100 YEAR FLOOD!

Arizona doesn't have snow days, tornado evacuations, earthquake drills, etc - but when it rains 5 inches over night - our city comes to stand still and life just got a little bit more fun that day! Chandler Schools decided not to take attendance today and said only come to school if you can come safely - otherwise - stay home! We could have gone to school safely no problem - but since I have been going to school for 30 years in Arizona and we never got a day like this - we had to take advantage of it and stay home and play! The news called this "the 100 year flood"! Hope the kiddos enjoyed this day in history!

Here is the greenbelt next to our house while it is still raining - look how high it comes up to Tyson.

Yes, Tyler is being held in every picture - he thought the grass felt to weird to walk in so he refused to do it and made Emma carry him :) 

HARRY POTTER MARATHON & SHARK WEEK!

Every once and a while on cable they will show some episode of Harry Potter - we never watch them start to finish, but when ever its playing - it will always grab the boys attention. So we decided it would be fun to watch all the Harry Potter movies in order from start to finish. We did it over the space of 3 Sundays. The kids loved it and asked great questions and we had a lot of fun doing it together as a family. On the last Sunday we had part 1 and part 2 left of #7 so I thought it would be more fun to turn it into a family party. We all went to church and then when church ended, Jared stalled the kids at church for a bit and I ran home and set it up as a surprise. The kids thought it was awesome and might have used one of my favorite lines they say quite often, "this is the BEST DAY EVER!"

I don't have a pic of it, but we did have yellow and red streamers hanging before they entered the room to represent "The house of Gryffindor"

the spread....
 

Nagini - the snake

 Butter Beer and Ollivanders Wands

 Hedwig Droppings

 Butter Beer drinkers

 I did this to our bathroom too - but I forgot to take a pic

 
 Our favorite part of the whole marathon was when Harry and Professor Dumbledore had to go and gather all the hurcruxes and Tyson was totally into it, sucking his thumb and holding his lovey and we knew a hand was about to come up out of the water so Jared and I silently watched Tyson and when the hand came up - his whole body jumped and he threw the lovey out of his hand - we about peed our pants laughing so hard - we only regret not filming it! ha ha!

The kids chowing down...

A week later was the start of "Shark Week" and Saturday night at 10pm we decided with Stacia, Liz and Taya that we should get together on Sunday and watch the first episode of shark week together. I only sometimes like to toot my own horn - but this is one of them - I ran to the grocery store and this is what we got the next day before everyone came over. We had a lot of fun watching it and boys watched it all week long.

the spread...

 Jared helped me carve this masterpiece!

SUMMER SHEANNIGANS!

This summer we did the usual summer things and here are a few pictures I took to capture those moments - I really need to be better at taking more pics :(

Zerberts with Alyza

 
 Splash pad with the Parrys
 


 
 
 
 
 Boys and silly glasses
 
 
 
 Tyler and Tyson playing nicely together - they did this all on their own -

 Summer Movie fun

 

Flag Football

 

The boys got to go to farm camp again - this time it was just the twins because Eli went to Perry Puma Basketball Camp instead! 

 They got Ostrich eggs and made them a nice warm bed in their bed for a couple of days waiting for them to hatch - good thing they forgot about them and I got to throw them away when they weren't looking :)

Tyler has a very inquisitive mind. He is always trying to see how things go together and fix them himself - this remote control car wasn't working so he took it upon himself to find a screw driver and open it up and change the batteries to see if that would help  -

 
 He will also sit there and build an entire lego set himself too!

 Tyson and Eli enjoy that too - but they don't have the patience for it like Tyler. He will spend the whole day on it - the other two get bored quicker! The other two just want it to be built so they can play with it and Tyler would rather build it instead of playing with it!

Tyson and Alyza snuggles

 Jared was gone with the Young Men at the lake so I took the kids and joined up with Stacia's family and we went to the river - the boys thought they were going to see all sorts of river creatures from Wild Krats - of course they didn't, but they still had a good time!

 

EMMA'S FIRST TIME ON POINTE!

It was a big day in a dancer's life - Emma got pointe shoes for the first time! She was very nervous to do it with the big girls for the first time so Ms. Shelley was so very sweet and came and met us down at the studio at 9pm on Saturday night after Emma's rehearsal had finished and taught Emma how to put on her shoes, tie her shoes, take off her shoes, store her shoes and get up on her shoes. Emma thought she was so cool. She proudly showed her brothers her shoes and told them that these were the shoes that she was going to wear that would make her toes bleed! They thought she was crazy - but she was all smiles!