Accident Report

Macdonald Accident Blogger:

The accident took place Monday, March 7, 2011 at approximately 5:25pm. The scene of the accident was the road in front of the Grubbs house. Conflicting reports coming in tell us that no one or nothing was in the road. One witness, the boys older brother Jacob, who was trying to get the victim to come home for dinner, reported that he was riding his bike eastbound on Lakeview when out of no where his bike stopped and the victim's face hit the asphalt. No other witnesses came forward. However, a good Samaritan, Sis. Grubbs, helped once the accident had occurred. She quickly retrieved wet paper towels and sent the crying child home to get patched up. Pictures show the damage from the accident. (Pictures were taken the next afternoon) Luckily it looks as though his nose did not get broken. His upper lip had been swollen the night before, but as a 5 year old that moves at lightning speed, he is healing at a rapid rate. The victim has been advised to avoid any more accidents in that area. However, he was spotted the next day riding the same bike in the same area.

I guess some kids just never learn!

Aaron's Kindergarten Musical

Aaron's Kindergarten Musical was on Feb. 24th, 2011. I've been a slacker getting it posted here. I started graduate school at Ottawa University this past January and just finished the first term this week. That is where all my time has been lately. So I now see that it will take more effort to keep up with this blog. Better late than never!

Aaron is pictured her with his friend from class, the neighborhood and church, Will. They sang songs about going to the zoo, hence the zoo animal hats. It was really cute. I took some video of the show for Joe since he couldn't make it to the school at 2:00 in the afternoon.
On another note, Jared is slowly progressing with potty training. Not there yet, but progress none the less. I am hoping to be done by his 4th birthday this July. Each day we have success and setbacks. But we are encouraged by the progress.

President's Day Vacation Weekend

We took this wonderful President's Day weekend and went up to Grandma & Papa's cabin. We left on Friday and were expecting a snowing weekend. On the way up it began to snow. It was a little worrisome traveling through Forest Lakes. The snow seemed to be coming at us through a tunnel. We could barely see the car in front of us and were glad they kept a pace and path we could easily follow. Our truck does not have 4 wheel drive, but we had chains with us just in case. Needless to say, we arrived at the cabin around 8:30pm safe and sound. It would be a cold night, but no snow at the cabin so far.

These pictures are from Saturday afternoon through Sunday night. I guessed that the snow would start at 5pm. It started to snow around 4:15pm. Our boys went out as soon as they saw snow falling. My brother, Galen, came with his family (Julia, Austin, Dallin & Haleigh) from Snowflake to play for a while. They ended up staying for dinner and a round of dominoes (Mexican train). Austin & Haleigh stayed the night at the cabin. Then on Sunday Galen & Julia came back for dinner. They brought with them Trevor, Dallin and Dallin's girlfriend Adeline. We ate a roast dinner and played crazy dice. Jacob, Tyler, Aaron & Haleigh spent all of Sunday out in the beautiful snow that had fallen the night before. It was perfect powder. Joe and I joined them for a spirited snowball fight. It was a perfect time to enjoy snow at the cabin. We came home today, Monday, Feb. 21st. The roads were perfectly clear. It was a beautiful drive home.

Aaron enjoying the snow coming down on Saturday afternoon. Jacob and Tyler.
Even Jared went out in the snow for a little while.

This was just the beginning. These are the "before" pictures...

Looking out the back yard. The tree before...

The backyard before...

The wood pile before...

The cars before...

It started to snow harder. Tyler was enjoying it.

Haleigh getting in on the fun.

The adults watching from inside where it was warm and dry.

Austin enjoyed the indoors.

Joe, Grandpa, Dallin & Grandma getting ready for Mexican Train.

It getting harder & darker...

More snow

Sunday morning. The cars were covered and all was white and still.

The tree after

The wood pile after.

The lights out front had snow hats.

Aaron had brought his Nerf ax and it was a perfect scraper for getting snow off the cars.

Tyler & Jacob enjoying the snow in the backyard.

Sadly, Jared got some kind of stomach bug and spent Saturday night puking. He chose to stay inside Sunday and watch movies.

Joe, cleaning off the truck Sunday morning.

The snowman & the kids.

The snowball fight.

Jacob stole my new snow boots & good snow gloves. Good thing they fit or he would have been cold.

Looking down the road in front of Papa's cabin. So beautiful.

We were pulling snow out of the back of the truck for the snowball fight. It was perfect powder. By Monday morning it had iced over into a solid block.

The kids decided to build a snow fort out back.

They said they were going to use it to protect themselves from our next snowball fight.

They spent the entire Sunday afternoon working on it. Little did they know, Joe and I were not coming back out for another snowball fight. We were tired from the first one!

It was a great trip. Our boys had never been in a snowstorm like this before. They have gone sledding and seen it come down a little, but nothing like this experience.

School Days... Busy, Busy

I am officially a student again. I am in my 4th week of my first class in the Graduate program at Ottawa University. Each class is 8 weeks long, so I'm halfway there. It was a bit overwhelming at first but as I've gone on it is getting easier to manage. Writing papers and reading the assignments is a challenge, but has not been too bad so far. We'll see how the next term goes, I'll have 2 classes.

At the same time, I have been going through the hiring process with the City of Mesa Police 911 operator. So far I have made it through and am in the middle of the background checks. It's unbelievable how much background examination goes into this process. I had a polygraph test about a week ago, passed of course. It's been very eye opening. I am hoping something will come available this summer.

Busy, Busy.

Oceanography Pictures...Finally!

Here are some pictures from the Oceanography trip. I took about 300 of them, so you can see why I say these are some of them.

This is the first morning getting instructions before we went out on the boat. It was cold, but warmed up nicely.Getting on the boat.
Heading out.

Jacob got called up to touch the sting ray.

The Whale!

Just thought this was kinda cool. Sea lions hanging out on a bouy.

SEA WORLD!

At the Dolphin show.

Day 2 at the Aquarium of the Pacific...the group shot. With Bubba Gump Shrimp in the background.

Touching sharks.

A friendly sea lion.

Feeding the Larakeets.

The boys in our group. They were pretending to drown and very upset that I didn't cut off their feet for the full effect.

Karaoke on the way home...Jacob's song...

Sea world...fun! Sing it to the Red Robin song.

Oceanography Trip with Jacob

I've been trying to upload pictures from Jacob's Oceanography trip to San Diego the weekend of January 14th for the past week or so, and have had no luck. So for now I'll at least get a few memories down & add the pictures later.

Jacob and I went to the school at 4pm on Friday, Jan 14th and got on the chartered bus to California. I was really happy to go along as a chaperon. There were 3 boys in my group, including Jacob. We drove to San Diego, arriving around 10pm AZ time, 9pm California time. I roomed with another mom who also has 3rd grader and kindergartner, so we felt comfortable cause we see each other at lots of school things. Her name is Nicole. I had a lot of fun visiting with her each night.

The first motel we stayed in was gross. Just old and smelly, if you asked the kids. But for 1 night we were ok. The next morning we were up early and at breakfast by 7:30am. We then went to a pier for our boat excursion to see whales. Before heading out to the ocean they dragged a net in the bay and brought up lots of ocean dwelling fish, crab, sting ray etc. The kids were able to see and touch many of these animals. Then we went out the to ocean to look for dolphins and whales. It didn't take long. No dolphins, but there was a whale & I have a picture of it to prove it. We followed the whale for a little while then had to turn back to home. On the way back in they took us by the fishing bait docks where sea lions hang out hoping for a free meal, again I have pictures. Back on the bus and off to Sea World for the day. We spent about 5 hours at Sea World. I made sure we made it to every show. We saw them all, and we were tired from it. After Sea World, we got back on the bus and went to a pier for dinner. I don't know if it was really good or if we were just really hungry from the day, but it was great. After dinner we walked along the beach to a bon fire. There we had s'mores and campfire stories from the owner of the company sponsoring the trip. The tales all had "shark eating man" themes. Needles to say, it kept our attention.

The second hotel was in LA near Knottsberry Farm. It was much nicer and we were all so tired that it didn't take much to get us a great nights sleep. Sunday morning had us going to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. It was a really great aquarium, again lots of pictures....
Jacob spent the only $3 of his own for the entire trip at the aquarium. He bought nectar to feed the Larakeets, pictures? Of course!

At lunch time we exited the aquarium and had pizzas delivered to a the park area next to the aquarium. After lunch it was back on the bus and start the drive home. One stop for dinner in Blythe and we were home to the school by 9pm.

Talk about quick trip. But it was a totally blast. Kid Karaoke on the way home was too funny. Great laughs and good memories. Jacob has a blast and only had 1 day of high sugar while on the boat looking for the whale. Otherwise he was great.

Hopefully the website will cooperate better with me sometime this week and I'll get those pictures up.