Check Up

The kids went to the dentist yesterday for their 6 month check-up. Both of them came out with their renewal membership to the "No Cavity Club", and Grace was finally able to tell the dentist that she no longer sucks her thumb. Hooray!!

I didn't get a picture of Grace as she was already done when they called me back

This is a pediatric dentist, so they've got lots of stuff to play with while you wait, and after you've seen the dentist you get to choose stickers and a treasure from the treasure chest (every mother's favorite - junk toys). They also have these funky flavors of toothpaste - Grace chose watermelon and said it didn't taste very good, so next time she said she'd tell them she wanted chocolate if they had it... Anyhow, we came out of the dentist's office with both of the kids in agreement that they'd like to go to the dentist every day. Are my kids wierd or what?!

After doing such a wonderful job at the dentist, I gave in to their ever hounding requests to go to McDonald's (whenever we say we're going out to eat, Grace always asks if she can choose the restaurant). I don't think it's the food so much as the ability to run free around a restaurant and play...





If you're too big to slide down the little slide, just jump!

A well deserved drink of lemonade after a hard day of play!

Chiricahua National Monument

David has worked every weekend (at leat one day of it) for the last month or month and a half, and we were all going a bit stir crazy. Since we had a four day weekend, and my husband was indeed home all 4 days, we took a little trip east for a hike.

The Land of Standing Up Rocks - as called by the Chiricahua Apache

The origins of these rocks began when the Turkey Creek Volcano erupted 27 million years ago and spread ash over 1200 square miles. The cooling of the ash and subsequent plate shifting created joints and cracks in these rocks. As further weathering and erosion by ice and water occurred, it washed away the weaker material and left what you see in these pictures. It is amazing what God can do! Some of these rocks don't even look as though they should still be standing. My favorite are the "little" rocks that sit atop the large ones as though someone just tossed it up there.

This is one David took looking up. Doesn't quite look like we should've walked under these rocks!

We hiked about 2 miles round trip, and changed about 550 feet in elevation. It was a beautiful day - pretty warm, but we had a wonderful breeze to cool us, and it didn't rain a drop! With it being monsoon season again, that's always a worry... We saw dozens (many dozens, and the kids had to stop and look at each one) of lizards, and even saw a brown bear climbing on the rock as we were driving to where we were going to go for our hike. Unfortunately, we were too slow with the camera, and all we got was a picture of the brush that he ran into. It was a wonderful outing, and was just nice to be able to do something as a family again.

One of the many lizards we saw on our adventure.

In the "Grotto"

A young boy's dream - all the rocks you care to climb!

Girls aren't too bad at climbing either...

Okay, I'll stop with the pictures! It was just an amazing sight - everywhere you turned it was something different and more beautiful... My son kept asking what I was taking pictures of - he couldn't understand why I kept taking pictures of rocks. I mean, afterall, we have rocks all over the place!

One last photo - for my daddy... this one is called the Sea Captain.

Our Independence Day

We headed out to Veteran's Memorial Park this evening at about 6:00 PM, after a wonderful supper of hot wings, cheddar bratwurst, and parmesan potatoes (we had ribs last night). Doesn't all that sound like wonderful holiday celebration food?! I think the scale will disagree... The kids ran around and played on the playground, and then we sat and enjoyed some apple praline pie and fireworks.

Enjoying a sno-coneMy monkey boy

Soccer with Daddy
Happy Birthday America!

We hope you all had a great day!

Happy 4th of July!

Just wanted to take a minute to wish all of you a Happy Independence Day! We are planning on spending some family time together today and going to the park to watch some fireworks tonight. We went last year and had a great time, and for being a small city, they put on one heck of a fireworks show!

We've been keeping busy lately, the kids finished up their gymnastics and ballet classes this week, so we should have a few weeks of downtime until I can find new classes for them. Here's some pictures of what we've been up to the last few weeks.

No diving in the shallow end!

The kids (with a little suggestion from Grandma) decided to "get Mommy!" Needless to say they thought it was great to get me soaked!
The birthday boy - cake for breakfast...

...and cotton candy ice cream with sprinkles for dessert!

All I can say is, turnabout is fair play!

Get Grandma!

We went to a birthday party at the local pool for one of Grace's preschool classmates. The kids (and adults too) had a great time. Tristan wasn't too fond of the slides, but Grace told me before we got there that she was going to go down by herself, and much to my surprise, she did!

She came down all smiles and said "I wanna do it again, Mommy!" So, she headed up the 2 flights of stairs all by herself and did it again.

My little fish

David got there after work, and took Grace down the "dark" slide. This slide is pitch black - you can't see a thing until you get close to the end, and the last time we were there Grace had no desire to go down this slide a second time... This time however, she said that she wanted to go again - you guessed it - by herself! And she did - twice!