Congrats JoEllen!

Most of you, my family at least, know my friend JoEllen.  She and I were best friends through high school and beyond. She is now an interventional cardiologist in Fargo where she lives with her husband and their sweet little 2.5 year old daughter, Zoey.  JoEllen and, Jeremy, welcomed their second baby girl, Paizley Marie, to their family today!  I got a text from her on Wednesday night that her water had just broken, and that she was hoping for a quick labor like I had.  I haven’t had a chance to talk to her for awhile, but hopefully I’ll be able to fly up to Fargo sometime in the next 12 weeks while she’s on maternity leave.  I would love to visit Fargo again (haven’t been back since I moved out of there in Aug 2002), and see JoEllen’s beautiful new home and her sweet little girls.  I’ll be checking my schedule and watching the Allegiant flights!  Congratulations JoEllen!  Enjoy this special time!

Destination Station

About a month ago, an announcement came out over our work email that MCC would be hosting two NASA astronauts on campus as part of the Destination Station program.  This is a national awareness program promoting the International Space Station.  There would be two different astronauts who have spent time on the ISS visiting MCC, one visit for students and one for the community.  The first astronaut to visit was Suni Williams.  I went over to the main campus of MCC to listen to her speak, and afterwards, I got a signed calendar from her.  In this picture I was telling her that my 6 year old son is obsessed with space and plans to be the first astronaut on Mars.  She thought that was pretty great.  Awhile back, Grandma Vivian forwarded me a video of Astronaut Williams doing a video tour of life on the ISS, which was so interesting.  She showed a few clips of that video during her talk. You can see it here.   

On Thursday evening, we headed back to MCC for the community visit by Astronaut Cady Coleman.  Her talk didn’t go very smoothly, unfortunately.  MCC is doing some remodeling of their meeting space, and their main large room that is usually used for events like this is unavailable.  They have a huge outdoor tent that they have rented for these events, equipped with lights, heating and A/C. Shortly before she started speaking, the lights flickered and then went out—pitch black inside.  The generator went out!  They got the lights, computer, heat, and projectors all back up and running, and yep, it all went out again.  This was embarrassing, especially with a tent full of community members.  It came on again and Cady got about 20 minutes into her presentation when it went partially out yet again.  There were still some lights, but no microphone or computer for her presentation.  She just rolled with it though, and it was still a very interesting talk.  Afterwards, she signed autographs, and the kids all got a signed photo of Astronaut Coleman. Tyler brought his calendar from earlier in the week and she signed that for him too.  It was great!  I can’t imagine how amazing it would be to see the earth from the ISS.  6 months would be a long time in such tight quarters, but what an experience! 

Tyler’s class is going on a field trip to the MCC Planetarium on Tuesday, so I’m going to go with them.  It was definitely a cool opportunity to meet some real astronauts and hear about their experiences.  It was also interesting to hear the paths they took to become an astronaut. 

Day trip to the snow

We had a great Sunday. The kids had stayed overnight at Tina’s, so when Dave and I went to get them in the morning, we packed up our car full of all the snow gear we could gather before picking them up. We decided we’d head north until we found snow.  We didn’t really know how far we’d have to go, but figured Payson was the general direction we’d head.  It’d been quite a few days since there was much snow fall up north of here, so we didn’t even know if we’d find anything.  The kids were excited for the excursion, and I was looking forward to a day trip out of town.  I’ve been feeling the need to get out of the Valley for awhile now.  This day trip was a good start. 

As we got closer to Payson and the ground was still brown as far as we could see, I was a bit concerned that this was going to be a long drive for nothing.  We passed through Payson after only seeing a few sparse little piles of dirty snow on the north sides of buildings.  North of Payson, I saw a turn off for a state park that I had been wanting to see for awhile.  I didn’t necessarily intend on going in the winter, but we were driving right by the Tonto Natural Bridge, so why not check it out?  It wasn’t too cold out (about 40 degrees) but was pretty windy.  We bundled the kids up in all of the snow gear we had brought (even though there still wasn’t much snow to be seen) and headed out for a little hike.  The kids were thrilled at the first little skiff of snow they found.   

After hiking around, and seeing it from a few different view points, we finally got a good look at the Tonto Natural Bridge.  It’s exactly what it sounds like it would be—a natural bridge carved into the land by Pine Creek.  There are paths you can take in the warmer months that lead down to the water, and maybe sometime this summer we’ll make another trip up there to explore.  For now, we took a quick look around from the top, took some pictures, and then headed back out on our mission to find snow.

It didn’t take much longer before we were able to see some snow filled areas among the pine trees along the side of the road.  We pulled off the highway and headed into an area that seemed to have some undisturbed snow and it suited us just fine! It made for great photos, and with the help of my tripod and remote shutter, I was even able to get in some of them.  Here are some of my favorites, and you’ll have to check out the album for the rest. I just love so many of these pictures, but I’ll try to limit how many I include here.  The change of scenery is really nice, once in awhile.

I am in love with this picture. 

This one is funny—we’re trying to take a couple of nice family pictures, but all the kids wanted to do was EAT SNOW!  I can relate though—I was a big fan of eating snow all of my years growing up in ND.  I’m sure I would still do it if I was there.  There’s nothing quite like a gloveful of fresh powder.  This stuff was not so fresh, but the kids didn’t seem to mind.

This was a pretty flat area, so there wasn’t much opportunity for sledding, but that didn’t stop them from trying!  Ava loved when Daddy pulled her along in the sled.  She was all smiles!  She’ll love it when we can go sledding in real snow on a real hill one day.  We had borrowed these sleds from Tim and Tina, so we just had to give them a try—even if it was flat!

Tyler and Dave got started building a snowman, and around this time, Ava started to announce that her “feet felt like icicles.”  I bet they were too.  She was the only one who didn’t have snow boots.  We managed to round up snow pants, jackets, hats, gloves, and boots for everyone but Ava.  She was stuck with a pair of Tyler’s old rain boots with a couple pairs of socks.  They kept falling off and were obviously not very warm.  It just doesn’t make sense for us to buy snow clothes for our kids to use for a couple of hours each season, and this trip was too spur of the moment to have time to borrow from others.  Tyler is lucky because Matt had all kinds of winter clothes from living in Germany. 

Despite having feet like icicles and gloves that were way too big for her, Ava still managed to have a good time….but didn’t last quite as long as her brother.

How about this cool snowman?!  They did a great job!  Tyler keeps asking me if I think his snow man is still there.  He was very proud….

After Mr. Snowman was done, there was time for one last spin around on the sleds, a bite of snow for the road, and then we headed into Payson to grab some lunch before hitting the road.

It was such a great way to spend a Sunday.  There are so many interesting places in this state—many within easy driving distance, and I really hope that now that our kids are older, we can begin to take advantage of those opportunities to explore.  It is amazing to think of the drastic difference in our climate and landscape less than 2 hours away from our house. From 60s and sunny to snow and cold within a couple hours.  Snow is great when it’s just for an hour or two!  If you didn’t click it before, here is the link again to the album.  Enjoy!

Cousin sleep over

Dave’s cousin, Mike got married on Saturday night.  Mike is the oldest son of Claire’s sister, Theresa who passed away from cancer about 4 years ago. It was so sad that she wasn’t there to see her son on this special day.  She would have loved Bethany for sure.  It was a very nice wedding with a fun crowd of people.  I didn’t take any pictures at this wedding, but just so you could see the happy couple, I borrowed this picture from one of Bethany’s friends on Facebook.  They are a great couple, and we look forward to spending more time with them in the future. The wedding photographers have already posted a blog with the images from the wedding.  You can view them by visiting this album. They're great pictures, and really capture the details and the fun of the wedding, and the happiness between Mike & Bethany.

Interesting (and quite appealing) thing about this wedding was that it was ‘adults only.’  Who could blame them?  We had figured we’d just get a babysitter and go have fun at the wedding.  Tina had other plans for us though.  She isn’t a big fan of getting babysitters for her kids (non-family, anyways), so she offered to stay home and keep all of the kids so the rest of us could go without having to get sitters.  We didn’t tell the kids about this until just before the weekend, but they were very excited to find out they’d be having a sleep over with all of their cousins.  Tina had 9 kids between the ages of 11 and 3 over night!  Yikes!  Here are a couple of pictures I borrowed from her Facebook so you can see what their night was like. 
Two little girls, ready to be shipped anywhere!  If it fits, it ships!  They both had their blankets too, just in case it was a long trip.

It wouldn’t be a sleep over without ice cream sundaes!  Tina had all kinds of fun planned for them—pizza, movies, popcorn, ice cream, and breakfast in the morning. 

Sure, they could have slept a few kids in each of the 3 extra bedrooms, but it’s way more fun to have a big sleepover together in the living room, right?!  Tyler brought his tent, as you can see in this picture.  There was only room in it for him though, so he got the space to himself.  Dave bought our kids their own sleeping bags for the occasion too, so that was exciting in itself.  You’ll see Ava below here, just under Tyler’s tent in her pink princess sleeping bag.  She was the first one to fall asleep, and they all slept great! 

And while all that fun was being had by our children, we enjoyed a night out with grown-ups at the wedding. Many thanks to Tina and Tim for keeping our kids for us, and making it such a fun night for them.  I would like to say that I’ll repay the favor one day, but I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll volunteer to keep 9 kids overnight.  2 or 3 maybe, 9, doubtful.  This family I found sure is something else….

Congrats to Mike & Bethany, may they live happily ever after!

I’ve run out of titles for posts about the park

These pictures are from last week sometime, Valentine’s Day, I believe.  Tyler and Dave were practicing some catching while Ava and I played.  Well, if we’re being honest, Ava played while I took pictures of her being cute.  We signed Tyler up for the spring session of NYS baseball, so Dave has had him out to practice a little more often.  He’ll start sometime in March.  As you can see, he still needs a little practice not being scared of the ball catching.

And here’s the part about Ava being cute.  She really is good at it, isn’t she?

Happy Friday!

I made the catch!

So, I am really enjoying this trapeze thing.  I know I probably said that last week when I wrote about it, but every time I go, I enjoy it more.  On Tuesday, Meredith sent me a message in the middle of the day that she might not be able to make it, so I’d likely be going on my own.  I was a little hesitant about that, but had no intention of missing it.  It was a good night to be there.  There is a group of “regulars” who fly at George’s once or twice a week, and many of them were there.  They’ve all been flying for at least 3 years or more, and they’re really good.  After I saw them warming up, I felt woefully inadequate and quite out of place.  I hesitated to get up there and take my turn, yet they all encouraged me to get up there.  I didn’t want to get in the way, or make them have to help me in and out of my lines and off the board (the platform).  Once I got started, I started to feel more comfortable taking my turns, and felt very supported by everyone there.  They also continue to remind me that I’m always welcome, and talk about future tricks I’ll learn, which makes me see that I might be able to keep this up for awhile.  Every time one of them got up there, they threw some cool new trick that I’d never seen.  It was so much fun to watch!  I want so badly to be able to get better and learn new things. I felt great after this lesson because I landed a catch I’d tried a few times before.  I tried it twice and it went smoothly both times!  It was such a rush! You may have seen it on Facebook, but here’s the video again just for fun. I’ve watched it a bunch of times, and it’s helpful to see a few of the things that George was trying to help me fix—such as my bent arm on my take off.  I need to get that straightened out and then I’ll be able to start taking off on my own without anyone holding my belt.  Baby steps, but I’m looking forward to getting better! 

A trip to the Dairy

I got to go with Ava and Lacy and their preschool class to the Superstition Dairy today.  Two days in a row I got to do fun stuff with my kids at their schools!  It’s been great!  Did you know that Arizona ranks #12 in milk production?  If you’ve spent much time in the east valley, you’ve undoubtedly smelled some of these dairy farms!  The one we went to today was really cool!  It’s a family farm with 1000 Holstein cows.  We got to listen to them tell the kids about taking care of the cows, then a hay ride around the farm.  After that, the kids got to pet some of the animals and then we got fresh milk (all different flavors) and ice cream.  Every Thursday night, this place has a farmers market with all kinds of local grown and made foods.  I’d like to check it out some time.  Here are a few pictures I took of the girls on their farm tour. 

I think this is a pretty cool image of the snow that is still left on the Superstitions in the background of the dairy farm.

This was one of Ava’s favorite parts of the day.  She loved holding the Daddy Chicken rooster.

Here’s just a few more pictures from our day—click this link.