Strange rumblings in the night....

We are having the craziest storm here tonight. We had huge winds, blowing rain, and then from inside the house we started noticing a lot of light flashes outside and neverending thunder sounds. Which is what it was. There is nearly constant lightning in the sky, but horizontally, up in the clouds, not from sky to ground. And the thunder isn't stopping. Hasn't for a good 20 minutes at least. I'm waiting for the 10:00 news to see what the weather man has to say, because I'm sure this will be the lead story. Any weather around here usually is, but this is truly unusual. I've never seen anything like it before. I tried to get a little bit of video, and if I ever figure out YouTube, I'll try to post it, but it probably won't do justice to what we've been seeing.

Matt's Saturday night

No pictures for this one, but Matt got to go to the Diamondbacks vs. Florida Marlins game last Saturday night. Misty May-Treanor, half of the Olympic beach volleyball gold medal winning team, was there. Her husband is a catcher for the Florida Marlins. Matt said they put the camera on her at one point so that you could see her up on the fancy new screen at the ball park and she held up her gold medal for everyone to see, and the crowd went crazy! He said it was a lot of fun!

A few more Utah pictures

Here's the closeup of Collin. Real baby men wear purple.

At the resting point of our Snowbird walk, Christopher took over the camera: Here is me with Jimmy, from a lower point of view.

Here's an almost centered, just slightly skewed picture of Jimmy and Daisy, taken by Toph.

A quite nice picture of the scenery around us.

Finally he handed the camera back to mom and posed for one last shot before heading back down the hill.

Utah trip

We went to Utah the first week of August to be at the blessing of my brother's new baby. It was a really good week!

We stayed with my parents in Taylorsville. They have a canal that runs behind their house. Christopher liked to go out every morning to feed the ducks. Here he is with my dad. You can see how the duck feeding went: one piece for the ducks, one piece for Christopher, one piece for the ducks...

Christopher had a very good time getting reacquainted with Grandma Hail. We live so close to Matt's parents that when we got to Utah Christopher was saying: "I have two Grandmas? And two Grandpas? Cool!"

The star of the trip, little Collin Matthew Hail. We got a closer picture of just the baby, but this really captured how sweet Christopher was with him. He wanted to help with everything - holding him, feeding him, making him laugh. It was fun to watch. At one point he said "Baby Collin is my cousin? Another cousin? I'm going to have to come visit him again more!"

On Friday we drove up to Snowbird with Jimmy & Daisy to meet up with my parents (my dad was up there for a conference for a few days). It was very pretty and we had a really good walk up to this lookout point. Christopher climbed up on this bench and proceeded to give directions: "Mom. Take my picture right here. Just like this. Wait, let me look out at the trees. Okay, now!"

Christopher with Uncle Jimmy. Toph got tired about halfway back down the trail, so he got to ride on some shoulders and take a little break.

Pure relaxation

I promise I did not stage this shot, but I simply had to take the picture. I went in to put something away in Christopher's room last week and there was Pooter. Completely crashed out with his back feet tucked under the sheet, his head on the pillow. He figures he's a member of the family, so why can't he use the other child's bed when it's available?

Flagstaff weekend

This past weekend we went to Flagstaff with Matt's parents and our friends Jason & Erin. We went to the Highland Festival on Saturday (pictures will be posted soon) and then after the boys went home on Sunday, the girls stayed for an extra day to play a little more.

On Monday morning we went to the Deer Farm. Christopher was more interested and excited about it than he has ever been before.

Petting the pygmy goats. They were pretty passive this time around, so maybe that made it easier for him.

Outside the deer farm is an old tractor. We tried getting pictures of Christopher and Hannah together on the seat, but that didn't work out too well. They were fighting over who got to drive. So they parted ways and Christopher decided to "fix" the tractor while Hannah snuck back up into the driver's seat.

Erin, Hannah and Christopher. Same goat as before, I believe.

Summer activities

No earth-shattering events, but just some recent happenings:

Christopher loves building towers now out of quatro blocks that are taller than he is. Then the fun part - knocking them down! Which is impossible to capture on camera.

Swimming with his buddies Decker (middle) and Caleb (right side of photo). They're all such good swimmers now that they can get to that step by themselves.

Singing "Happy Birthday!" to Daddy. All day long he was asking when we got to celebrate Dad's birthday and he truly loved singing to him, helping him blow out the candle on the birthday brownie, helping him eat the brownie, and helping to open the birthday cards too.

Yesterday when it started raining, it was still sunny. A strange combination, but really pretty. It partially accounts for the completely washed out lighting on this picture since I was on the darker front porch. Anyway, as soon as Christopher saw the rain he ran to get his umbrella and his "rain boots" (the snow boots Grandpa Hail got for him when we were in Utah for Christmas last year). Christopher has been watching the late afternoon/evening cloud buildup typical for this time of year and hoping for rain for days.

Rain, rain, go away...

Wow. We just got about three inches of rain in about two hours. Our lawn is a pond, the streets in front of and behind our house are streams, the drainage wash behind the house is literally flowing like a river (you can even hear it flowing), and Matt is out draining the pool because it was almost full up to the top. That's a lot of rain. We also had some really close lightning strikes. It's welcome rain, but it sure was a lot at one time. I'm actually curious to watch the news tonight and see what the technical rainfall amount was. Only in Arizona does the weather become the top story of the night when it rains!

Happy Birthday, Matt!

Happy 35th Birthday to Matt!!! He's a wonderful husband, father and friend and we are so blessed to have him in our lives. If you'd like to call him and wish him a "Happy Birthday," please feel free to call or email me and I will quite gladly pass along his cell phone number for all to use, all day long!

Almost done...

Our back yard is almost finished, but I just couldn't wait any longer to post the "before and after" pictures. There is one tiny part left to do, and that's to put some pavers down in a couple of areas around the pool - places for chairs and maybe a patio table - but the other side of the yard is done!

Here is what the yard looked like before, maybe a couple of years ago. The previous owners decided to "landscape" by throwing down bermuda grass seed - ALL OVER THE YARD. For any of you familiar with bermuda grass, it's very difficult to get rid of. We starved it, weed sprayed it, and hacked it out of the ground for a little over a year. This picture is from February 2006. Christopher was helping Matt beat on the dead grass a little bit:

Fast forward a year to March 2007. The pool is done, the border for the grass got done, and then we laid sod and threw a few boulders down in the dirt around the lawn. This was just after the sod went down. These next few are composite pictures since we can't get a shot of the whole yard in one picture. The top view is to the east side of the pool, the bottom left view is west of the house, south of the pool, and the bottom right view is the east side of the house, south of the lawn.

Fast forward one more year to March of 2008. The plants are in! Trees, flowers, shrubs, except for the east side of the house, which really won't change much.

Tah dah!!! Just a few short months later, the gravel is in and everything looks much more finished. That big dirt patch just off the pool deck is where the pavers will go so that we can someday get a patio table and chairs. The actual patio is just too small to put anything on and still be able to walk on it. The pictures don't convey the actual changes very well, but it has been quite the process and a lot of work by Matt. If you want to see the real thing, come see us some time!

Texas trip

At the end of May we went to Texas to visit Melisa and Joshua and Amelia. We had a good time and we're grateful for their hospitality! They're also good tour guides.

We went to a snake farm. We actually got to touch the albino reticulated python (I think that's what these are) and I got to hold a ball python too. Too bad we had to fly home or we could have bought one for $40! :)

Then we went to San Antonio and toured the riverwalk and took the boat ride. That's us in the back of the boat. It was hot. And humid. Poor Christopher was just dripping sweat by the end of the ride and even passed up ice cream in favor of cold bottled water. Matt and his dad also explored The Alamo.

We got to go up to the lake house owned by Joshua's boss and the boys got the Sea Doo up and running. Matt went out first with his mom and Christopher.

After Matt & his dad flew back to AZ to go back to work, Grandma and I took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese one morning while Melisa got some shopping done. They were both quite excited when Chuck E. came out to visit. Christopher had to show him his new cars.

A crib box makes for great play time. Amelia was quite content, in bunny ears and pajamas, to color in one of the boxes, while Christopher and Grandma had a fun time driving the other one on all sorts of errands.

1st year of "preschool" - Done!

We did a home-based preschool this past year with two other moms and we rotated which house the boys went to each week (2 days a week). We could hardly believe when it was done, but in May we ended the year. And we absolutely had to have a "graduation" party!

With cute hats.
And diplomas.
And pictures with the moms who taught these sweet boys at Joy School. Miss Karen and Decker are to my right in the blue shirts and Miss Nylene and Caleb are on the other side. It was a fun year for the boys and we're doing it again next year.

One more picture from April - I just had to

Christopher was getting ready for a bath. Matt went outside to do something in the yard. Christopher got distracted from the idea of the bath and had to go see what Dad was doing. Mom grabbed the camera. And here is the result.

Old MacDonald had a farm...

We've had a few extra critters around here lately. Yard work, spring time - the types of things that bring all sorts of new life around.

Christopher has really gotten into putting on Matt's straw hat and going outside to check on the plants and see if any animals are visiting us.

Not too long after we put plants in the back yard, one of our rosemary bushes became a sanctuary for three baby rabbits. Right here you can see at least two of them.

Here's a better shot of one. They were just hanging out under there for a few days. They didn't run away or even move when we got close, but they were probably too young to know any better. So yeah, there were three. Then the next day there were two...and the next day one...we told Christopher that the mommy had just been coming back to take them home...

Then a pair of birds decided to build a nest on top of our front porch light. Four eggs, and all four babies hatched and lived. You can just see the tops of their fuzzy little heads here. I couldn't really get any pictures of them as they got older because of:
- the momma bird. Standing sentinel over her little brood. The parents both starting getting pretty agressive with people who came up on the front porch once the babies had hatched. They wouldn't actually touch anyone, but they would be really loud and fly pretty close. The babies have now grown up and flown away. So we cleared the nest. Then two days ago, another nest was built. And the cycle begins again.

More March fun - Jimmy & Daisy visit

Jimmy and Daisy graced us with their presence in March, and we were very glad to have them! Christopher was just this close to filing a formal petition to be adopted by them...

We had a picnic at Fountain Hills while they were here, and had to do some silly poses while the fountain was going off. This is Jimmy, "not feeling so well" after we ate lunch...

This is Christopher, "blowing off some steam"..... he struck that pose all on his own.

This one is a little dark, but there is nothing better than some quiet time with Uncle Jimmy, listening to the iPod.

This picture was the first picture I took with my camera phone. Completely unrelated to Jimmy & Daisy's visit. But still undeniably cute.

It's about time for an update....1st quarter 2008

Christopher started sleeping in a "big boy" bed on January 4th! We took the guard rail off about a week later and he's fallen out a few times, but in spite of our wanting to keep him contained in the crib, he was ready for the bed.

Ummm...how to explain this one? Well, Pooter is a big cat with lots of long fur. He tends to pull out clumps of fur and either scatter them like kittens on the carpet around the house, or swallow them. The swallowing part results in nasty furballs which he tries to chuck up on our bed around 3 a.m. So I started shaving his fur. Then the clippers stopped working. It was a couple of days before we got the new clippers, so we had to snap this shot of poor Pooter with his reverse mohawk in the meantime. :)

Grandma Nell gifted us with a very large amount of grapefruit at the beginning of the year, and Christopher got quite good at helping Matt juice them in the mornings.

Bandanas are just cool. He didn't this one off for at least an hour.

Easter came early, but we actually managed to get a picture with the Easter bunny at the mall this year. This is Christopher with his friend Joseph. I actually took this picture on my new camera phone and somehow managed to upload it to my computer! Yay for me!

Christmas pics - Inside

Christoher and Ellie looking at the Christmas I Spy book.

Personal home theater. Waiting for the rest of the family to wake up Christmas morning.

Ummm...thank you Uncle Jimmy for helping Christopher get started on his modeling career.

More "macho" shot with Daddy and Nerf guns.

Okay, back to the cars. This picture is a little dark, but he loved simply lining up his cars and bringing the Mac truck to come visit them and show them the new place to park.