Water Fun!

We found a great waterpark that we went to for family night last Monday. It's only a 20 minute drive from our house, and cost $1.50 for adults and $0.50 for kids age 2-18! It had a full playground in about a foot of water, toddler sized water slides, 2 big water slides, a tide pool, a spray park, and a lazy river with tubes to float on! We had a blast! Can't get much better entertainment than that for 3 bucks!
We think we want to live back in Idaho someday, but if we keep finding such great things in Arizona, we might be in trouble! :)

Zoee Jane

Zoee now has 2 little teeth on the bottom. But she is in no hurry to start table foods. She still prefers her baby food, and still requires that I put a little on her lips to lick and taste before she is willing to open her mouth for anything! Zo spends a lot of time standing, and doesn't even need to hold on to furniture to get up anymore. She hasn't been brave enough to take a step yet, though. She loves to smile and laugh and bounce around and dance to music now. Her current favorite things to do are to pull all of the tissues out of the box and stuff at least one in her mouth, try to climb into the fridge every time I open it (even if it means racing clear across the kitchen to get there before the door closes), and sneak into the bathroom to grab the toilet brush or splash in the water whenever I forget to keep the door closed. We sure do love this crazy little girl!

Attack of the Mosquitoes

We have had mosquitoes like crazy here, making it hard to even stay outside long enough to get our run in each night. Poor little Jaden had a mosquito in his room the other night, and woke up the next morning with 28 bites on his forehead! It was all red and swollen. We made him a baking soda paste, and secured his bandage on with Zoee's headband. Luckily, he thought the whole process was entertaining, and enjoyed playing doctor, so he didn't try to tear his treatment off his head! :) And he was almost as good as new the next day!

Happy Fathers' Day to the Best Daddy in the World!

(I told him he looked like he was modeling in this picture. Doesn't he look like he'd be a great spokesman for the Garmen GPS system? What a cutie bug!)

We celebrated this happy Fathers' Day with cheesecake (no one makes it better than mom, but I came pretty close this time!), and a GPS, all wrapped up fancy in a Walmart bag. We've decide that to live in the wake of the 5th largest city in the US, it is almost an essential to have one of these! (Actually I am the one that really wanted one, so I took this opportunity to gift one to my wonderful husband, and therefore get to use it myself! :)

Lots of Projects!

-We've been busy-
In an attempt to keep cool and stay sane...
Spray parks, shaded playgrounds with water misters, sprinklers and swimming pools...






It's harvest time for a lot of things in AZ. We just got our last crop of green beans. Yes, that's the whole crop. I'm going to have to find a way to have a little bit bigger rows next year. I've got plans to dig all around the unused edges of our back lawn next planting season, and have stuff growing in every corner! It makes my husband roll his eyes. We also harvested our apples. We started with 8 apples with our first year of fruit on our little trees. But after Jaden helped me pick one, the neighbor girl took a bite out of another while it was still on the tree, Daniel hit one with the weed eater, and the bugs won a couple more, we ended up with 3! :) We pulled up some of our carrots, and decided they needed a little more growing time. But we ate these baby ones anyway. We've got lots of lemons growing now (which we are not going to harvest as limes this year, even though they tasted fine that way!), and our squash and watermelon plants are blossoming!


We've also been able to buy some very cheap fruit. I don't have any of the equipment to do canning on my own yet (though I'm working on that one!). So I've had fun making some freezer jams. We have cherry, peach, peach cherry, and mango peach! Yum!

And my last project that has been keeping me busy (and away from blogging) is window makeovers and room decorating! This a before pic of the curtains that were here when we moved in. I'm working on making new ones, and making matching covers for all of my couch pillows. I don't have a lot of experience with this one, so it is proving to be quite a slow process for me! But I'm learning some good things, and I'll post some pictures when I'm done. I'm also trying to get some house decorating done...only a year after I moved in! :)

The Beloved Drinking Fountain

I wonder what that tastes like...

Oh, that stuff's good!

This is the best water I've ever had!I just can't get enough!

And I'll taste Pooh bear while I'm at it.

Life just can't get any better!

Happy 8 Years

We like celebrations around our house!
Today marks 8 years since Daniel was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Without that decision, and many that followed, our paths probably never would have crossed. We celebrated the happy occasion with some of our friends, and my first attempt at making an ice cream cake! :)

Our Cool Weekend

We had a "cool" weekend. It only got up to 95 degrees on Saturday, so we spent all day outside. We worked on taming the back yard jungle.



While climbing around under our "lime" tree, Jaden told me there was something under there. When I asked him what it was, he told me it was a ball...well, almost...it was a giant LEMON. We harvested our "limes" last November, except for this one that was wedged way down between some branches. Apparantly, we harvested under ripe lemons instead of limes! :)

And, of course, after all the hard word, we had to party! We had a fun cookout with our neighbors.


Jaden was a great little fireman after it was all over!

Zoee decided to surprise us with a new trick tonight! She just decided to let go of the chair and stand!

She has also been crawling around the house like a stink bug, hands and feet instead of knees. It's hilarious, but I haven't been able to catch her on video. And she started waving this week. We haven't been trying to teach her, she just decided to wave at her dad one day. It's one of those beauty pagent waves, with the wrist flicking action :) She's only waving with her left hand, so maybe she will take after mommy and be a lefty!
Jaden, in the meantime, has been "Scar" the lion. He had been wearing my belt around his waist for days, as he can't go anywhere without his tail. He also insists that we call him Scar instead of Jaden. It's been quite funny. Scar is getting pretty good at walking in heels, too.