Fun in the Mud

Friday I went on an overnight activity with Haley and the youth from church to the Peppersauce Cave or the "Mud Caves" in Oracle. I'm not a leader but thought it would be fun to tag along so I invited myself. It was so much fun! I love camping and being outdoors especially when the weather is nice which it was. Friday night I learned how to make "flaming biscuits". This is done by wrapping a small Pillsbury biscuit around the end of a dowel and holding it over the fire until it's golden brown. The trick is not to burn it. I'm not sure why they call them "flaming" because you really don't want flames on your biscuit. Once it's done you pop it off, fill it with butter & honey and eat it. Yummy.





The girls really got into this and had lots of fun with it. It took me four trys to make the perfect "flaming biscuit"

Saturday morning we got up early and the girls did their camp cooking certification by making us breakfast burritos. Then we were off to the caves. I had this picture in my head of this big open cave that had some mud that we were going to squish around in for awhile. Boy was I wrong. Not what I expected at all. In fact it was a little scary. To start with I had to crawl through this opening that was barely big enough to fit through. I had to get down on my belly and inch my way through. It was a bit intimidating but once we got through it opened up into a huge cavern. It was completely dark so you had to have a flashlight to make your way around. We kind of split up into groups and went exploring. Lots of different tunnels and paths to go through, some scarier than others. The ground was slightly damp which made it real slippery in some spots and there were big drop offs where you couldn't see the bottom and narrow crevices you had to squeeze through. The farther in you got the wetter it got and that's when you really started to get dirty. I was really afraid of slipping and losing my footing so I did a lot of sliding on my bum and crawling on my hands and knees. Once you got to the back there was a small pool which some of the braver kids & leaders took a swim in. There was also one area that is called the "rabbit hole". It's a very small hole that you can climb down using a rope. Haley informed me before we even got there that I would not fit down this hole so not to even try it. I took her word for it and stayed clear. We spent a couple of hours in there before we called it quits. I can honestly say that I have never been dirtier in my life and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Proof that girls can get down and dirty just like the boys.

Look at those dirty bums!


Not my best picture but I need proof that I really did it.

Haley is such a sweetie. She was worried about me the whole time. She kept saying "mom, don't do it, don't go down there" or "mom, you're scaring me, stop". I had to tell her several times to chill out and stop worrying, I'm not that fragile. It makes me feel good that she's looking out for me. She told me when we got home that she was really happy that I came with her. Ahhhh! Isn't that awesome? I hope she always wants me around. She's a great girl.

I woke up the next morning and I was sore in some weird places. My legs were sore which made sense because I did a lot of squatting. But my shoulders and my triceps were sore and I didn't quite understand why, but I was relieved to find out that the other leaders were sore in odd places too. I guess you just don't realize all the muscles your using when your crawling around on the ground like some kind of animal.

I'm already making plans to go back and take my boys. This is the type of thing that is right up their alley.

Great Game!

Nate and Jake won their first game of the season tonight. It's so exciting to see them play a good game and walk away with a win.

Nate played awesome. He hit a triple which scored two runs and then stole home on the next pitch. He played catcher and had two tag outs at home.

Jake also played good. He was short stop and didn't get much action but he is really good at running all over the field backing up everyone. He also scored a run by stealing home. He's pretty quick on his feet and likes to slide.

Hopefully this will be the end of their losing steak.

GO DIAMONDBACKS!

Easter

Easter weekend flew by as usual. The boys started it out on Friday night by going to the Easter Pageant with their grandpa & grandma. Their uncle Kent was an angel. He's been in the pageant for several years but I think this is the first time they've been to see him. They really enjoyed it despite the cold.

Saturday morning was our neighborhood Easter breakfast and egg hunt. It was supposed to be at the park but because of the rain it was moved to the church. The food was yummy and I don't think the kids cared one bit that they were hunting eggs on a hard wood floor instead of the nice soft green grass. It's never much of a hunt anyways, it's more like an egg race -- to see who can fill their baskets the fastest.

I'd say it took about 20 minutes to put out all the eggs -- and less than 5 minutes for the kids to collect them all.

The last couple of years the primary - who provides the eggs & candy for the hunt - have asked anyone who is willing to give back the eggs so they can save them for the next year. So this year the kids automatically sat down and started emptying their candy out and making a big pile of eggs only to find out that they didn't want them back this year. They all went in a trash bag and into the dumpster -- saved us from having eggs all over the house.

Then it was on to grandma Patti's house to dye eggs. We do this every year with all the cousins. It's a fun tradition and a very messy one. I think grandma's porch is stained several different colors now.

The big girls got a little creative with their eggs.

Jaxson did a great job this year. I didn't have to help him which was nice. He was so funny though. He would drop an egg in the dye and then count to ten and then say "OK -- time to take it out." He did this with every egg he dyed. I think he dyed eggs in school on Thursday and I'm wondering if this is what the teacher told them to do.

He also refused to change dye colors. All his eggs were orange. I don't know why his hands are green when the only color he used was orange???

After we were done dyeing the adults went across the street to the school and hid the eggs. All the kids are very impatiently standing behind the line waiting for the "GO"!

Grandma Darlene & Grandpa Willie did a fun thing this year. They put paper money in eggs and hid them. Then after the kids found them they could go to Grandma's Easter store and buy fun stuff with their money. The store had stuff like kites, sidewalk chalk, coloring books, bubbles, pencils, candy & cookies. The kids had a lot of fun buying what they wanted. This is a picture of all the money once the store was sold out.

The boys all got new church shirts and matching ties in their Easter baskets. I took several pictures but not one of them had all four kids looking at the camera and smiling so here's the best of the lot.

Dinner Sunday was at our house but I was so busy with the food that I didn't take any pictures. I am grateful for my big crazy family and I feel blessed that most of us live here so we can get together and celebrate the holidays together.

Baseball Season is here!

Yes, it is that time of year again. I'll be spending 3-4 nights a week at the ball field for the next 6 weeks or so. Thankfully I only have 2 teams to follow this year instead of 3 like last year.


Haley is the catcher for her team.

The boys play just about everywhere but their favorites are catcher and pitcher.

We've played a total of 6 games so far and have lost every one of them. But the season is still young!

All I know is -- win or lose, it's going to be a long 6 weeks!

Help!

I am looking for a good Orthodontist for Haley. I need to find one that is on my list of preferred providers so I can get the most coverage, but I don't just want to pick one out of a book. If you have someone you like, let me know and I'll check to see if they're on my list.

Catching Up!

Yes, I know, it's been two months since I posted anything. It's not because of a lack of anything exciting going on it's just me being lazy. Here are just a few highlights of our lives for the last 2 1/2 months.

Tucson

I managed to take one day off during spring break so we took the kids on a little trip. It started out as a day trip to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. Then we invited some friends along and it turned into an overnight trip. My kids were thrilled! We don't get away much.

The Museum was pretty awesome. Hundreds of different planes to see.

This is one of Larry's favorite war planes, the F4U-Corsair.

This is the fastest plane to ever fly. The SR-71 Blackbird. It was a spy plane.


And this is the bumblebee. The world's smallest plane. I don't know how anybody fit in it to fly it. It was tiny. Very Cute!

There were a lot of old WWII planes on display and many of them had half naked women painted on them. All the boys thought is was pretty funny -- but very disgusting, as you can see by the look on Nate's face.

Unfortunately it was a warm day so we didn't spend a whole lot of time outside. There were hundreds of planes to see and we quickly walked around but didn't stop to read about all of them. We did get to go on an old "Air Force One". I think it was used by Kennedy & Johnson. It was pretty small compared to the one used today but it was still pretty cool to see.

All the kids. What a group! When we paid for admission they asked us if we were a school group. They were pretty shocked when we said "Nope -- just three families!"

Jaxson had a great time but was very disappointed that we didn't get to fly in one of the planes.

He did get to sit in this one.

On Saturday we went to Colossal Caves. We took a tour which led us down underground about six stories and we learned all about the history of the caves. They found old indian artifacts in it and lots of gear used by criminals who hid out in it back in the 1800's.

These are the stalactites or stalagmites (not sure which one) that you see all throughout the cave. Some of them were really beautiful.

It's a constant 70 degrees in the cave year around so it was nice to be out of the warm weather for awhile.

Here's the kids panning for gold or gems at the little ranch outside the caves. I think this was the funnest part of the day for them.

After the caves we went to the San Xavier del bac Mission. It's an old spanish mission that was built in the late 1700's. We got to see some some real aztec indians do some of their ritual dances.

We had a really great time and saw lots of cool stuff. It was a long and exhausting two days and the kids were really wiped out by the end. Jake passed out as soon as we got in the car to head home.

Hiking in the Superstitions

During Spring Break I took the boys and went hiking with some frinds up to Hieroglyphic Canyon. My sweet husband stayed behind and watched all the daycare kids for me.

The boys had so much fun hanging out with their friends and climbing all over the mountain. They love doing anything outdoorsy.

It was a fairly easy hike for everyone BUT me. I found it challenging but rewarding. I'm just glad I made it all the way. I really need to get in shape. It didn't help that a couple of the girls that I went with are training for a marathon right now. What was I thinking??

Big Spring Break Project!

When we had all the rains in December we noticed that the carpet was getting wet downstairs in the bedrooms. We thought it was just in one corner in the boy's room and right under the window in Haley's room. With our busy schedules we haven't had a chance to do much about it. Larry's had two weeks off work and the kids were out of school for spring break so we decided it was time to conquer the task. Well, it is a MUCH bigger problem than we thought. Haley's room was the worst. We found lots of black mold. Yuck! Stinky stuff too.

And the boys room was wet in two corners. We pulled up carpet and knocked out drywall and found not only black mold but this white fuzzy mold too (I'm assuming it's mold).

I think the boys enjoyed taking a hammer to the walls but it wasn't fun hauling all that carpet & drywall up the stairs.

We've finally got everything torn out and now the next step is to figure out where the water's coming in at. Since it's not really our rainy season right now (do we even have a rainy season?) I think we're just gonna have to take the hose to the house and see if we can figure it out.

But for now my family room in the basement is a bit crowded.

Haley's corner

Nate's corner