Taking Center Stage

It's that time of year!  The time that all the other time has been building up to!  The time when all the practice and hard work really pay off and get put on display in "the big show".  Also known as...ballet recital time!  This weekend is Clara's weekend.  And I DO mean weekend!  Her recital covers two days.  She dances both today and again tomorrow.  Same show...just twice!  If you count in picture day and dress rehearsal day, that means I get to put this gorgeous creature together FOUR times!  FOUR times I get to make the ballerina bun and pin it extra securely so that it won't budge!  FOUR times I get to work magic and create some stage drama for her face.  FOUR times I get to wrangle her into her itchy dress!  Oh yes!  It's been big, big fun around here for the past week!  She danced her first recital this morning and did a GREAT job!  She's SO talented on stage!  Here are some pics I took before we headed across town!  More to come soon!

A Special Treat

I've been SO remiss about keeping this blog updated!  Life just keeps getting in the way and things are busy, busy, busy!  You would think that now that it is summer and the kids are out of school I would have all the time in the world to sit here and blog, keeping you endlessly and accurately in the loop, huh?  You'd think!  But alas...summer has been busy around these parts.  Nothing entirely crazy, mind you.  Just, you know, life!  Max is working through some of his Senior coursework online right now so he can finish high school early.  That means, I can not often get to my computer because HE is at it!  So, there's that.  And both Clara and Max are on swim team.  Two DIFFERENT swim teams, two DIFFERENT organizations entirely.  For the most part, their practices overlap.  A bit.  But it still has me running up and down the road constantly!  We will get this figured out!  Eventually!  Ballet recital time is also approaching.  So we still have ballet classes, and in the next couple of weeks we also have ballet recital pictures and dress rehearsals and other fun excitement thrown into our mix.  Needless to say, we have NOT been bored!  Our very best friends in the world are getting to move away.  They load up their truck tomorrow.  This brings us GREAT sadness, and so we are also trying to cram in as much together time and play date time as humanly possible in the next 36 hours!!!  I imagine I will have an extremely sad little girl after she says goodbye to her friend tonight.  It will be a year or more before we see them next.  SO so sad.  But let's not dwell on that bit of news. There will time enough for tomorrow's tears tomorrow!

The treat I am referring to in the post title is a little musical demonstration by my sweet girl.  She RARELY lets me catch her on camera!  It has been QUITE some time now since I've gotten any kind of recording.  But yesterday...she gave me a pajama performance!  She woke up all kinds of sweet and agreeable and before she could remember that she hates for me to record her piano playing...I had captured this!  Enjoy!!!!  I know I sure am!  Click on this link!!!!


Clara's Pajama Performance

It's About Time...

And time is REALLY flying!!!!  I mean...YIKES!!!  Seems like I blinked and the school year just zoomed by and summer vacation was suddenly in full swing!  Seriously...it's crazy!  Is time flying like that at YOUR house?  Or is it simply a Tucson, AZ phenomenon?  There has been SOOOO much going on!  I almost don't even know where to start!  And so...I will just jump in with events...pray they are in some semblance of order and let her rip!

First of all...Sometime between the last post with my itchy, allergic ears and this post, my amazing and talented daughter WON FIRST PLACE in the DARE essay contest for the Amphitheater School District!  Every single 5th grader in the district was required to write and submit an essay explaining why drugs did NOT have a place in their future. Out of ALL of those hundreds of essays, MY BABY GIRL won FIRST PLACE!!!!!!  I was just bowled over!  So happy and surprised for her! SHE was totally surprised and shocked!  The best part?  My girly won BIG prizes!!!!  She won a beautiful certificate and a gift card to Outback Steakhouse.

And she won a BIKE!!!!  Holy Cow!  Was she ever SHOCKED!!!!  And delighted!!!  What a prize?!!!

And doesn't everyone who wins a new bike park it smack in the middle of the front foyer?!  Talk about wrapping up elementary school with a bang!!!  Way to go Clara!!!


The end of the school year was not all bikes and games though.  No.  There was definitely work to be done.  A few dreaded projects that needed wrapping up.  And I DO mean dreaded.  Mostly because I HATE taking on overly creative projects that require huge amounts of my time and brain power.  I feel I have so little left after birthing and caring for these three kids...every morsel is precious.  Thus...I was totally distressed when her teacher sent home a notice of a "Living History Wax Museum".  It seems Clara's class was chosen especially for this project.  The other 5th grade classes got a pass.  They all simply had to write a report on their historical figure.  But not girly's class.  Oh no!  They got to go over and beyond.  A full written report.  Followed by a costume dress up presentation...and the icing on the cake?  A backdrop of refrigerator box size to support their character AND a special parents night at school to view our child and all the OTHER 48 historical projects.  Try not to jump out of your seat with jealousy.  Contain yourselves.  This joy is ALL MINE!  You may find it interesting that Chris Roberts, magically, yet again, managed to be out of town for this historical event.  Imagine that!  Ahem...I digress.  Anyway.  Back to our historical project.  Oh yes.  Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross.  That was Clara's figure.  On the bright side...she only had to memorize a new LAST name for her speech and presentation!  She wrote her paper/speech.  She memorized all two minutes of it.  We gathered her costume and created her backdrop.  And, just as I feared, it was quite the headache and more effort than I EVER would have wished to put forth right at the end of the school year.  But alas...the night arrived and with it...Clara's finished project!

Clara Barton in front of her Red Cross tent.  

It was a truly riveting night.  One where I got to wander from booth to booth hearing two minute speeches about more historical figures than you can imagine.  I listened to Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Einstein, Sacawagea, Audry Hepburn and many, many others.  Like...MANY, many, many others.  But the pain wasn't all mine.  Poor Clara had to give that poor speech of hers over and over and over and over again, only catching a break if a group of parents happened to stop in instead of just one at a time.  We were both exhausted by the end of the night and I was so full of newly acquired historical information that I hardly knew what to do with myself.  We went home and I promptly gave thanks that THAT was over.


In other news...I have new hair.  New color.  New cut.  Lost several inches in the back this go round...but it's all good in the end I think.

Jump ahead again and we find ourselves at the VERY LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!  Can you even believe it?  My goodness, but time has flown by!  It seems like just yesterday I was looking my baby jumping off the bus at the end of her very first day of 5th grade!  And now...here she is on her very LAST day of 5th grade!  And her last day EVER of elementary school!  WOW!!!!!!!

First day of 5th grade!

Last day of 5th grade!!!

 The last day of school festivities were a blast!  We had a huge picnic on the grounds with all the students, teachers and families.  This is Clara with her homeroom teacher.  We ADORE her and will miss her terribly!!!

 After our picnic, we went into the auditorium for the 5th grade awards ceremony.  Clara received a VERY big award!  She was presented with the Presidential Achievement Award.  In order to get this she had to have had straight A's throughout 3rd, 4th and 5th grade on her report card.  There were only FOUR Students in her school who achieved this!  It was SUCH a proud mama moment!!!  I cannot tell you how excited I was to hear her name called and see her head up to that stage and get that award!

Collection her Presidential Achievement Award and certificate signed by Obama!

 After the awards were all wrapped up, the goodbyes began.  Some were heart wrenching!  There were hugs all around!

 And flowers!  One MUST have flowers when one graduates the 5th grade!

 And more goodbyes!

Clara with her language arts and math teacher.  We LOVE this lady too!  How blessed we have been this year to have such awesome teachers in Clara's life!

And now that school is out, we are officially on summer vacation!  It's looked a lot like this....

And this...

And swim team is going in full force...so it's also looked a lot like this...

Cooper continues to keep us on our toes, getting into any and everything that he can find!!!  The baby gate we recently put in the pantry to keep him from 1) getting locked in there by accident and 2) to keep him OFF the shelves is obviously not working real well.  Mister Mischief strikes again!

We are still volunteering at least once a month downtown with the homeless.  These are shots from last week's adventure.

Clara and Max served the drinks.

Benjamin learned how to make the biscuits!!!  

They taught Max how to make gravy!  Did I mention how GREAT this experience is for my kids???!!!  I LOVE that they learn some new things while we are there serving!

In other huge news...Benjamin now has his learning permit and is legal to LEARN how to drive.  I call him "Need for Speed" after a comment when he told me he was a great driver because of how he drives on this certain video game.  I can tell you that after our first driving lesson...Need for Speed has plenty of room for improvement and will be needing every hour he can collect behind the wheel!  Pray for this mama as this boy is a bit heavy footed with the pedals.  It's a little scary really!

And finally...here's my girl in her team swimsuit.  Isn't she just the cutest?!  They are the Pusch Ridge Pirates and I am digging their flashy new suits for the season!  Love the metallic skull and cross bones!!!  Yes...I do indeed love this particular little pirate!!!!

And now...you are officially caught up on life here in the desert!!!! SO sorry for the long post and the LONGER time in between posts!  Must do better!  Yes, I must!

Itchy Ears

Long time, no post!  We pretty much just skipped an ENTIRE month!  There's been lots going on.  No doubt about that.  Just not much time to sit down and write it out.  March brought Spring and our long awaited Spring Break getaway to Lake Powell.  That didn't happen.  That's right.  We had to cancel at the last second.  Our sweet girl got sick.  VERY sick.  And the doctor's verdict was pneumonia.  And just like that...we were homebound!  Our sweet girl spent the ENTIRE week in bed.  As in, every single day of it...just sleeping and coughing and resting and recovering.  And visiting the doctor.  Three times to be exact!  I wasn't totally sure she would make it back to school when everyone returned on Monday...but she did!  She was exhausted.  And cranky.  And exhausted...but she pulled through and ended up having a GREAT week back!  Part of what made it so great was her class field trip to Phoenix for the J A Biztown day.  It was a field trip they had been working toward and preparing for for a long time.  They had been learning the ins and outs of the business world.  How to write and receive checks, how to balance a checkbook, how to run a business, figure profits and income, etc.  Each child in the fifth grade chose positions to interview for.  They dressed in their very best, prepared resumes and put their best foot forward in a series of interviews with a panel of adults.  They were asked about the qualities they possessed that might make them a good candidate for the desired job.  They were asked about their past and current experiences that might contribute to their qualifications and about people they admire in life and why.  It was a grueling and stressful process for them.  They were total bundles of nerves.  And then...after the interviews were all done, they had to WAIT.  For an entire weekend and then two more days.  The suspense was killing them!  You might be wondering what position my Clara decided to interview for?  Well...she's a high achiever and she set her sights this time on THE position.   Clara decided to interview for the position of Mayor of Biztown!  I don't know who was more nervous about the interviews...her or me!  When the jobs were announced Clara was OVERJOYED to find out the SHE GOT THE JOB!!!!!!  She beat out all the other 5th graders for the prestigious position and did a GREAT job in Phoenix!  She had to make several speeches throughout the day to the townspeople, give several television interviews and sign paychecks for the entire town.  There were lots of meetings and many issues that required her attention.  She had a BLAST, but at the end of the day, told me she didn't get paid enough to do that job all the time!  LOL!  Spoken like  a true overworked grown up!

And now...here we are in April!  And it is FLYING by!  Holy cow!  Cannot believe we are a third of the month gone already!  What's new in April?  Well...Clara is currently juggling tennis lessons, ballet classes and swim team.  Ballet is preparing for the June recital and swim team is just gearing up.  Clara is proving to be a natural in the water!  She has only been swimming for two weeks and has already been moved up a group level!  All she wants to do is swim, swim, swim!  We are out of the house 5 days a week with her activities.  It's total craziness, but it's fun to see her enjoying and doing so well in her activities.  The schools are all smack in the middle of state testing this week and next.  And we are in the final 7 weeks of the school year now!  WOW!  Can you believe we are out of school NEXT month?!  I am SOOO looking forward to some nice, low key summer action!  Ben continues to do quite well in school and Max is slowly, but surely making an academic turn around.  While he won't make any honor rolls, we DO have some hope that he will at least PASS his classes.  Which is more than we could have hoped a few weeks ago!

In addition to all the kids stuff, we are currently having our house painted.  This is the first time we have ever had to tackle this.  And WHAT an adventure!  Picking the color was stressful, since we decided to change it.  Once we decided on our color, we thought it would be easy sailing.  But that has NOT been the case!  We have had one disaster after another.  We hated the treatment they did on our wood vigas.  MAJORLY hated it.  So much that we ended up having to spend an entire day pressure washing the new paint OFF of the house.  Sigh.  We wondered if we wouldn't have to just totally replace all of our woodwork.  We are talking disaster on a major scale here!  Fortunately, we were able to find a solution that worked for all of us.  We are now into the SECOND week of house painting.  Oy!  Hopefully, we will be done by the end of this week and will NOT be reaching into a third one!  I do NOT enjoy living with all of my windows and doors all taped up!

On top of all the crazy paint ordeal, I managed to pick up some nasty cold bug.  Came down last Friday with a sore throat.  By Saturday afternoon I had added a fever and body aches to the mix.  Monday brought on the snotty nose and cough.  I was certain I would be cured by now, on Wednesday...but as I sit typing this...Wednesday has been a pretty miserable day and there is no end in sight for the snot!  I am REALLY hoping that tomorrow is a GREAT day.  My new symptom tonight is itchy ears!  They are driving me CRAZY!!!!  I am hoping the drainage is a positive sign, but I might lose my mind before this clears up!  This has gone on WAY too long for this mama! I have felt sicker than sick and am ready to get back into life!

On the pet front, Cooper has been a MAJOR pain in the butt!!!  He has learned to raid the trash can.  Multiple ways!  First he learned how to get into our COVERED stainless steel trash can.  We managed to discourage him for a day or two by turning the can around so it opened opposite.  It took him a couple of days, but he quickly figured it out and defeated our efforts.  Then I bought a new smaller plastic trash can and placed it under the kitchen sink.  It took him less than a week to figure out how to open the cabinet!  Can you believe it?!  Talk about a crazy, pain in the butt dog!!!!  Finally, Chris had to install baby latches on our kitchen cabinet there under the sink.  Not something we ever imagined we would be doing with our youngest baby being ten years old!  If only that had solved all of our problems!  Cooper's other favorite place is in the pantry.  If its left open even a tiny crack he wiggles his way in there.  It's a very small pantry, and if he wiggles his way to the back there on the floor, it's dark and we can't see him.  He's been shut in there a couple of times.  This past week I locked him in there by accident and left to take the kids to school.  He ended up being in there for about 45 minutes!  In that time he managed to relieve me of an entire bag of pita pockets and who knows what else?!  After that incident, I placed a baby gate inside the pantry door along the bottom so he can't get in there.  That way he can't be under the shelf where we can't see him AND he can't use anything on the floor as a boost up to the bottom shelf...where I have indeed found him on more than one occasion!

In addition to baby proofing the house, we've also attempted to snake proof our puppies!  Cooper and Oscar both went through rattlesnake avoidance training a few weekends ago.  That was interesting.  I did not know when we registered them that we would have to personally walk our dogs RIGHT BY THE SNAKES!  The snakes that most definitely were NOT in cages!!!!  They both did well with the training.  Oscar was not amused and, as we thought...was a super quick study.  I'm not totally convinced Cooper REALLY got it...but the trainer felt confident that he registered the snake as  a no no.  Let's just HOPE he's right!!!

On a high note, we got our Gigi all moved here from Texas.  She is living just a couple of miles away from us.  She is busy unpacking all of her boxes and settling into her new place.  Before long, it should be feeling like home!

Looking to the future, we are planning ANOTHER camping trip next weekend.  Here's HOPING we can all stay healthy enough to actually GO this time!  Our last TWO attempts have had to be cancelled. I really REALLY am looking forward to this one!  We are camping with Clara's sweet teacher next weekend and it should be a great time with great weather!   As an extra treat, we get to have Clara's little BFF come along with us and spend the weekend.  Clara is CRAZY excited about having Claire along for a whole weekend and it will be nice for all of us too for Clara to have someone to play with!

So that's the gist of what's happening at our house.  I'm sure I've left plenty out!  But hopefully I managed to hit all the high points!  Until we meet again!!!  Life is good in the desert!

The Blizzard of 2013

That's right!  You read that correctly!  There's been a BLIZZARD in TUCSON, AZ!!!!!  And that is some exciting news for the desert dwellers!!!  Of course...any weather is pretty much exciting around these parts.  Don't get me wrong...our blue skies and sunshine nearly all the time make me happier than words can ever express.  What is NOT to love about that?!  But when a little weather rolls through...be it monsoon storms with dramatic lightning, or rain that creates a super cool inverted temperature scenario with the clouds, or a light shower that lights up the sky afterward with rainbows, or even a blizzard....well...the desert dwellers just kind of do an appreciative happy dance!  It happens to seldom that it just doesn't get under our skin.  Quite the opposite.  We grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, put our feet up and just watch it happen.  It's better than any TV show out there!  February has actually seen some really cool weather this year.  Cool...as in neat.  I mean...it's been cool too.  We are wearing coats several days a week...but not ALL days.  My Ben continues to wear shorts, God love him!  But the weather has been visually cool too!  Here are some pics of February...NOT starting with the blizzard!  Be patient!  It's coming!

We had an inverted temperature scenario here a couple of weeks ago, resulting in the clouds being on the ground with the mountains up above.  Very, very pretty and a different way to see the mountains we love!  So cool to see them shrouded in clouds from the bottom up!

And now....on to our "blizzard"!

And this would be my sweet Ben...completely inappropriately dressed for a blizzard, standing in the snow, no coat, eating ICE CREAM!!!  Pray for my children.  Sometimes the obvious things just don't occur to them (like dressing warmly).

Cooper LOVED the snow!  Could not keep his face out of the cold stuff!

We got a LOT!

This just seems so wrong in the desert!!!

Our yard looked like a winter wonderland!

This boy is in his happy place!!!  He LOVES the snow and cold!  And look!  He's put on a sweat shirt!  Ahh...the power of prayer!

The really never outgrow this, do they?!

Clara scraped together enough snow after the FIRST round to build a snowman!  We got about 4 waves of intense snow fall!  One while they were in school, one right after they all got home, one a bedtime and another in the night!

Our little abode....all snowy!

Cactus!

prickly pear collecting snow!

Talk about a scene you do NOT see every day!

So beautiful and weird at the same time!

I LOVED seeing my desert thrown into such an unusual state!

The morning after the blizzard.  The snow is STILL here!

It's amazing to see the snow on the mountains far away from us!  

SO cool!  Literally!

I think I could look at this all day!  However, in true desert fashion, it is melting QUICK!  I imagine it will be mostly gone by lunch time!  Not on the mountains...but definitely from the roofs and surfaces!

And there you have it!  Photo footage of the great Blizzard of 2013!  We are thawing out now!  But it was SO neat while it lasted!  I have to say... desert snow is my kind of snow!  It's so beautiful while it lasts, such a treat...but goes away so quickly!  Love it, love it, love it!!!!

She's Got Her Dancing Shoes On!

It's her favorite night of the year.  Well, besides Christmas Eve...but anyway...she is excited!  Tonight is the Valentine's Dance at school.  And she gets to bring a special adult.  Any guesses as to who she might have picked?

That's right!  She picked her Daddy!!!

Here she is...a vision in pink!  

SOOOO beautiful and sparkly!!!

I could eat her up!

Love these two and I cannot WAIT to hear about their wonderful time out!

On the agenda?  Well...her daddy has whisked her away to Mr. An's for some yummy dinner!  Then they are off for a night of dancing.  THEN she's off with her good friends for a sleepover!  One of her very BEST DAYS EVER!!!!!  She was downright giddy!!!