kayla's birthday, she celebrated with a water balloon fight in the back yard.

Michael lost his first front tooth. 

I have spent some quality mornings chopping down the jungle, and clearing the dead stuff from the roses.  I have actually had a lot of fun.

  From our home, to yours, life is good.


 



Its official!

Yay! School is out, and here's what we've been up to.

Kimberley at her jazz band performance.

Kayla performing at her school talent show.

Baking snickerdoodles with the cousins.

Karina performing with her school choir. 

 Matthew started cub scouts.

Michael on his kindergarten field trip.

With school out, our time in Arizona is officially coming to an end. What a great year!

Eight is Great!

The birthday boy woke up and opened his first present before his big sister left to take the ACT. He was planning to ride bikes all morning, but it actually rained in the desert.  So he tried out his bike in the house.

He requested a Lego cake, for his Lego birthday.  He decorated with some of his favorite lego pieces.

His red haired sister built this for his birthday. 

 He had a wonderful party, with pizza, and games, and magic tricks...

 One of his favorite presents.

Eight is great!  His big baptism date will be April 23rd.

Our Trip To Tombstone

The kids had a couple of days off for "rodeo days" and so we decided to take a family trip to Tombstone, Arizona, "the town too tough to die." Brent was able to take a day off, so off we went to get some Western culture.

Who knew that an old phone booth was so facinating? 

We went for a ride on the trolley tour, and saw a lot of places where outlaws were made sherriffs, and sherriffs made a few less outlaws.

We took in a show, where we hissed the bad guys (wearing a red scarf on their belts, in case we couldn't tell them apart), and cheered on the good guys.

A nice lady offered to take our family picture. She wasn't wearing a gun, or a red scarf on her belt, so we let her. 

Who says Wyatt Earp wasn't bigger than life? 

The kids got a kick out of this.... 

...until the rules were enforced! 

 See if you can see what was totally wrong in these pictures....

 I'm just saying...

 At the tail end of our day, we made one last stop.

A sobering thought.  

Good Times

Here's the note that we received after we were "Twelve Days of Christmassed".  This year was a lot of fun, hearing the doorbell ring, and all the kids racing to the door to try and catch the elusive family that was dropping off gifts on the doorstep.

We never actually caught the culprits, as Mom always seemed to be mopping, or ironing in front of the door each day.  Quite the coincidence.  But when we finally found out who it was, we discovered that they had been wearing ski masks, and parking around the corner, to avoid detection.  Luckily they also avoided police detection!  We loved it.

Another tradition is feeding the reindeer on Christmas Eve.

And leaving out cookies for Santa, and a wee glass of milk. 

This thoughtfulness obviously paid off.

Good Times.