Aaaaaahhhh! It's Almost Christmas!!

 Now that Thanksgiving has past us by, the craziness of Christmas has started!  We're kind of tired already but will soldier on.
It started last Friday with my school's annual Christmas show.  The 5th grade choir sang 5 different songs and we sounded pretty awesome.  As soon as that was over, I head home with Ella for a sleep over.  Mom and dad headed up to the Ritz Carlton for a Raytheon work event.  It was a nice night all around.

On Saturday, everyone enjoyed a slow start to the day.  Mom and dad headed out for brunch and then mom met me and the Healy's at the Christmas Tree lot.  Mrs. Healy warned mom that her family experiences "Christmas Tree Lot Meltdown" every. single. year.  She was hoping to avoid it this year but with three sleep deprived kids (me, Ella and her brother) it wasn't looking good.  None of us kids liked the first lot.  It just wasn't Christmassy enough and tree were super expensive.  I got ticked at mom when she refused to pay $100 for a tree.  She offered to take back some of my presents in exchange but I didn't like that idea so much.  We decided to head to another lot and it was sooo much better.  They had hot chocolate.  Need I say more?  We found a nice tree for a decent price AND it supported a good cause.  Win win win!

This is me, Ella and her little brother on the way to the Christmas tree lot.

We managed to get our tree up and the outside lights done and all our other Christmas decorations up and then we had dad use his secret hidden talent to do some chalkboard art for the season.  Pretty good, right?

And to make it all the more better, it was cold enough for a few days that mom actually broke out the hot chocolate.   And then made me pose with it before I could drink it.  Because she needed something to post on Instagram.

This past weekend was pretty quiet.  I spent the night at my friend Claire's house on Friday and then on Saturday, our choir performed at the Tucson Botanical Gardens and then I got to run around with my friends while the adults socialized and it was a really fun night.  Unfortunately, I woke up at 4:15AM to toss my cookies and have been kind of down and out for most to the day so it has been pretty quiet.  Hope everyone has a fabulous week!

Long Time No See!

 Whew-  it's been a busy few weeks around as evidenced by our lack of blogging.  And sadly, mom is having brain farts when it comes to her computer and can't seem to find some of the pictures she wanted to post.  Never fear though, she found 19 others so you can still glimpse our fascinating life!  We last chatted a few days before Halloween.  Those are the pictures my assistant can't seem to find.  I went as Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games and you'll have to take my word for it that I was an awesome Katniss.  Mom's work friend even said I was the best one she had seen and she saw lots. It was pretty awesome.  This was also the first Halloween in our neighborhood since we were out of town last year.  It. Was. Cra-cra!  Remember when mom said that we needed to buy our bags of candy at Costco and we bought 7 bags with 150 pieces in each bag?  Well.  We needed all that.  We estimated close to 500 trick or treaters and is was totally cool.  The neighborhood was so fun that night.  It was like a huge party and everyone seemed very respectful of the neighborhood, nothing was trashed and there were even kids out the next morning picking up trash.  All in all a great event!

The rest of the week was spent in recovery and we were happy for the weekend.  Mom headed out with a friend of hers to hike Tumamoc Hill on the west side of Tucson.  It is kind of iconic Tucson and mom had never hiked it in all of her 20 years living here.  It was really pretty and worth the drive, especially when she and her friend hit a popular Mexican bakery not to far from there and got fresh, hot tortillas and empanadas to round out their morning.

While mom was doing that, dad took me and my friend Ella up to Dave and Busters.  Ella had never been so I got to introduce her the fun that is D&Bs.  Everyone had a really fun day.

The next day- Sunday, November 6, Tucson does its version of All Souls Day with a huge procession through downtown that can top 100,000 people.  It really is a cool event and I love going.  We are lucky enough to have friends that own a building not to far from the parade so we head down early, paint faces, eat, drink and be merry, run around and melt our face makeup and then walk to the parade.  My friend Alexa is pretty good at face painting so she was my makeup artist this year.

There was a whole bunch of painting going on, with the moms and dads getting in on the action too.  My mom of course didn't because she was having flashbacks of trying to get the paint off our faces for hours after we got home last year.  She figured one face was enough.  Maybe next year....

I did make my own flower head piece which is also pretty cool, yes?

The next week, mom and I headed out to do our civic duty.  She realized this year that she has been taking me to vote since I was 6 months old.  Kind of cool right?  While we were not thrilled with the results this year we are going to suck it up and see what happens.

Then we had a great visit from the Dallas Goedels.  Uncle Tim, Aunt Dana, Brooke and Faith rolled into town on Thursday night.  I happened to have a softball game that night and they walked up just in time to see me hit a real, live home run!  It wasn't a "circus ball" home run where you score because no one can throw or catch a ball and you just keep running on overthrows.  This was real, over the center fielder's head, roll to the fence home run.  With two runners on.  AND to make things even better, I had to come in and pitch the final inning, with our team up by one run.  Oh the nail biting going on in the stands!  Between some nice fielding by my team mates for the first out and my two strike outs, we were able to hold our lead and FINALLY win a game!  It was pretty amazing and we ended up taking third place in the tournament.  Not bad for a team that won three games all season.  We just peaked at the right time.
The rest of the weekend was spent showing Brooke and Faith around Tucson and all the cool things we have here.  I introduced them to Eegees and they loved it of course.

And then Brooke and Faith really wanted to see cactus and a snake.  We were able to help them out with the cactus part but the snake not so much.

I know Grandpa and Grandma loved having us all together and it was super fun to see everyone again.  The Dallas Goedels left on Monday morning to continue their adventures and then I only had two days of school left until our Thanksgiving break.  We did our annual camping trip and it was another perfect trip.  The weather was awesome, everyone was happy, the food was good.  I ate four rolls, mashed potatoes and turkey.  My plate was very beige but tasted so good!
As you can see, the adults were very enamored of our table setting- we have pictures of people taking pictures.  That's how good it was.

So now, we are caught up to this weekend.  We did some black Friday shopping and ended up buying more for ourselves but that's how it goes right?  We'll be back next week with Christmas decorating pictures!

All Kinds of Stuff....

Even though we are pretty bored today, it has been a busy, fun two weeks!  We kicked off last weekend with my school celebrating Grandparent's Day at my school.  Grandpa Vern put on his fancy shirt and managed to get to our house at 7:15 (!) in the morning to take me to school.  We spent the morning hanging out at my school and in my classroom.  Mom apologized to my teacher ahead of time for whatever havoc Grandpa and I may have wrecked to we were good to go for the day!

The reason Grandpa had to take me to school was because mom was heading out on a Girl's Weekend to Palm Springs, CA.  The in-laws of one the girls has a condo in Palm Spring and let them take it over for the weekend.  It was a fun weekend with naps even on Saturday afternoon.  The nap was much needed because the ladies headed out for a night of dancing and didn't get to bed until 2AM.  Mom is still recovering from that one and everyone decided once a year may even be too much for those types of shenanigans.  Yawn.....

While mom was away at her girl's weekend, I was having one of my own.  My friend Ella had her birthday party.  Her favorite movie is Mama Mia and the musical happened to be making its last ever show in Tucson so her parents surprised her by taking us all to see it and then having us sleep over.  It was a super fun night for us.

Meanwhile, dad was enjoying having the house all to himself.  He claims all he did was watch a movie and eat Trader Joe's chicken fried rice but we think he probably thoroughly enjoyed it.

This week has been kind of long and dragging and I'm sure it has nothing to do with lack of sleep the prior weekend.....
Mom did get a surprise in the mail this week when her Cleveland based friend sent her this awesome t-shirt.  Go Tribe!

On Friday, we found a new restaurant that may become our new favorite.  It is a pizza place, with good beer and close to home.  It reminds us of Perry's Pizza in Denver which was our favorite hang-out.  Bear Canyon Pizza just opened last week so there were still some bugs to work out, like waiting over an hour for our pizza but once I got over the dramatics of being so hungry I could die, it all worked out OK.

On Sunday, we put the final touches on our Halloween set up.  We now have four new additions to our family.  Meet Winston, Maverick, McCoy and the cat Bella Baguette.  We also have a zombie we named Abigail but she scares us so she stays outside.  You can see our dining room as you come up to the door and we have it lit with black light so it should be pretty cool!

Now, it's time to go carve our pumpkins- hope you have a great week!

BusyBusyBusy. Aaaaaand Relax.

Sorry for the delay in posting- we had a very busy weekend last week and we were kind of exhausted because of it.  But in a good way.  Because we are always good when we are exhausted....

We started our last weekend off with my first choir concert of the year.  In fifth grade, we have to take band or choir.  Since mom didn't feel like fighting with me about practicing an instrument for a year, I really didn't get a choice so choir it is.  Good thing I like it.  On Friday, we had our Coffee and Cabaret presentation.  There were a few alumni students that came back and performed, the middle school choir performed and then we did.  Mom had a video to post but it was too big, so you're stuck with just a photograph.  That's me in the back row on the left.  You'll have to take my word for it but we sounded pretty good.  After that, the parents decided it would be fun to head out for dinner/drinks.  So the Healy's, the Reberts and us went out and closed down the restaurant.  We finally made it to bed at 11:30.  Whew- waaaaay past mom and dad's bed time.

We sort of slept in on Saturday but not really because I never sleep in.  We had kind of a lazy Saturday but did make out to do some Halloween decoration shopping- pictures soon to follow (but trust me, it going to be good! It involves skeletons and crawling zombies and fog!!)

Saturday night, we had my softball games.  I did pretty darn good because it turns out we were playing a club team and I held my own against them both pitching and hitting.  In fall league, we play double headers so it was another night of getting to bed at 11 and not sleeping in much the next day.

Sunday was Episcopal School Sunday and they celebrate mass for all the students that attend Episcopal schools.  So off we went to my second choir event of the weekend.  We had to sing a song during the 10 AM mass.  The whole thing was a little dreary with gloomy organ music and a sad homily but we were a nice bright spot.  After that, we came and rested up for our final event of the weekend.

You all remember my friend Ella?  The one I'm planning on moving in with because I have so much fun?  Well, her mom is the PR director for Cox Communications here in Tucson and they sponsored a table at the fundraising gala for the Tucson Botanical Gardens.  For some reason, they invited mom and dad to join them.  Nobody really likes mom and dad so they don't get a ton of invitations.  It was a very fun night and they met all kinds of interesting people including the director of the zoo!  We love our zoo here so that was kind of fun to talk to her about it.  Grandpa Vern and Grandma Sue came over to hang with me for the evening and I tried to go to bed early but it's never easy when mom and dad are out.   So after yet another late night, it was time to start our week.  You can only imagine how it went.

Thankfully, it was a relatively short one because my fall break started this week.  I had a half day on Wednesday and was off Thursday and Friday.  On Thursday, I had a sleep over at my friend Claire's house for her birthday.  I was pretty much exhausted  on Friday so I kind of laid low.  We did venture out again- this time to Costco for Halloween Candy and a new TV.  We get so many trick or treaters in our little 'hood that we needed to buy our candy at Costco.  It's going to be epic!  We had to buy a new TV because this house is bigger than our last house and mom and dad are getting old and can't see the smaller TV so well, sitting farther away.  It is pretty sweet having a huge TV to watch my cartoons on.

Saturday was two more softball games.  I didn't do fantastic the first game but then mom made me eat something and wonder of wonders, I had a fantastic second game.  7 up, six down, one walk.  Not too shabby.

On Sunday, we took my friend Isabel to Golf-n-Stuff and had a fabulous day playing mini golf, playing laser tag, riding bumper boats and go carts.  Super fun day!

Hope everyone has a fantastic week and we'll see you on the flip side!

We Heart The White Mountains

So we had a pretty spectacular weekend.  This was our annual trip up to the White Mountains for the mountain bike race and just to kick off Fall in the high country.  We always go up with a bunch of friends and Mr. Walker and Nana D meet us there and this year, Uncle Adam and Auntie Erin, Sophia and Brendan joined in the fun.  It was a family, friend packed weekend and we loved it!

The Goedel Clan (meaning us) drove up after school/work on Thursday and camped in our RV the first night.  We arrived about 8:30PM to meet our friends and found the fire already roaring, the beer cold and conversation lively.  It was already pretty chilly but that made it feel that much more like fall and it was wonderful.

Friday was a beautiful, relaxed day.  There was a little bike riding, and some pick up softball games.  There were 5 of us 10 year old girls running around the campsite so you can imagine what that was like- drama, bike riding, drama, softball playing, drama, eating lunch and finally some drama but it was all good.

Friday afternoon, the Walker Clan rolled in from Albuquerque.  They all stayed at a condo close to the start of the race and we spent the night with them.  After a colossal mix up at check in ( 2 Leah Walkers were registered to stay at the same condo!  How crazy is that?  Aaaand the check in girl went to mom's high school!) we settled in and enjoyed some more sports (miniature golf).  Sophia and Brendan were looking like naturals and dad was one handing his putts with ease.  And he didn't spill his beer.

We headed in for dinner and I was a good cousin and let the little ones take full advantage of me.

On Saturday, we were up bright and early.  Dad, Mr. Walker and our friends all headed out on their respective races and I rode in my own kid ride.  I got to ride with all my drama friends and it was super fun and mom was only hoping that I wouldn't crash.  She keeps her expectations low.  I ended up doing great and loved it.

After a fun, outdoorsy kind of day, we headed back to the campsite and found this little cutie waiting for us.  She was hiding under one of the campers with no tags.  She was super friendly and we asked around but no one reported a missing dog.  Since everyone in our group are animal lovers, we couldn't just leave her out there.  No one was able to take her home so we called the Super Animal Lovers- Uncle Adam and Aunt Erin to see if they could help out.  Sure enough, they agreed to take her back to Albuquerque and find her a good home.  Thank goodness for that!

As you can see, she settled in pretty quickly......

Hope you all have a wonderful week- we are gearing up for another busy weekend so should be fun!