Bulldog Canyon

March 23-24th Jacob went with our Hawes Ward Scout Troop to Bulldog Canyon in the Superstition Mountains. These are pictures from the hike. They are not in order...but at least I got them here! Special Thanks to great Scout Leaders who take the boys on these fun adventures!

Jacob and Cameron I believe this is on the ride home...
Jacob and Cameron again

playing in the stream...Jacob is out in the water with the stick in the air...

Troop 238

Thanks again to our Scout Leaders!

Finally some pictures....

I finally got some pictures off my phone..... So I'm going to try to catch up, working backwards from today.

These first bunch of pictures are from Saturday, March 24th. We attended the Mesa Police Family Appreciation Day. It was held at the Training facility. Jacob was still on his scout camp out but the rest of us went and enjoyed free food and tons of fun booths and exhibits. Including 3 different bounce houses and a petting animals area. The boys had a great time getting into all the military trucks, police helicopter, air evac heli, ambulance and communications command vans. Joe and boys got to meet some of my co-workers as well. It was a fun time that we hope to attend each year.

Tyler holding a parret

Snow cones and a petting area....

Goats, chickens, ducks and bunnies...

Aaron holding a baby chicken

Jake the Police Dog

Guns!

Helicopters!

Aaron's 1st time in a stretcher....we are sure it won't be his last!

Military Hummer

add in the equipment...

Tyler's turn

Pinewood Derby was also on Saturday, March 24th....

This was Tyler's last year. Unfortunately he came in 2nd to last. Not our best year.

P.S. we have more pictures on the other camera....I'll work on getting them off there.

Before Spring Break I took Jacob, Tyler and Jared (Aaron wasn't feeling well) to the Mesa Gateway Airport Aviation Day. Totally cool! So many airplanes.

This is one of my favorite pictures. I didn't even pose them!

Here is Tyler's choir concert in February...

Spring Break 2012 or as we know it Puke-fest 2012

Again, still no pictures. We have yet to locate the camera cord. I believe it is being held hostage in Joe's office at school. I may have to go break it out soon!

We decided this year for Spring Break to take a quick trip to the cabin. I hadn't seen the completed cabin renovations, so it was a good time to go enjoy the pines and see the changes. We left on Sunday, March 11th...our 17th Wedding anniversary. Wow, 17 years! Hard to believe it has been that long. The trip was uneventful and the cool pines were awesome. We had a fire roaring at the cabin in no time and were enjoying the new room and watching the squirrels out the new back windows.

On Monday we took a trip into Show Low with the idea of some family bowling and lunch. Well that was a total bust. Nothing was open. It seems Show Low was still on winter season schedule. No bowling...no family fun center....and we seemed just too late for any movie. However, we did find a fun new diner to eat lunch at and it was delicious!

We returned to the cabin and started to settle in for the night....

Too bad the black plague was about to descend!

Tyler started puke-fest in the early evening. He puked non-stop for about 4 hours. We were not sure if he was really sick or just having allergy issues. Tyler has a history of puking easily from any minor irritations in his throat. By about midnight he finally settled down.

We were awakened early the next morning by Aaron yelling that Jared was going to throw-up! We made a quick decision to pack it up and take everyone home as quick as we could. I sat in the back next to Jared and held the puke bag as we flew down the mountain. And it was a good thing we flew down the mountain, cause as soon as we got home it hit Joe. He spent the next 6 hours between bed and the bathroom. In the meantime, Tyler was on the mend and Jared had finally stopped puking.

Wednesday was my lucky day. I spent the entire day feeling awful.

Luckily, Thursday was a day of reprieve. Tyler was scheduled to have his tonsils and adenoids out that day. And no one felt bad that morning, a blessing. Tyler's surgery was very good and he is a champ. The doctor was able to remove lots of tissue. Tyler has been healing well and has been enjoying all the milk shakes and Popsicles.

On Thursday evening, Aaron decided he needed to continue Puke-fest for our family. Luckily it was a quick event for him. He slept off most of the symptoms. Friday, Jacob awakened looking green. Puke-fest was wrapping up it's sweep. Jacob spent the entire day moaning and sleeping.

I did take the 3 non-pukers to see The Lorax on Friday morning. We were all ready for something fun for Spring Break! It was a fun movie.

Saturday was our 1st official Puke-free day. And our last day of Spring Break. We had accomplished little and were ready for Puke-fest to be gone. We didn't do much...tried to put the house back together a little.

Not our best "vacation". Hopefully we will never have to do that again!

By the way....in all our adventures I didn't take 1 picture! So don't expect any follow-up pictures about this week!

Time.... to catch up.

Time....something that we seem to have less and less of. Time...marches on. Time...to update the blog a little.

Here's just a bit of what we have been up to for the past 2 months.

• Tyler turned 10 on January 13th. He celebrated with a slumber/wii party with a bunch of his good buddies. Sadly again I was not at his birthday party. Work just got in the way this year. I did decorate the house for him and baked him a great cake. Pictures? I think we took some and they might even be on the camera. Just as soon as we find the camera cord I'll add them!


• Tyler also earned his Bear Award and moved into the Webelos den.


• Jacob has been busy going on Scout campouts and earning achievements as well. He recently earned his 2nd Class and 1st Class. We also have pictures of that...again...soon.


• Everyone has had the yucky cough/cold that just never seems to go away.


• Joe is enjoying Softball on Tuesday nights with a new team.


• We attended our cousin Garrett's Baptism.


• Spend lots of time out on the trampoline

I can't seem to think of everything else. I'm sure once I get my pictures up and running again I'll remember a few things. We are looking forward to Spring Break next week. Taking a little time to go to the Cabin, Tyler is getting his tonsils/adnoids out and hopefully we'll hit a movie. Should be a fun week.

Of Course I Forgot Something!

One last thing we did over the Holidays...we attended the J. Buren and Lenore Carpenter Family Reunion. Above is a picture of us as we entered the reunion. It was fun to see old pictures of my grandparents. All of my brothers and sisters attended along with most of my extended family, cousins, aunts, uncles etc. We enjoyed a pizza lunch and minute to win it games. It was fun to get together with family.

Now we can move into the New Year!

Holiday Wrap Up

This year the Holidays were a bit different for our family and with the craziness of our schedules, sadly not many pictures were taken and those that were are not great. So my final post for the 2011 blog will be written post so I can finally wrap up the year and get on with 2012.

So to start about mid December....my birthday was on Dec 20th. I turned 39. 39! Where did that come from? I don't feel 39! Hopefully I don't look 39. Anyways, I am a believer in milking my birthday to the fullest. I spent the early part of the day with Jared at his preschool Christmas party. We made gingerbread houses, played with play dough, made a Santa puppet and watched the kids perform favorite Christmas songs. It was a fun was to spend an afternoon. My baby will enter Kindergarten next year, so I'm trying to soak up every little experience I can with him.

That night Joe spoiled me as usual. He took me to a favorite restaurant, Brio, where we enjoyed delicious Italian bistro food. This is a special treat because this is not a cheap place. Afterwards we went shopping for my birthday present. I got my iPhone 4s. So fun! It is amazing what can be accomplished by such a small device. I never would have imagined in my lifetime to see such developments. I think back to the early 90's when the Internet was this new and kinda scary endeavor and now I carry Internet with me everywhere I go. Amazing!

I continued the birthday celebrations into next week with a night out with great friends. Dinner and great conversation are always a pick me up. Thank you Aimee Asay, Nicki Enos, Laura Flores and April Corey for taking some time to celebrate with me.

My work schedule was an added change this year for the Holidays. I currently work Wednesday through Saturday on the 4pm to 2am shift. That meant I worked on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve this year. Both weekends were very busy and crazy at work. Both were learning weekends. I never knew how crazy Mesa can get!

For our family Christmas celebrations....we got together with my family at Grandma and Papa's for a Christmas Eve lunch (because of my schedule, but it worked out great). After lunch we opened presents from cousins and grandparents. On Christmas day, which was on Sunday this year, we attended our shortened ward services where I sang in the choir. That meant we had to delay the opening of presents for our boys until after church. The boys were really great about it and very patient in their waiting. Each boy got something they really wanted. Jacob got an automatic air soft gun, Tyler tons of Beyblades, Aaron a new bike and Jared power rangers. Joe got some books he had been wanting along with a gun safe. I got an iPad and accessories for work and play. We all were very blessed this year.

Later that night we went back to Grandma and Papa's to have dinner with them and Galen's family. It was Galen's year to have the kids for Christmas and it was fun to have them all together. Julia's son Sheldon was the only member missing this year.

Another big and exciting, though not in a good way, thing that happened and another reason why I don't have pictures for this post...is our computer contracted a nasty virus and it is kaput. We extracted all the information we could from it and then it took it's last breath and died. Luckily we didn't lose too much, only a bit of financial records that we kept for 2011. Not a big deal because most of that is online and in the past anyways, but I liked to make reports for our taxes from those records. Just a hiccup, not a big deal. But then I realized we forgot to copy off all our emails and email contacts. Years worth of email contacts. It is almost all recovered now thanks to all our family and friends taking time to send test emails to us so we can update the new programs. I think of it now as an early spring cleaning. A forced spring cleaning. Much needed.

So there you have it...a quick overview of our Holidays. Now time to move into the New Year!

Tyler's Choir Concert & Aaron's 1st Grade Program

This past week Tyler had his Choir/Recorder Club Concert and Aaron his 1st Grade Program. I was unable to attend Tyler's Concert so Joe took pictures and recorded a few of the songs. So I felt like I got to see some of the concert. Luckily for me, the 1st Grade Program did a school time run through so I attended it in the afternoon and Joe and boys attended the evening performance. Both boys did a great job.

Reindeer on the Roof ....