Kind of Bored.

 Our last down week and we're bored.  And hot.  And maybe a little grumpy.  At least mom and I are grumpy.  Dad seems to be holding up OK but that's because he got our new toy home.
Our Friday Family Adventure was to the RV store to pick up our new RV.  We were supposed to pick it up at 10 but the air conditioning wasn't working so they had to keep for a few extra hours to get that fixed.  So.  Rather than driving all the way home again, we headed to Camping World to buy more stuff for our tiny camper.  In our defense, it was stuff like sewer hoses and toilet paper but we still managed to kill about an hour and half.  After spending a good 45 minutes in the blazing, hot sun learning all the ins and outs, we finally got to drive it home.  Dad spent the rest of the weekend culling our stuff and organizing everything that made the cut.  We are heading to California on Friday for 10 days so we'll see how it goes!

Saturday was almost as much fun for me as Friday.  I got to go school clothes shopping with mom.  Cue the whining.  "I caaaaan't dooooo this today!"  "It's tooooo hooooootttt out here." "It's too coooooold in here."  " I'm thiiiiirstyyyy."  "I need to go to the bathroom".  We got it all done but it took about 15 hours.

On Sunday, mom headed to a movie with friends so dad and I went to the movies with our friends Mr. Mike and Madeline.  

It has been grossly, blazing hot this past week with just enough humidity to make it miserable so we spent most of weekend here.......

It's good to have a pool!

Have a good week!

Relax. Reset.

Well- this was our first down week in a long, long, time.  It was kind of nice but mom is ready for our next adventure.  Mom and dad used the week to restart their long neglected "healthy eating and working out" program.  Apparently, both of them gained a few lbs during my softball season due to late nights and eating out.  Mom has come to the sad realization that she can have a beer OR desert but not both.  Dad has lost 5 pounds by just looking at carrots and not doing anything else.  There is lots of sighing and dirty looks coming from mom's general direction.

On Friday, mom and I headed out to the zoo.  Despite being 95 degrees at 9AM, the animals were still fairly active.  I'm not sure if you remember that our adventures at the Denver Zoo always seemed to involve animals pooping while we watched.  Well.  The tradition continues in Tucson, except all the animals were peeing while we watched.  We got to see the tigers, the elephants, the bears AND the monkeys all take care of business.  In the end, we were just glad to actually see the animals up and moving because it's so hot here.

We came home and cooled off a bit and got into our next project.  A while ago, mom found a lip balm recipe and thought it would be a fun thing for us to do.  We went to the "healthy people" store and got organic coconut oil, beeswax, essential oils, lip balm tins and got creating.  It was pretty easy and they turned out nicely.  I see lots of lip balm in everyone's Christmas future!

Now.  On Saturday.  Dad wanted to make sure we had something to spice up our "Relax. Reset." blog, so we bought a new RV.  It's a Sprinter Van  so it's smaller than our current model and it is really the model he has been wanting all along.  I don't love it because it's so small.  Mom and dad think it's a good thing for several reasons.  Because it's smaller, we  can take it more places with less hassle.  After driving through San Fransisco in our old one, dad decided smaller IS better.  Mom will be better able to drive this one.  And finally, the bigger RV kind of took away from the "outdoor" experience because we could comfortably spend time inside and what's the point of camping if you're  inside.  This kind of forces us to be outside because it's small.  But we still have a bathroom- so that's good.  We pick it up next week in time for our trip to California.  Nothing like taking a brand new RV on a 1000 mile trip.  Mom was looking for an adventure.....

Sunday was a quiet day- dad went golfing and cleaned out our old RV to get it ready for trade in.  Grandma Sue took me to the movies so we got some good grandma/grand-daughter bonding time and mom made snickerdoodles.  (How's the diet working for you, mom?)
As mom was cleaning the house on Saturday, she realized we haven't used her beloved cookie jar in ages and decided we needed to correct that.  This was the cookie jar from her childhood and it has made countless moves with us and survived.  It deserves special treatment so we filled it with cookies!

We have one more week of relaxing and resetting and then we are off on our next adventure.  See you all soon!

Framily!!

 Whoa!  Look at this!  Three weeks in a row for the blog!  We're really trying hard on our end....

Last Monday was Fourth of July and our friends Joe and Amy have an amazing view of fireworks from the comfort of their own back yard.  They moved in 2 years ago and now host an annual Fourth of July party so that's where we spent Monday.  All wrapped up in that party was a small celebration for our friend Dave who ran off and got married without telling anyone.  He's not a guy who likes lots of attention but the ladies told him it wasn't about him any more and Mariko, his new wife, deserves a celebration.  After eating a ton of good food and hanging out with a lot of good people, we watched the fireworks and oohed and aahed and had a generally good time.

Thursday night was the last of my swim meets.  I got moved up into a faster heat for both my free style and backstroke but I still won both heats.  I didn't win by a landslide this time around but a win is a win.  I'm actually kind of bummed I don't get to swim anymore this year.  There is a winter team but I'm not sure I'm that committed to it.

On Friday morning, we left for a weekend camping trip with some of our favorite people and oldest friends.  They really are family, thus the title "framily".  Get it?  Friends+Family=Framily.  So clever my mom is.  Anyhoo.
We spent the weekend at Fool Hollow Lake up in Show Low.  We got there a lot because Grandpa Vern spends his summers up there so we always stop in to see him before heading to the campground.
We had our usual camping crew of Audrey, Mike and their daughter Madeline and then Joe, Amy and their two  girls, Grace and Anna and finally Eric and Janet joined us as well.  Plus two dogs.  It made for a crowded, fun time.  Grace is 7 and Anna is 3 so Madeline and I were in charge of them and we did a great job making sure they stayed all in one piece.  Ms. Janet's kids are all grown and she is desperately waiting for grandkids so she happily kept all of us youngins occupied while the adults relaxed.  It was a win-win-win!

It was pretty toasty here, even up in the mountains so we got some quality lake time in.  Even Ginger got in and swam a few laps and then we all swam all the way across the lake and back.  I turned it into a mini-Olympics as Ms. Janet is from Canada, so she was team Canada.  Dad and I were Team Korea and everyone else was team USA.  Team Canada took the gold (Ms. Janet is impressive in so many ways), Team Korea took silver and Team USA came in for the bronze.  The dogs got participation ribbons.

We headed home Sunday, back to 105 degrees and a long work week ahead but I have no sports for the next several weeks so we're going to enjoy some down time.  Have fun!

Swim Meets and Atlanta

It has been another busy week here.  I had my first swim meet of the season on Tuesday night.  Even though the season started mid-May, my softball commitments kept me from swimming in any meets before this week.  I wasn't too excited about it- "mooooooommmmm i'm tiiiiiirrreeedd", "i don't waaaaaannnt to gooooo".  Cue mom counting to 10.  (I have entered an incredibly whiney stage of life again and mom has very little tolerance for it so is lots of counting to 10.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not).  However, once I got there, I realized how fun it actually was and told mom half way through the night that I really liked swim meets.  For mom, it was just like our meets in Denver except instead of freezing her butt off, she was sweating it off.  For those of you who have never had the pleasure of attending a swim meet, it involves a lot of sitting and waiting for your event to be called, a frantic 60 seconds of cheering and then sitting and waiting for your next event to be called.  It's a good time to catch up on reading and gossiping with the other parents so it isn't a bad evening.

I ended up having a fairly good night considering how little I've swam this season.  I won both my freestyle and backstroke heats by a lot and came in fourth out of 5 for breast stroke- not my favorite.  I was pleased.  I have one more meet next week at our home pool, so that should be good.  Hopefully, the videos will play.  They are a little wonky right now.

Our neighbor down the street is an artist and she built this great little "free library" for the neighborhood.  You take a book, leave a book.  I've already visited it several times but they had their "grand opening" on Wednesday so we headed down, ate some cookies and chatted with fellow book lovers.  It's a neat little addition to an already neat little neighborhood.

On Friday morning, we headed out to Atlanta for mom's cousin's wedding.  Because our flight left at 7:20 out of Phoenix, dad and I decided we should head up on Thursday afternoon and spend some time at a resort that night so we didn't have to get up at 3AM and drive for 2 hours.  It was a super fantastic plan- the resort had a lazy river, a water slide and a waterfall and we had really good time.

We landed in Atlanta on Friday fully expecting to be overcome by heat and humidity but it really wasn't bad and we had a great time exploring a new city.  We loved the mass transit system and people were so very nice and happy everywhere we went.  Southern hospitality, I think it's called.

We found a place for dad to get his hair cut- that pesky man-bun of his was getting annoying.

We spent Saturday doing some exploring and found Olympic Park- unfortunately, it was closed as they were setting up for the Fourth of July but it was still kind of cool to walk around the outside.

We then headed to the world of Coca-Cola.  At first I was none to thrilled (see above about my whiney stage) but once I realized I got free coke, I was perfectly happy.  I love soda but I don't get a whole lot it since it rots you from the inside out so this was a dream come true for me.  We got a small bottle at the entrance and another small bottle on the way out and then they have sodas from all over the world that you can sample.  Even mom enjoyed that part.  We decided that the sodas from Latin America were our favorite and the sodas from Europe were our least favorite.

Ramsey's wedding was Saturday night and most excitingly, it was at a brewery!  It was a very fun, pretty setting and it was great to catch up with Nana D's side of the family.  They are kind of a cray-cray group but it always makes for a fun time.
Up until now, I've been a dancing fool at weddings.  It took a lot more encouragement this time due to the fact that I'm pretty sure everyone in the whole place was going to be watching me AND moms are now embarrassing, but I did get up and dance.  And once I did, I was back to my old dancing self.  Even dad got up and danced for a few songs so you know it was a good evening.
We wish Ramsey and John lots of love on their new journey!