Sledding At the Park

What happens when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade? Well what happens when 20 inches of snow gets dumped on your house and your kids have 2 snow days and your tired of being stuck in the house and you just need to get out? Go sledding! The plowtruck finally came to our neighborhood and I told the kids I would take them sledding. (Nice Mom, right!) Here are some of the pictures I took of the kids while sledding. Some other kids before us made a ramp and the kids were like we need to destroy this because it could be dangerous and we could hit a tree and get hurt and I saw it and said, "Wow, you could get some AWESOME air!" Now who was the responsible adult today! HMMM!

Enjoy the pictures!

Sydney

Sarah and Sydney

Sophie getting AWESOME air!

Sean

I decided I wanted to have some fun, but after the ride down Sean told me I was too big! Nice kid.


Tomorrow everybody goes back to school including me for my last day of finals!!!

Blizzard 2009

Another winter has come to Flagstaff, it started to snow early, early Monday morning and snowed all day. The schools cancelled halfway through the day, in my opinion they should've just cancelled them first thing in the morning. I finished my anatomy final and then they cancelled classes at the college! YEAH I'm so relieved to be done with that class, I enjoyed it, but WOW I'm tired but I learned our body is sooo amazing, Heavenly Father is AMAZING!

Today we had a snow day and tomorrow we have a snow day! The plowtruck hasn't even been on our street and in my cul de sac it's just snow piled about 2 feet!

Sean showing how deep our cul de sac snow is!!

Yeah the snow on this side of the house doesn't see the sun, so I think we are pretty much guaranteed a White Christmas. (At least in this spot)


The kids had a snowman made but it got buried in the snow!

Lake Powell 2009

At the beginning of the month we were invited by the Controller of the Little America Hotel's to join his family on a house boat at Lake Powell. The answer was a no brainer except would my family be able to behave themselves so that Fred would still have a job and how was I going to contain Mr. Sean? We had a great time left on Thursday and came back Sunday. Lake Powell is 2 1/2 hours away from our house and it is definitely one of the most beautiful places on earth. I think I've become spoiled because I don't know if I can ever go back now without being on a houseboat. Here are just some of the pictures...

Sean and Maxwell (Maxwell just turned 5 in August, yeah he was twice the size of Sean)

Sarah jumping off of the side.

The full moon coming up as the sun went down.

LOVE the hair!

Celebrated Sydney's 7th Birthday!

Sean's favorite place to be the HotTub (Doesn't it look inviting!)

The Family at Rainbow Bridge, very big and very beautiful!

Do you see the ranger? She is going to tell our group your to close to the bridge, some of the local tribes consider Rainbow Bridge sacred and you're NOT supposed to walk under it.

Meg, Cassie, and the guy we rescued! Sunday coming going back to the marina took us about 5 hours. The wind was awful and the lake had white peak waves (VERY choppy!) The guy was in a kayak and going nowhere, so we had him on aboard, he's from Montreal, I think he was amazed with all of the kids we had!

Sophie on the tube!


White men CAN jump!

L-R: Eric, Cassie, Porter, Bowen, Fred, Sean, Sarah, Meg, Mark, Maxwell, Sophie, Sydney, Elisa


We had a GREAT time and Fred still has a job so I guess we behaved!

LUCKY!

WOW I haven't blogged in forever, I guess since my "bad" week. Life is on the upturn and I have a wonderful husband who LOVES me and children who "tolerate" their crazy mother. I'm halfway done with last semester of Pre-requisites and will submit my application for NAU's Dental Hygiene program by Feb. 1, 2010. (Keep me in your prayers that the committee will like my application and accept me!) I will post more when I have the time, just felt like I had to move on from despair and appreciate how LUCKY I am to be alive and have such wonderful supportive people in my life!

PS-My hoodie says LUCKY so I thought that to be an appropriate title for this blog. Not that I just wanted ya'll to look at a wonderful picture of Elisa standing at the top of Lombard street!

Infinite Power of Hope

I was having a bad week, until I saw this. Please watch and enjoy, comment on your feelings if you would like to share.

BAD BOY

Boys, boys, boys. I think they are trouble. I picked up Sean today and his teacher told me he is having a hard time listening to her words and is disrespectful. And then I get the evil eye like I'm a bad mother. Oh what to do, what to do. I'm going to blame Fred for this one. Look at this sweet face, does he look like a monster to you? (Don't answer that!)

Totally "WICKED"

This past August 5 Fred and I celebrated our 14th annieversiary. Fred decided to surprise me with a trip to San Fransisco to see "WICKED" and spend a few days away from the kids. A little bit of trivia for you- Fred and I have NOT been anywhere alone together since our honeymoon 14 years together in San Fransisco. We were due for a trip. I told him I would go, but I had to do some homework. (Who does homework on a vacation? Do you see how dedicated I am?) We flew in on the 5th and saw Wicked that night. I LOVED it! I want to go back, San Fran would make a great girls trip. Anyone want to go!

Cell Phone Pics, I don't know why we didn't ask someone to take a picture with both of us, next time I guess.

We had a great time we used public transportation or walked to everything. The wharf, Golden Gate Park, we even went to a Giants game! I think Fred had to balance his manhood out after sitting for 3 hours at the show!
At the Beach!
The Giants Game! Again another cell phone pic.


I LOVE Fred and I'm so glad he gave us the opportunity to "Defy Gravity" for 3 days! (My FAVORITE Part)

Summer of 2009

Wow! Where do I start? This summer has been super crazy. We had a great summer, uneventful didn't go anywhere magnificent. We just laid low and chilled in Flagstaff. I had 1 class this summer, English 102 online, I thought easy I can do it. WRONG! Take a look at the first word you read on the introduction. WARNING! You can't put a warning sign on a class. Can you? Anyways, very intense, but I'm proud to announce I did get an A so spending 33.6 hours a week reading and writing paid off!


Oh what do you do in the summertime when all the leaves are green? Check out some of the things we did:

We went on a picnic and swam at Oak Creek with our friends, the Bean Family!
Sean enjoying the chocolate pudding and cheese puffs! MMMM Healthy picnic!
Sydney and Emerie
Sarah as the Little Mermaid
The Grizzly Gang (wouldn't stand still long enough to take good picture) The water was so cold your feet would start to go numb! BRRR!

Sophie played AYSO soccer, Bad mom warning!!! I did not take one picture! I'll have to ask the more responsible mother's if they had any. Their team was called the Grape Juice Comets. I think they won 2 games out of 8 not the best record , but they had fun. Sophie scored lots of goals, and had fun playing with Taylor and Sadie.

My sister, Kristin, and her family flew out from VA and we took a train ride up to the Grand Canyon. Fun times!
Parker, Kristin, Sean, Sophie, Dad
Sophie, Parker, Sean, Brady, Brenden and Sherriff Tucker. (Sydney was freaked out and wouldn't take her picture with the sheriff and Sarah started her 1st day of school.)
This picture freaked out my mom.
Yep! Same as last year, still there the Grand Canyon!

We had a great time with cousins and next summer maybe we'll get to go back and see them and tour DC!

The 4th of July

This year was pretty laid back. We watched the parade, saw a lot of interesting characters, but our favorite part was when the veterans and the active duty military men and women went by. What a blessing it is to live in a free country! Here are some of the highlights from the parade:

Hopi Dancers

Only YOU can prevent forest fires!

More Hopi People

Sophie's Club Soccer team

Darth Maul giving Sean a High Five

Darth Vader lives in Flagstaff and he has a gut!! (looks like he needs to get out and hike a little more)

We had a great day, BBQ with family, a very low key day, but ended it with a yummy patriotic dessert-raspberry sorbet, vanilla ice cream topped with blueberries.


PS- some you may be wondering why I have this song playing for 4th of July...funny story during the parade we heard this song and realized it was the Gay pride float, but the best part of it was the Christian church floats that were behind them. The old man driving the tractor didn't look to enthused about it. It made Fred and I laugh!!

WELCOME HOME

We FINALLY bought a house in Flagstaff and we FINALLY feel at HOME. It's not in the middle of the street, but in a cul-de-sac. I LOVE it and can't wait to start doing some work on the house amd let my creative juices flow because they haven't been flowin' in awhile. I'll send out address cards soon to you all with the new address and if you ever need a place to stay while in or driving thru Flagstaff please give us a call...

Piano, Dance, Soccer

I forgot to include some other important stuff that happened over the last month that happened a long with all of the other stuff...

Sarah and Sophie had their piano recitals...

Sarah playing Bella's Lullaby


Sophie playing Spanish Guitar


Sarah decided to take up dance with her friend, Maddie...it was a LITTLE different from what she expected...she thought it was ballet, but it turned out to be modern dance...she has decided not too keep doing it.


Sophie participated in the English Soccer Challenger soccer camp, this is Sophie with her coach, Daz, they come over from England and spend the summer teaching American children how to play the game. She got player of the week and a really cool poster from some British soccer team or should I say British Football team...