Catching Up

Annie at the peaks in the summer...I was actually taking this picture on my lousy phone to send to my friend, Kristen, in CA to gloat about how beautiful Flagstaff is.  Now I'm in CA feeling jealous of whoever is standing in that spot right now (except now it's probably all brown and dead and cold and windy, so it has its downside)

Evan riding Annie's bike at the trick park with glee.  All he needs is a little brown Extra Terrestrial in the basket and some Reese's Pieces.  

Sam enjoyed time with Dylan, an old friend from school in Flag.  They get along so well.

Taking a hike to see a spring and the site of a shooting that left a young boy dead in the 1800's when Flagstaff was first being settled.  Mt. Elden that overlooks our house in Flagstaff is named after him and/or his family.

A perfect spot for Annie at the spring!

The main essentials to pack on a wilderness hike.

Sam won this book at the Clif Kid Backyard Game contest this summer, so he was working on the summer checklist on our hike.  He got to mark so many things off like a snake, a fossil, a creek, and even mushrooms!   I don't know when we are going to find fireflies anytime soon, and that irks me because I sure like completing the entire assignment and getting an A+.  Guess we need to go to Kansas City in the summer soon.

Jeremy stayed in Flagstaff to finish his thesis after the kids and I left (so he got to avoid the middle-of-nowhere car breakdown).  Here he is on the porch of the iHouse with our friends' daughter, Karli and Piper the dog.  (I'm jealous of whoever is sitting there right now, too)

The kids and I spent the next few weeks in CA doing as many fun things as possible.  We visited Aunt Kendra and (tried) to swim with sharks.

We toured the old ships in the harbor.  It was fun!  (The Maritime Museum)

Kendra told me to come look inside one of the cabins on an old ship and I think I shouted out in surprise when I was greeted by this strange doll who reached out to greet me.

We toured an American submarine and a Soviet sub that were from roughly the same time period...it was interesting to see how the American sub had much more thought for human comfort...the Russian sub had tiny pass-through doors and knobs everywhere--even in the bathroom!  No one seemed very impressed that I could read all the warnings painted in Cyrillic (not that I understood what most of them meant...only the one that said "Don't drink the water")

Here is Annie, sentenced to swab the deck by her pirate brothers.  Girls can be pirates, too, you know!

We went to Pump It Up, Scooter's Jungle, Skyzone, Children's Museums, the library, parks...it was a tough life for the kids :)

Another relic from the past that has somehow been stored at my parents' house all these years...along with my old foam curlers.

We went to the Santa Ana Zoo where Annie got to see a porcupine and Evan talked to these birds he loves.  We also saw a monkey eat his cagemate's poop as it...nevermind.  Too gross to keep talking about.

"Petting" an armadillo.

I have become the mom who shoves her kid to the front to volunteer for shows, and Sam happily obliges, it seems.  Here he is doing Minute-to-win-it at the Discovery Science Center.

There was an amazing Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit there...we all loved it.  There were so many echoes of design in creation and beauty in function demonstrated in Da Vinci's work...he was so observant and so ahead of his time and so in awe himself of the things he was studying in nature. 

"Though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting and nothing is superfluous."  --Da Vinci 

"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."

La Habra Children's museum was far less sophisticated, but is always fun!

The stage is my kids' favorite favorite part.  Even Grandma played a part in one of their productions.  Annie is a good sport because most of the plays involve her being captured and the boys fighting to rescue her while she sits patiently and waits (often a very very long time) for them to complete their elaborate battles.

Evan provided background music with much expression.

Riding bikes at Koch Park with the neighbor kids.

My dad is taking a woodworking class at the community college so I took a "first day of school" picture of him, too.  We like tradition around here.

For my dad's birthday, we took him for a day of fun at Boomers (and also exploited the fact that he could ride the go-karts for free, so he had to keep waiting in line to take each of the children again and again)

Annie had a super fun fit later that afternoon...

...but she was happy to give Birthday Donkers to Crampaw later that evening.

The last time I wrote, I was getting ready for my birthday party, so here it is!  Good conversation and sweet desserts.

For a footrest, we were all using a small stool I made at VBS when I was a kid...I looked under the table and felt happy to see the grown-up feet of my childhood friends together with mine so I snapped a picture.

And last but not least, Annie got to go on a special trip to San Diego with grandma, where she got to go to the San Diego zoo and see a Hokey Pokey (porcupine, her favorite animal) go on a walk on a leash!