So thankful it's October!!!

We made it!  We officially survived another Yuma summer.

A "hurricane" hit October 1st and brought in crazy humidity but dropped the temperatures by 10 degrees :). Yuma had some pretty major flooding but our side of town seems to fair better in these situations and we didn't see any damage.  Ben got sent home from work early and we spent the afternoon enjoying some rain and then playing outside.  Hurricane, shmericane...we broke out the grill!

Can you see the boys by the tree?  They were finding rolly Pollys and having a blast.

Then they built the rolly polly's a village...apparently it was also for sale.

It has just felt amazing to FINALLY be able to open the blinds and go outside.  

October also brought a group of deployed Marines home.  Elizabeth's birthday was a week before Shane came home and she let us throw her a little party.  She is a very private person, so we have been honored that she has let our family into her bubble.  As much as I hate that Alison understands not having a loved one at home for a birthday, I can see how much character these trials have produced in her.  Alison put a lot of work into getting decorations, setting up the party, making cards, wrapping a present and planning the food.  I was really proud of her and I know it made Elizabeth feel very loved.

Colin's front tooth was hanging on by a thread for eternity, or so it felt like.  We tried everything to get this sucker out!  

Sugar snap peas did the trick.  When he took a bite, his tooth fell onto his arm and he was so startled. Once he saw that there was no blood (that's how ready this thing was to come out) he was fine.

School year goals

I love the idea of having a goal for the year; it's a great way to keep the focus on quality over quantity.  The first year of homeschooling, I feel like we were just figuring things out and working out kinks (sorry Alison for always being the guinea pig).  The next two years our focus was math as we built Alison's foundation back up from public school and I'm excited to see the strong results from that work.

This year, our focus will be on reading.  Our goal for the year is to see how many books we can read. We're keeping a log of every book read, including books we read as a family and books individuals read. If they write a summary of the book, they get an extra point.  We haven't set the prize yet, but at the end of the year, we'll celebrate the grand total of points for the year.

Why reading?  While we have reading time most days, it is the one things that quickly gets tossed to the side when we get busy.  I need the goal for myself to make reading to the kids a priority for the day and to be diligent that I'm getting good literature in their hands.  Alison has gone through spurts of devouring books and has been in a fiction dry spell since the end of Harry Potter.   My goal for her is to fall in love with fiction again (she choses biographies first, then informative books).  Eli has been doing awesome with reading, but needs some encouragement reading harder chapter books.  Colin is at that sweet spot of reading where it's just waiting to spring off.  At this point with Eli, I had him make a book of his reading lesson stories; he reread the easier stories and drew a picture to go with it.  Colin has started doing that as well.  It builds their confidence and makes it fun.  My goal for Colin is to get him reading independently.

This and That and a whole lot of catching up

Let's see...

Alison got her 11 year shots.  It was the first time that I didn't hold her for shots and it felt weird.  She was brave as all get out and the nurse had a good laugh at me as I didn't know what to do with myself.

We met some friends for an afternoon of bowling.  The base alley is actually really nice and has yummy snacks for cheap.  We can often have the place to ourselves which is an added bonus.

Where two or more are gathered, there Maya will be.

She will not be left out of snuggles.

Eli and Colin built Ninjago world.  They wanted me to submit this picture to the Lego Magazine, but I have yet to figure out how to do that...

Alison, put on a show for us one evening...Colin and I waiting for it to start.

I often find myself holding my breath when watching her do these moves...ouch!

We all got really bad colds :(

Colds are exponentially awful when it's 110 outside and the last thing you want is soup and tea, but soup and tea would make you feel better.  We opted for lots of popsicles.

You know Eli is not feeling well when you find him like this:

We would ask him what didn't feel good and he would just point to his nose.

Some school had to rearranged with all the colds.  Colin was supposed to be learning about money, so Alison set up a store for him to shop at and put a price tag on poor Maya!  Naturally, she was the first thing he bought with all of his money.

Thankfully, I was well enough to join some ladies from church on a little getaway to San Diego.  Getaways are essential to survival of a Yuma summer. 

While I was gone, Ben made pizza and picked up a rotisserie chicken for the meat.  The kids were so excited about this chicken; it was the strangest thing.  The next day at lunch, they all asked to eat some of the chicken and then the boys started doing this:

Who know chickens could be so entertaining.  It also came with a whole slew of questions about how they kill the chicken and take the feathers off and get the blood out; basically all the things I don't want to think or talk about.

It's been a hard few weeks as it WILL NOT COOL OFF.  Last year, at this time, we were spending evenings outside and it has yet to be under 95 in the evening this year.  It can be depressing, but some people don't even think about it.  Eli chose to wear this today:

I was kind of proud of his rebellion.  There comes a point when you just have to say, "Take that Yuma! I'm wearing pants anyway!".

I realized this week how much Colin jumps around.  He is always moving!  He'll be asking me a question and jumping on one foot and waving his hands in the air.  He's a genius; if I moved around like him, I would be in killer shape!  This is a tiny glimpse just how he walks; just walking into the library, but he's adds hops and skips to his walk.

Flagstaff, part 2

Monday morning, we went to Walnut Canyon.  Rain was forecasted for the afternoon, so we made sure to get moving in the morning to get the hike in beforehand.  Lesson learned; always hike with ponchos no matter what.  We told the kids that it was an easy hike (we've done it before) but there are a lot of stairs going down into the canyon and anyone who didn't complain, got to pick out candy afterwards.  I'm not sure that was even necessary because the kids did AWESOME.

Eli was feeling extra tough this trip and wanted the camera to know it :)

Ironically, this was the one day of the trip that I did my hair...

It lasted 5 minutes before we started feeling sprinkles.

 

 The sprinkles just continued to get harder.  Colin did not like his hair getting wet.

 

But Eli LOVED it.  This was his favorite part of the whole trip.

 

I have no idea what Colin is doing, but he always is cracking us up.

There were plenty of cliff dwellings for us to pop in and try to stay dry for a minute, but the more we got wet, the colder we got.

It was wet, but refreshing.  It's been way too long since any of us have seen rain and we were definitely okay with feeling a little chilly for a bit.  The whole point of going was to cool off, so check!  It was beautiful just to sit and watch the rain pour into the canyon.

I can't believe how quickly the kids were able to climb out of the canyon in the pouring rain...they were rockstars!  We changed clothes and went to Brandy's for a hot bowl of soup.  Our last stop was the downtown candy shop for the kids to pick out a treat.  Eli got a bag of jelly beans, which doubled as entertainment as they tried to guess the flavors and Alison and Colin got a lollipop and chocolate covered pretzel.

I'm really going to miss our September Flagstaff trips, they have been a huge blessing to me the last three years.  Hopefully we find an equally cool place to visit next year, but there is something so soothing about this place to me.  

3rd annual Flagstaff trip

We left for Flagstaff Saturday morning and unfortunately, due to traffic, we didn't get there until late afternoon.  We went straight to Sunset Crater to go on a little hike.

If you ever wonder what in the world it means when I say "soak it up", this is what it looks like:

I'm lagging behind, watching the kids enjoy being outside and listening them talk to their daddy and taking in the glorious views and soaking it all up.

After checking into our hotel and grabbing some dinner, we spent the evening at our favorite park.

We started Sunday with a hike at Fat Man's Loop.  I had read a great recommendation for this hike...I thought I read that this trail had lots of toads and I told the kids that we were going to catch some (seeing creatures motivates them to go farther on hikes)...we talked about and looked for toads the entire time and it wasn't until we were back at the car that I realized that I had the wrong trail.  Oops. We still had a great time and saw a snake!

Flagstaff was all over the place in temperature; it would swing from 50's to 80's.  We started the hike off chilly, but quickly the sun came out and the hike was much steeper than we thought and we began to sweat.  Desperate times means the boys took off their shirts.

We didn't make it around the loop, which is a bummer.  It was a little more challenging than we were anticipating and a storm was rolling in, so we stopped midway for a picnic lunch in the shade and then headed back down.

We listened to it thunder the whole way down, but managed to escape the rain.

Then we drove back towards Sunset Crater and had to stop when we saw this:

We thought it was snow!  But when we got out and looked closely, we found that it was hail.  I cannot image being in that hail storm!

This was Colin's favorite part and he said later, "Isn't this the best trip of your life?!"

Then we went to Wupatuki National Monument.

This was Alison's favorite :)

As we were driving out, Ben saw this citadel that he had to explore.  Eli was done walking for the day, so we hung out by the car while Alison, Colin and Ben went up.  

This was Ben's favorite.  I'm pretty sure he would have built himself a house right there if he could have.

We picked up some ice cream and headed back to the park.  It was a full, amazing day.