Swimming, HomeEc, Shop and Wrestling

Sounds like a day in High School, huh?

Nope, just a regular old day at our house!

Some of the pools here open EARLY. There is a new city pool that opened last week that opens at 9am so the kids and I headed out after breakfast to swim!

I couldn't let go of Caitie in the pool because the motion of the water made her fall over!

Swimming

Here she is before we left

Evan swimming, he's getting braver in the water, but not in the sprayers.

This is all he would do :)

And although it only looks like he's squinting from the sun...rest assured this was the start of a "I don't want to leave Mom" whining marathon! He needed a snack and some water and he was fine!

Can't tell if Caitie wanted to leave or not, she was sleepy!

HomeEc

Afterwards we went home for lunch and nap and snack (I told you it's always snack time around here)!

Caitlin bathed in her yogurt as usual!

Shop

After Danny got home we went to IKEA to look for a TV cabinet to fit the gigantic, weird entertainment nook in this house! We found the perfect one! And it wasn't at all expensive.

IKEA is my new favorite store to shop at. They have everything and they've thought of everything! There are maps (which you definitely need) and pencils, cool carts with shopping bag attachments (and they provide the bags!) the store is well organized and they have everything you can imagine for your home...and it's NOT expensive, but seems to be well made.

So, we found the perfect TV cabinet/stand and brought it home and Evan helped Danny and Tracy put everything together!

Wrestling


Here you can see Evan and Danny tackling me. At one point even Grady was standing over me licking my face!

We have clean(er) tile!

I finally got the tile cleaned! Well - started anyway. There's a lot of tile in this house!

I wrote all about it with some photos on our other blog...

Click here

More House Pictures and Happenings...

Today I went out and took some pictures of the house from the outside and our neighborhood - so you can feel more like you know where we are even thought it still really means nothing geography wise! :)

Front of House

Backyard (needs mowing or trimming - we're still working on those details!) I did clean all the back windows this afternoon. I just need to get to the front now! They look so much better! The dust collects pretty quickly on the screens.

More backyard...

Looking West from the corner

and North from the corner

Tonight I'll put up some photos of the greenspace and play ground. It's just a few houses away so in the fall and "winter" we'll be there a LOT! We've been taking the dogs out walking at night (around 7 or 730) it's still hot but not so dreadful for them so they get a little exercise.

We live in a relatively new area with LOTS of family and kid friendly neighborhoods. The city of Chandler has 7 pages of preschool activities alone in their city guide (the ones that come out for each quarter or season)! It's amazing...and there are parks (usually covered) and walking trails and bike lanes/paths everywhere! It's just not what we're used to in Missouri.

We went to a Lutheran church near us on Sunday but it just wasn't what we were looking for. We miss Timothy!! There's another that's within decent driving range so we'll try that this week and see how it goes.

Kids say the cutest things...

Evan Had lots of time to talk to me on the drive to Arizona and he said a couple of things that really stuck out in my mind...

We were discussing that Aunt Tracy would be here when we arrived and he says to me "Mom, I'm shy of Aunt Tracy, but I love her". Isn't that so cute, and way beyond what a 2 1/2 year old should be able to communicate? I was really impressed with that comment.

Later the same day he was in the back and every few minutes would announce to me that he "tooted"...finally I said "you have a lot of gas today, huh?" to which he replied "Mom, I'm not a gas tank, I'm a little boy". It took me a while to realize he must have thought I said he had "a lot of gas tank" rather than "a lot of gas today".

Yesterday when we were out hiking and geocaching Evan picked up a little green army man from one of the caches and told me "Tyler maybe like this little guy". So I think we'll be bringing a little army man with us for Christmas for Tyler to add to his collection!

Ice Cream and Rock Band Makes Us Happy!

Apparently we had the giggles tonight and we can only blame it on Rock Band.


Tracy bought Rock Band for Wii earlier this week and we opened it up today to play. We all had a blast...



Here's Evan and Caitie jammin'







Afterwards we had ice cream and were feeling pretty goofy. Tracy made me promise not to put her photo up so I won't!








And Evan just couldn't stop laughing!

Dobbins Lookout and Channel 3

Saturday we got up and got ourselves ready fairly early to take a short hike on South Mountain.
South Mountain is (go figure) South of Phoenix and separates the East Valley from the West Valley. We are in the East Valley.

For this particular hike we drove around South Mountain to the west side (about 25 min drive) and then drove up the mountain to Dobbins Lookout.

Here's a little blurb about it: South Mountain Park At over 16,000 acres, South Mountain Park and Preserve often is considered the largest municipal park in the country. There are more than 50 miles of trails for horseback riding, hiking and mountain biking. Dobbins Lookout, at 2,330 feet, is the highest point in the park accessible by trail. If you aren't into hiking, biking or riding, you can simply drive to Dobbins Point to get a fantastic view of the Valley of the Sun. It's just over 5 miles from Central Avenue to Dobbins Lookout.

It was already 95 degrees by 930am (on the Valley floor) but up on Dobbins Lookout it was only about 89. I'll tell you that in Missouri I would have NEVER been out doing anything if it was 95 degrees at 9am! Here it's different, the heat is hot but it's not stifling!

We took some great pictures. It's Monsoon season here which means lots of clouds by the end of the day and it's humid (relative to their 'normal' weather) so it's a bit hazy. We'll go back in the fall when it's clearer and take some additional photos.

NE of the city

Downtown Phoenix

Cute kid we found there :)

It's amazing to us that this is just a short drive away!

While we were there, Danny and Evan took Tracy to find a geocache. Tracy's not really into climbing around on the side of a mountain so kudos to her for being brave and sticking with my two adventurers. Danny and Evan are two peas in a pod! I went on the second one (to the Channel 3 cache) - it was a bit of a hike as well. By this point Evan was hot and tired so he didn't want to be involved much!

Here are some photos of the find!

The 2nd cache was way up at the top of this "hill" - you can see it at the top of the picture.