Catching Up!

We took a few weeks because life was not exciting enough to write about so we can summarize it like this- wake up, go to work/camp, come home, go to bed.  Doesn't make for a very exciting blog, no?

Thankfully, the last two weeks have broken the boring streak.  We finally got out of town for summer vacation and it was great!  We left bright and early Saturday morning and headed to San Diego.  Our first hotel was right next to the marina and I immediately found my boat.  It was called the Fanatsea and I want to trade in the RV and spend the rest of my life at sea.

The big boat in the back is the Fantasea.

We spent the rest of the day at Sea World which was just so-so and then the next day, we drove up to LA to get our annual Disney Land fix.  For all the times we have been, we still had some rides to check off our list.  We had yet to ride the Matterhorn or Space Mountain so we got those done.  For future reference, Matterhorn is not so great.  Space Mountain was AWESOME!!!  I was a little ticked off that I couldn't talk mom or dad into going again.  Next time.  We still have to do Tower of Terror but we are all a little scared of it so I'm not sure when that will happen...

We drove back to San Diego two days later and checked into our most awesome hotel.  It was right on the beach of Mission Bay with a great pool, super calm warm water and perfect weather.
We headed to Sea Port Village and spent some time walking on the boardwalk.  Dad got a nice new camera so mom and I got to practice being models all week while he experimented.

This is us with Coronado Island in the background.

On Wednesday morning, dad had us up bright and early to head to La Jolla beach to play in the tide pools.  We saw some cool creatures- anemones, crabs, what we think was a tiny, baby shark, seals and dolphins.  We collected some cool sea shells and found sea glass and dad did more experimenting with the camera.  I think we could have hung out there all day long watching the waves crashing onto the rocks- just mesmerizing.

These are mom's pictures from her iPhone- just as good, don't you think?

When we finally dragged ourselves away, we headed to the San Diego Zoo for a few hours.

Thursday, we headed to the USS Midway to tour the museum.  Dad served on an aircraft carrier during his Navy time so we got all kinds of good stories about life on the ship.  Mom thought it sounded hot, stinky, crowded and nauseating and gives dad big kudos for doing it.

 
(This sign says Raytheon)

This is what dad did in the Navy- the guys wearing white are the safety squad

After that, we headed to Point Loma Seafood for a late lunch/early diner of delicious fish tacos.  The view was just OK......



Now, vacationing with dad is always super fun but not necessarily relaxing.  After going non-stop for 5 days and no plans to stop anytime soon, I finally asked when we were just going to "chillax" (my word) by the beach/pool for a day.  Mom was definitely up for that so we spent Friday morning at the beach and the afternoon at the pool.  Mom and I rented a stand-up paddle board and spent some time paddling around the bay.  Mom wouldn't let us get further than 3 feet from shore because she was pretty sure there was a great white shark swimming around us, just waiting for us to fall off the board and gobble us up.  We had a good time anyway.

After a fabulous week, we reluctantly headed home.  I had two more days of relaxing and then I started 3rd grade!  My teacher this year is Mrs. Stalkfleet and mom is excited because she is very organized and doesn't baby us.  It should be a good year.

On the home improvement front, we replaced our dirt pile with grass.  We decided to go with synthetic grass because mom and dad hate taking care of grass.  This stuff, you just hose down and rake once in a while and boom- perfect lawn.  We love it already.

And we FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY got new blinds.  We bought our house in 2005 and when mom and dad first looked at it, "we are going to replace those nasty, aluminum, apartment blinds ASAP."  Well, ASAP became 8 1/2 years later but we finally got it done.  Aaaaahhhh, so much better.  Time to start saving up for the next project!

P.S.  Mom's birthday is 10 days away.....

Mish Mash Part 2

Yet another quiet, semi-productive week in the Goedel Household.  The First Communion pictures keep rolling in- this one from Aunt Mary Kay has mom's side of the family.  How lucky am I?

It was grossly hot this week and our monsoons seems to have disappeared.  On Wednesday, it was 93 degrees at 8 in the morning.  Mom loves the heat but this was ridiculous.  It made for a tiring, cranky week.  For mom anyway.

Dad managed to escape some of the heat and headed out for a boy's weekend camping trip but it doesn't sound like it was tons of fun.  It was still warm, plus thunderstorms, mosquitos and ants.  Bleh.  He was glad to be home.
Mom and I had a slightly less buggy weekend back at the homestead and finished up some projects.  If you remember our front door from last blog post......

We got some stuff potted and now doesn't it look magazine worthy??  Huh? Huh?  Doesn't it?  Well, we like it.

Mom also got on the ball with her planters she bought for the backyard last February.  We had some really dead plants still in their original containers (been there since March) so we took those out.....

and added some nice Mexican Fence Post cactus.  Doesn't that look magazine worthy too??

 And finally, we had Ginger's last Puppy Kindergarten class.  We passed this time around and have the certificate to prove it.  Yeah us!

Mish Mash

After a crazy, busy 5 or 6 weeks, we have finally settled down for a few weekends and we are enjoying being lazy- as you can tell from our lack of blogging.  Or maybe it's just been so boring we have nothing to write about.  We are actually living vicariously through Nana D and Mr. Walker who are in Italy right now for Mr. Walker's birthday trip.  I think this is a good time to remind them that they had suggested doing a trip as a family to celebrate this milestone birthday.  I think they forgot a large portion of their family on this trip but we won't hold that against them.  For long anyway.

Nana did manage to send some pictures from my First Communion that include mom and dad and my god parents.

I have been having a pretty good summer, bouncing around among various day camps.  This past week, I was at an Iron Chef camp with the Girl Scouts.  I made my own apple pie, crust and all.  I thought it was wonderful even though I don't like apple pie (crazy, I know)

With all of our out of town adventures, our house and yard were looking pretty crappy.  The yard was looking like an abandoned, overgrown weed pit and the house wasn't fairing much better.  Mom has been watching way too much HGTV and got a wild hair and started on some projects to beautify our little piece of paradise.  She decided to paint our patio chairs.  Before....

and after.

And then she decided the front door needed some attention.  She has a patient who owns a pottery import business and they were having a "buy one, get one free" sale and because mom is taking such amazing care of him, he gave her an additional 1/2 off that.  What a ganga deal!  Now she just has to complete the project by actually buying something to put in the pots.  Stay tuned!

We have a few more quiet weekends ahead so I know there will be more exciting home improvement projects and even more exciting pictures.

Hello Again!

We have taken a few weeks off from blogging because we have so busy having fun that we ran out of time!  Our pictures are a little out of order but it takes too much work to rearrange them so we'll tell our story a little out of order.  It's all good....

Two weekends ago, we got out of the heat of Tucson and headed up north to Show Low to go "camping" with my friend Madeline and her parents.  We had an awesome time as usual with some new adventures for me.

On Saturday, while the dads were out trying to find some mountain bike trails that weren't closed by fire, the mom took me and Madeline out canoeing.  We did a great job paddling ourselves around the lake and not running into or over anyone or anything.

We even got brave and took a dip in the lake.  It was just like mom remember as a kid- floating in the cold water with the life jacket up around her ears.  Aaahhh- the memories!

When the dads got back from their "ride" (all the trails were closed :(  ) they took us again to canoe and this time, we swam all the way across the lake!  In our life jackets of course but still way fun.
Madeline and I rewarded ourselves and our bravery with Red Vines upon our triumphant return.

And the dads relaxed and enjoyed the view from our  campsite.

  It was a great weekend and now we want a canoe.....

The weekend before our camping trip, we had a house full of family because I made my first communion.  My great Uncle Jim is a priest and he flew in from LA to preside over the mass.  Nana D., Mr. Walker, Uncle Adam, Aunt Erin, Sophia, Brendan, Aunt Mary Kay, Uncle Boo, Cousin Brian and Amanda and their kids Miles and Dane AND our friends Brian and Christina and their kids Camryn and Evan all came in to help me celebrate.  It was so great having all this family and friends around- we are so very blessed.  Even if no one sends mom the pictures they took.  Hint hint.

Mom was excited because Sophia loved my Boris the Tyrannosaurus so much that I gave it to her.  One less thing to take up space in my room.
Ginger was fabulous all weekend so we had to put in a picture of her too.

We spent our Fourth of July up at our favorite resort, La Paloma, racing down water slides, ordering chocolate milk shakes from the swim up bar and people watching- it was a good weekend but we are now done with all our weekend craziness and can relax for a few weeks.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Look Out Jenny Finch!

Week three of summer vacation down and what a great week it was!

Last Friday, mom, dad and I headed to Dallas for a Jenny Finch Softball Camp and since Uncle Tim and Aunt Dana lived two minutes away, dad and I extended our trip for the week to spend some quality family time.

The camp was a good one, if a little hot.  Dallas in June is no picnic and I whined and moped a lot but surprisingly, I did pay attention some and learned some things.

We got to meet and learn from several Olympians, we got our picture with Jenny and got to hold her gold medal (it's heavy!) we got watch Jenny pitch live and in person (she is pretty amazing live- the ball moves a lot faster than you think),

and we got to see Crystyl Bustos hit.  That girl knocks the snot off the ball.  Even dad was impressed and not much impresses him.

Mom and dad hung around the camp for the two days I was there and learned some stuff too so it was good all around.  Now we are putting it to good use at home and practicing with plans for the 2016 Olympics and the Jordan Goedel Softball Camp.  We did kind of wonder if Jenny had buck teeth and bad skin if she would be as popular........

Mom had to head back to Tucson and work on Monday but dad and I stuck around and tore up the Dallas suburbs with my cousins and their friend Abby.  We headed to Six Flags on Tuesday.  We got there just before it opened at 10 AM and stayed until it closed at 7 PM.  The dads were exhausted but we were still going strong.  We (meaning dad and Uncle Tim) won big stuffies that we (mean dad and Uncle Tim) had to carry around all day.  I think was probably the best part of the day.  We had a great time and rode all the crazy, scary rides and ate all the crazy, scary food.  Days with dads always rock!

We need to backtrack a few days to the Sunday.  We were all bolted out of bed about 5:30AM by the sound of a train roaring through the neighborhood.  We were all thinking TORNADO!! and headed downstairs.  Once the rain stopped and we looked around, we saw shingles torn off roofs, plants uprooted, trees broken in half- it was a little scary.  We found out later it was not a tornado but a "straight line wind gust" which can sound like a tornado and do some minor damage but isn't as destructive.  Thankfully, things settled down for the rest of the day.  It's never dull in Dallas!

Dad and I got home on Friday, 13th and true to the date, we had some almost bad luck.  About 1/2 way into our flight, we started to smell smoke in cabin of the aircraft.  The captain comes on and tells us to be prepared for an emergency landing and to not be surprised if we see emergency vehicles waiting on the runway when we land, the exit row people and the first class people were all being given their assignment.  I was blissfully unaware, watching some movie or something but dad was a little fidgety.  Obviously, we made it OK but will probably never fly on Friday the 13th again.

Our weekend was pretty quiet.  I had my softball end of year party on Saturday and Sunday was of course Father's Day.  We celebrated my awesome dad by leaving him alone and letting ride his bike up Mt. Lemmon and drink his beer.  We hope he had a great day because we sure do love him!

Meanwhile, mom, Ginger and I were at puppy school.  This was the last class so the instructor just did a bunch of "fun" competitions.  Not that we are a competitive family or anything, but....Ginger cleaned everyone's clock.  She won three of the six competitions smoking all the other dogs who are older than she is.  She won the contest to see which dog could run the fastest when called, she won the fastest through the tunnel and she won the fastest sit.  Woo-hoo!  We almost won the contest of putting  a shirt on the dog, walking her, taking the shirt off but we think the Border Collie that won cheated.  So really, we won four.  Not that we are counting or anything.
That is rice on our smart girl's nose.  She didn't know it was there.  But we won three contests!

That was our week- we hope everyone has a good one!

Summer!!

If the fact that I am out of school for 3 months doesn't tell you it's summer, then our 109 degree temperatures should!  Good thing I'm a kid and don't really notice these things!

I had a pretty spectacular first week of summer vacation.  First off, it is so very nice not to have to come home to mounds of homework.  I get to stay up a little later, relax a little more.  Aaahhh!  

I got to spend my first week of vacation at a horse back riding camp.  I have been begging for riding lessons, so this week was an expensive birthday present.  We got lessons and trail rides in the morning and then swimming all afternoon.  I had a fabulous time, even with the little summer cold that I got somewhere.  The camp was out at the same place that mom and dad had their wedding reception so mom was all sentimental and almost made us watch their wedding video.  Dad and I both put the kabash on that one- and thankfully, she relented.

On Saturday, we took a trip up to Mt. Lemmon to get out of the heat for a bit and get Ginger out of the house in an attempt to wear her out a bit.  We all had a fabulous time- Ginger loved all the new smells and sounds and Haile ( who stayed behind) enjoyed some quiet time away from the crazy puppy.

When we got home, we decided Ginger wasn't tired enough so we filled up her new play pool and she  had a ball.  And then she had a wet doggy party in the house before we could catch her.  Sigh......

Sunday was a quiet day.  Mom went to see a movie while dad and I did a little shopping for my upcoming softball camp in Dallas.  We leave on Friday and will have lots of fun stuff to report from that.  Stay cool and we'll see you in a week!