Our May

Here is a look at our month of May, one second every day...

Paddle boarding

I have a friend who rents out paddle boards, and I saw last night that she was doing a float down the Salt River for moms and kids. It was my first real Friday off of the summer, so I thought it would be a fun way to spend the day with the kids. We met Sarah and the others and headed out to the river. It's amazing to me that we have this beautiful river so close to our house! We can be floating on the river in less than a half hour, where you might see wild horses, birds, and other wild life. 

The boards we were using were inflatable, but you'd never know they weren't the hard boards we've used before. They were great! I wouldn't mind having some of these for our family, but I guess we'd have to rent a lot of boards from Sarah before it'd make sense to buy. 

It was a great day for a float down the river....and by float, I mean it! We didn't have paddles, but it would have been better to have a paddle than to use our flip flops to try to control where we were floating. 

After we were done, we went over to Tina's to have lunch with all of the cousins. Not a bad way to spend a Friday, and to finish off our month of May.

New costumes!

George is getting new costumes for us again! We got fitted tonight, and the designer brought a few samples of the material she'll be using. I'm so excited to see what they look like. I love these colors! They should be ready for our fall show, so stay tuned!

Wordless Wednesday

A visit from the Bradley boys

My college is pretty darn cool, especially if you're a seven year old boy who loves reptiles. My friend Becky has three seven year old boys, and one of them in particular is a huge reptile (and animal) lover. I had shared with her some of the animals we have on campus, and Becky asked to bring the boys in one day for a little tour. Our main critter keeper was out that day, but one of my other co-workers who take care of the labs was able to show us around. They got to see snakes, lizards, frogs, salt water fish tank, and a tortoise. The critters were pretty active, which made for a fun tour. Emily even took out the Rosy Boa for them to touch. 

When we went in to see the cienega, they saw that one of the desert tortoises was out and about. They were feeding him flowers off of the desert willow tree, which he seemed to enjoy. 

It was a fun to have some friends come to visit, and I'm grateful for co-workers who take time out of their day to share information with the boys. I work at a pretty special place! 

Memorial Day at the pool

The Dairmans invited us over for a barbecue and pool time today. Once again, it was actually kind of cool outside! We were sitting in the shade on her patio and more than once I commented on feeling cold. Is it really Memorial Day in Mesa? Trust me, we're not complaining one bit! The kids swam, even though the pool was much cooler than it would normally be this time of year. I didn't get many pictures, but did take this one to show how tall Tyler has gotten. I'm pretty sure he's exactly as tall as I am--if not a hair taller. 

Ava and Lacy had fun riding the floating bull, and spent quite a bit of time jumping on the trampoline. These two tend to keep pretty busy whenever they are together, making memories all the time. It was a fun day with our family! I guess it's time for summer to officially begin. The bonus of this cooler-than-normal May is that it'll help the summer to seem just a little bit shorter than it usually is. That's always a good thing in the desert!

Roso Flyers-Memorial weekend show

It's show day, and what a beautiful day it is. We've really had some amazing weather this month--very unlike our usual May temperatures. We definitely wouldn't have been able to predict temperatures in the low 80s for a high on the last Saturday in May. It was almost chilly by the time the show was over. We had the backyard all set up with our curtains to make our "back stage" area, refreshments (popcorn, lemonade, beer and wine).

George recently got new stage lights to go around the pool, and new lights for inside the pool. All the lights change color, rotating from one color to the next. It looked so good! This really is backyard trapeze at it's finest. 

Here we are, all ready for the show to start! 

I was throwing my two hardest tricks to Efe, who started the show, and I did both of them well and returned to the board each time. We all did great! I've written about show magic before, but it's a real thing! We all fly so well in shows. Nothing quite like having a cheering crowd to motivate you to do your best. When it was my turn to catch, everything went as great as I could expect. I got a few of the flyers back to the bar, with some round trips from Nadia, Ashely, and Efe. Once I had my hard tricks to Efe out of the way, and had successfully caught every trick thrown to me, I collapsed back stage in relief. My heart was racing and my hands were shaking. What a great feeling! 

We had a huge crowd there to watch us fly. My family was there, as well as Karen and a few of her friends, and Kathy and her family. I think Karen has been to about every show we've had--at least since we started with our costumes, lights, ringmaster, and all the extras. I'm grateful for her support! She has definitely seen the improvement we've made in the past couple years.

I'm so proud to be a member of this team, this family, this talented and supportive group of people. I will say it every time I write a post about one of our shows, but I am so ridiculously fortunate to have found my way to this place. It has truly changed my life, and I will be forever grateful to George and the entire team for the role it has had in shaping the person I am. Thank you, Roso Flyers....you will forever be a huge part of my world. 

And, to see it yourself, you can click on this You Tube video to watch the entire show! Enjoy!

Show practice

We have another show coming up tomorrow, so tonight was our last practice to make sure we were all ready. We did a run through of the show in order, throwing each trick we had planned. We have 3 different catchers tomorrow--Efe first, then me, and Rod will finish it off for us. It's such a special treat to have Efe here for this one! Here's a collage of pictures of me either catching or flying. I'm so excited to get to catch Efe in the show, but it is also the thing I'm most nervous about. After catching him again tonight though, I'm feeling pretty good!

LeaderShape--year 15

It's year #15 of my favorite program I organize each year at work. I've written about it before on this blog. It's a leadership development program for our students, and I've been involved with the planning of this amazing experience since the beginning in 2005. Our planning team works hard each year to put on this program, and it's my very favorite thing and one of my proudest accomplishments from my time in Maricopa. 

This was a very memorable year for a few reasons. First of all, it is by far the most amazing weather we've had for a LeaderShape in 15 years. It's always done in late May, so it's obviously a warm time of year. This spring, however, has been one of the nicest I can remember. It hasn't even hit 100 yet, and this week, it was in the low 80s all week. Amazing. We were able to do the entire team challenge course outside on the second morning, which we have never done. It was perfect! There were even students wearing sweatshirts! I doubt we'll ever get this lucky again, but I'm glad we had it this year.

Do you recognize this pretty lady on the right? We hold the program at the campus where Ashley now works, and she helped us run one of the activities during the challenge course. She had fun and did a great job! It was so fun to spend some time with Ashley in her new office all week, but admittedly, it was kind of hard to see her somewhere else. I really miss working with her everyday. 

Day 3 is always a fun one. Everyone wears their Institute shirts and we take the group and cluster photos early in the morning. They do an activity called Balloon Castles, which always makes for some great photos, which is my priority once the week starts.

An Institute can be made or broken by the quality of the Lead Facilitators we get sent to us by LeaderShape. Last year, Chris and Jason were our people, and they were so amazing that we begged LeaderShape to send them back to us again. They enjoyed our session so much that they both really wanted to come back. We are a very experienced planning team, which helps to make their job easier, and they really enjoy working with our population of students. It's must different from they students they normally see at the 4 year institutions that run this program. We're the only community college who does this, so it's a unique population. We're also hoping to get Chris back to do some diversity and inclusion training with our students during our upcoming school year. 

Becky and I are in our 15th year of coordinating this program together. I'm so grateful to her for brining me on board to help her out that first Institute in 2005. Back then it was just her and I who did this entire thing, but we've wisely brought on some new team members since. It's so great to be able to work with someone who has become such a great friend. 

Here are the awesome Red Mountain students who attended LeaderShape for our campus--Miguel, Amber, Shaina, Liberty, Shannon, and Racella. Both Shaina and Racella will be working in my office this year, and Shannon told me about the East Valley Children's Theater, which Tyler will be getting involved with this summer. More to come on that later. Thanks for a great week! 

Last day of school!

I missed the kids' last day of school again this year since I'm away at LeaderShape. It's so hard to believe that another school year has passed! It really did go so fast. Mesa Academy has been such a great school for these two, and I think they're both a little bummed that it's over. They really do enjoy being there. They both had a good year in school, got good grades, did cool projects, and made friends. Tyler only has one more year left there before he's off to high school. If that's not a shocker, I don't know what is. Ava's time at the Academy has just begun, and I'm excited to see what the next few years there have in store for her. Dave grabbed a couple of last day pictures for me, and it's crazy to see how much they've both grown and changed since day one in August. 

Here they are on the first day, and on the last day of 4th and 7th grades. Great job this year, you two! We're very proud of you.

Catching Efe again!

So, I'm at LeaderShape this week, but I'm still managing to sneak away in the evenings most night to fly. We have a show coming up this Saturday, and BOTH Efe and Brian are here right now! Brian is in town to help us get ready for the show, as become his usual thing to do, but Efe also came out to help George with some major work he's doing to the rig. Since he's in town, he's offered to be a guest catcher/flyer for the show too! We are all super excited about that! I thought I was going to miss a bunch of this awesome training this week since I'm technically away at LeaderShape, but the students have dinner break from 5-7 pm, and on Monday and Wednesday, they fly at 5. It works out perfectly. I actually only ended up missing one day of training. Since we found out Efe was going to be in the show, we agreed that he'd throw me a trick while I was catching. We practiced it a couple times tonight, and it went great!

Here is a layout I threw to Efe tonight too. It feels so great to catch with him! Welcome back, Efe!

Flashback (way back) Friday

We got a message from Kayleen's husband recently asking if we could send some pictures of her from high school. He had something planned for her 40th birthday trip and was missing photos of her from that time period. It gave me and Robyn a good excuse to go through some old photos, which is always enjoyable. Here are a few that we found. I don't know when these were all taken, but mostly high school through the few years right after. I had some really great friends in high school, and I'm so grateful to have them in my lives all these laters. 

This was our senior year at the apartment of some of our friends. I don't remember who-I think it was some of the guys who graduated the year before us. This is quite the group of friends right here--pretty much everyone out of my closest group of friends.

We had lots of birthday parties, and our tradition was to have a sleepover at the home of whoever was celebrating a birthday. This was at Dana's house. Don't we all look so happy?! This was probably Dana's 18th birthday, I recognize that haircut that Kayleen had our senior year.

This is me and Robyn at our "Operation Graduation" party. On the night of high school graduation, our school bused us to fun party at a local camp where they had games and activities, a hypnotist, food, bonfire, prizes, a time capsule and more. They do it to keep us recent grads from going out and celebrating irresponsibly and making dumb and dangerous decisions. It was such a fun night! In this picture, Robyn and I were doing sumo wrestling.

This was a group of us shortly after high school graduation. I'm thinking it might be Christmas break when we all came home from that first semester of college. Don't you love how we're all wearing sweaters with similar prints? Also, quite a few of us cut our hair that first year of college. So funny! We had this photo taken at a local photographer in Williston who did senior pictures for many of us. I wonder who organized that?

These pictures are a little out of order--this is obviously high school graduation with my closest friends. You'll see one friend on the left, Trina, who you probably haven't seen in any other photos. She was tragically killed in a car accident with another classmate while on a drive to Wyoming, less than two months after graduation. What a sad, sad time that was for us all.

This photos is a little out of place too, but I had to throw it in there. This is my friend JoEllen, who I've written about before. She and I became best friends when I was an 8th grader and she was a sophomore. She would pick me up from school every day in her little black Mazda, and we'd head to swim team practice. We look like babies in this picture! It's crazy to think that I'm not much older than Tyler here.

Here we are at the wedding of one of our first high school classmates to get married, Tracy, who was married in the summer of 2000. I remember that I really loved that dress, and that it was a super fun wedding! Tracy and her husband are still very happily married and just had their third baby a few weeks ago! 

Oh my, do you remember this one? Joyce and Marv hosted the most wonderful dinner party for me and my friends, and our dates for Winter Formal of our junior year in high school. Wow, this brings back some memories! What I remember most is how I was pretty embarrassed that my friends didn't like the fancy dinner that Joyce cooked for us. She would joke about that years later, about how she would have been better off serving pizza or burgers instead of whatever it was she made. I don't remember it being too weird--chicken and some vegetables I'm sure. Joyce was an amazing chef, so I'm sure it was delicious, but if you'll remember, Robyn literally only ate pizza at this particular time in her life. Joyce and Marv dressed up like waiters and served us all night long. It was amazing, and so very kind of them to do for us. 

Here is one of the many, many sleepovers we had at Dana's house. Her house was always the location for our Christmas sleepover, even after we all graduated from high school and came back to visit family for Christmas. We would do a gift exchange, and hang out in the cool loft above Dana's parents' garage. There were so many great memories made and laughs that happened in this space with these people. Hey, I'm not in this picture....I guess I must have been taking it.

Here we are again in Dana's upstairs. Gotta love that gun cabinet right there behind us in the space that all of us girls hung out every single time we were at Dana's house. This must have been that same Christmas that we got the big group photo taken the year after we graduated. We all have those same hair cuts.

Here we are in high school again--me and Robyn with....some teacher. I should probably remember who it is but I do not. I do remember that outfit I'm wearing though. I loved those Girbaud jeans, and though I was pretty cool for having those designer jeans. I think this was probably junior year, if I was to guess.

Robyn and I shared a locker this year--maybe sophomore year? I don't remember exactly. Gotta love those 90s jeans we were rocking! Can you tell who's shelf is who's? Robyn wasn't exactly the most neat or organized of my friends. I wonder how we ended up getting to share a locker? Weird how I have no memory of some of these things.

This was one of the summers after high school too--Kayleen, Robyn and were at Trenton Lake. I remember this day--I hadn't seen Kayleen for awhile, and all three of us lived in different states, so it was great to all be home together.

I don't know what's happening here, or when it might have been, but it looks like we were probably at an outdoor party somewhere--and it was windy. Senior year maybe, based on Kayleen's short hair? Here I am with Kayleen, Tracy, and Dana.

Ok, this was a super fun night. This was probably one of the first times that my entire best friend group from high school was at a bar together after we had all turned 21. I know that we were at the River's Edge in Williston, which was a really popular bar in the early 2000s. It was definitely the place you went to see and be seen in those days. I have always loved this picture--it's great of all of us and you can tell that we were so happy to all be together again. Also, I really loved my hair in this picture. Ha!

Another random Christmas get together, and once again, judging from the hair styles, it was probably that first Christmas we were all back home from college. I'm not sure who's house we were at either--can't remember who had that poofy valance above their window. I'm thinking it was probably Dana's house, per usual.

Fast forward a few years to 2004 and Dana's wedding--she was the first from our group to get married, followed by me five months later. Dana got married in Minneapolis, and we all made the trip for the occasion. It was so much fun!  The first picture here was on the night of her rehearsal dinner when we all first arrived and found each other.

That was a fun little trip down memory lane! I really did have a great group of friends through high school, and I am beyond grateful to have them in my lives still. We have some great memories, and as I like to joke with the younger generation of adults I work with--at least all of the photos of our bad decisions live in a box in our closets and not forever on the internet. I'm so glad that social media wasn't around when I was growing up! Love you girls!