Goodbye September!!!!

I couldn't let this month go by without a post!!!!  Life has been crazy (as you may have guessed from my lack of posting?!)  Nothing too crazy or out of the ordinary...but the pace of life during the school year certainly keeps us on the go and on our toes!

Here is some of what we have been up to....

I am wearing CONTACTS!!!!!  How is it going?!  MOSTLY successfully!  I am not having NEARLY the trouble I had with them in Texas.  I am a pro at popping them in and out on my very first attempt (generally), and for the most part have not had any trouble.  We are experiencing a wee bit of an allergy season here with "fall" in the air...and so every now and again I have a day where my eyeballs are just too itchy to pull of the contact thing for more than two or three hours.  But for the most part...it's a success!!!  So WOO HOO!!!!!!!

Here's me with my pups!  They miss the kids while they are away at school all day.  Isn't it so cute how they both look like they smiled for this picture?!  Cooper has been unusually behaved here lately.  I probably just totally jinxed myself with that comment...and all heck may break loose now...but as of TODAY...it's been a fairly uneventful month of September!  Which...after that whole bird eating thang last month...is a nice change!

What else?  Well...Clara is still swimming four days a week.  Though I don't expect that to last too too much longer.  The weather is cooling off.  And though they heat the pool, my girly with about zero body fat just can't really take the chill of the water.  She is signed up to swim through the end of November.  She is wishing she weren't.  I kind of am too.   But maybe we can get another week or two out of all this?  She is really interested in archery right now.  Her PE class teaches it.  That and clown college!  How totally cool is that?!  I would have LOVED PE back in the day if they had coursework like that!  We just did the basic run till you drop, play sports you hate, try to climb the scary as hell fat rope attached to the ceiling in the gym, square dance with boys you'd rather die than have to touch.  The usual old school stuff.  Sigh.  It's a whole different world today!  Anyway...she now wants to join archery club at school.  AND take a tumbling class at the gym so she can work on her handsprings and other assorted stunts.  AND do Odyssey of the Mind.  But she's willing to quit swim.  Who knows how life will play out with my little busy bee!!!

 Ben's school year is trucking right along.  He's getting good grades and seems to be showing an interest in LaCrosse.  I have no idea how all of that will work out...but it's something we are currently exploring.  I have no idea what the game is about.  What kind of equipment one needs to play the game.  Nothing.  I only know it's played on a field.  Outside.  In the winter here in Tucson after the football team is done with the field for football season!  His birthday is just over a month away.  He's gunning for a camera.  He's been quite interested in photography.  SPECIFICALLY, photography of fast, expensive cars!!!  There is an event here once a month in Tucson called Cars and Coffee.  The owners of flashy, expensive vehicles all meet up in the parking lot at the outdoor mall here and ogle each other's rides.  Ben LOVES to go.  LOVES to see all those cars all in one place and LOVES to photograph them!  He has an instagram account devoted solely to cars he sees around town and photographs and posts.  He is even considering NOT going on fall break with us when we go to the beach here soon because it falls on a Cars and Coffee Saturday.  Sigh.  That boy is just too much!

And THEN...last but not least, is my big boy.  Max is doing great!  Here's what we have been up to with him.....

 Can you say SENIOR PICTURES?!

 That's right.  It's that time!  Can you believe this boy of mine is a SENIOR????!!!!!

 I mean...seriously.  Just let that word roll off your tongue a few times.

 Just doesn't seem possible, does it?!

 And yet...there he stands.  In all his SENIOR glory!

Two months of his senior year is officially behind him.  2014 is just ahead of us.  And May of 2014 is the month we've been dreaming and having nightmares about for years now!  Yes.  My boy is a senior!   The countdown to launch is ON!

I'm trying to think if there is anything else that I have missed.  Anything earth shattering, new, original, or awesome.  And I'm coming up blank!  So I guess I have covered the bases.  For now!  Anyway.  That's all the news from the desert for this day.  I'm sure something else will come to me.  In the meantime...life is GOOD in the desert.  Terribly, impossibly busy.  With time moving faster than I ever thought possible.  But good, good, good all the same!