Monday, June 1, 2015

All over the place (but mostly last fall)

What an exciting time to be an Arizonan!  When we moved to AZ there were just the Mesa and Snowflake temples.  Since we've moved here, we've been able to attend the open houses for the Gila Valley, Gilbert, Phoenix, and soon the Tuscon temple.  I'm so grateful our family could be a part of it!  


We attended the Phoenix temple open-house last October.  At the time we didn't know that Marty's brother would soon be living just a few minutes away from it!










Last summer our QC splash pad finally opened up and the "littles" and I made very good use of it.  It's right next to the library so we would spend the morning picking books (which was almost too stressful to be worth it thanks to a very energetic baby) and then we would run all the energy off at the splash pad after that.  Then we'd go get B&B from school and come home to give the babies a GOOD nap.  Well, right before it closed down for the winter I wanted to take the kids one last time and have Marty meet me there.  We ran into some friends there and were having a great time until Gabe face-planted on the cement.  He hobbled over, fell into my lap and I nervously watched as his eyes struggled to focus.  This is what he looked like immediately after:

Eventually he went back to play, but I spent the evening on "concussion watch" and even woke him up several times during the night to make sure he was ok.




That night...



The fact that the boys' personalities are so different and they have to work at getting along makes times like these that much sweeter.





You can't really tell what this picture is.  Brynn wanted to make pink popcorn out of her princess cookbook and Bryce wanted to make Deathstar popcorn balls out of his Star Wars cookbook so we compromised and combined them.  You can't see the depression in the side of the ball, but it's there...just trust me, it's a pink Deathstar.



Playgroup bunny masks.  I'm really going to miss having these kids.

We made better use of this grapefruit season then we ever have.  There is a guy who sells grapefruit from his truck just down the road from me and they are sooo good and sooo cheap.  I bought a bag pretty much every time I passed him.  Every one of us (but Gabe I think) gobbled them up at every opportunity.  Plus now I have some wonderful memories associated with them; buying them for Dad while he lived here in AZ all by his lonesome (before my mom got here), and Kelly making fun of me for how much sugar I dumped on them while he lived with us.

                                                   Starting out with a spoon...
Then figuring, "Awe, the heck with it...."

Whenever Kelly and Christy & Company come from UT to visit we stock up on soda.  I don't know, it's just a fun tradition.  Since I was worried about my toddlers getting it all over the house we kept it outside.  It took me a while to realize just how often all the kids were opening up cans.  We went through about a thousand boxes of soda in just a few days - all of them only half full when they were thrown away.  I think all the bees in the valley came to hang out with us and all of our open soda cans.