Feels Like Fall

We have recovered from our Disney weekend and have settled back into life as usual.  As you may remember, we have a little bit of an acorn problem.  Mom is still sleeping in the guest room and the acorns are making an unholy mess in the yard.  Mom and dad spent an entire morning just cleaning up the back yard and roof and ended up with an entire garbage can full of the darn things.  The yard looked fabulous and clean.  And then they went inside for 5 minutes and came out to the yard covered in acorns again.  Fortunately, the front yard is taken care of by our neighborhood javelina.  They make Ginger crazy but they are efficient cleaners.  Grandpa Vern gave us a leaf blower for the backyard and although mom really doesn't like leaf blowers, she is making an exception as they make quick work of things out back.  Since it probably isn't practical to herd the javelinas to the back, we'll go with the leaf blower.

I had my friend Claire spend the night last Saturday and Madeline came over in the morning so her dad could bike ride with my dad.  We entertained ourselves by making mustaches.  All kinds of fun!

Every year, Tucson has this amazing event called the All Souls Procession on the first Sunday in Novemeber.  It is a huge "parade" through downtown that celebrates the lives of loved ones who have died.  It starts with a huge urn that you can put names and memories of those people in and then the urn is burned at the end.  There are big floats and as the parade goes along, you can just join in and walk.  People play music, have signs and all kinds of cool things and about 150,000 people go every year.  Mom has been wanting to take me for a few years now and it turns out that one of my friends has a get together every year for it.  Everyone paints their faces and then we drive downtown and watch the parade go by.  I thought the whole thing was pretty cool and maybe next year, we'll actually walk a little way in it with some memories of friends and family.

This past Friday was mom and dad's 11th anniversary.  Can you believe 11 years??  They both had the day off and went out to breakfast and then spent the whole day running errands together.  It doesn't sound like much but apparently, before I came along, they used to love just running around town together.  They haven't done it much lately so it was really nice to do that again.  Here's to many more errand running days!
Saturday was my last 2 softball games of the season.  It was a little bittersweet.  Dad helped out coaching this year and actually kind of liked it and is going to miss it.  I pitched and wasn't awful- even had a few strikeouts.  Our team was actually in it and we only lost by one run each game.  That is a win in our book.  Mom ended up having to keep score and about had a nervous breakdown in the process.  I guess it isn't easy to keep track of everything going on the field, yelling at us to get ready to bat, answering our questions about how many outs, what the score was, can we go to the bathroom.  To her credit, she only made two mistakes and one, no one except dad knew about.....

 I have started up with intramurals again.  I really liked basketball from last year and even though it was all boys, I decided I liked it enough I wanted to do it again.  Yeah me!  I also tried out for a solo part in our upcoming Christmas show.  I'm just getting all kinds of brave in my old age and it makes mom and dad really proud.  I've always kind of gone along to my own drum and now it's fun to see it in other ways.
Hope everyone has a great week!

Happy Halloween!

We had quite the whirlwind weekend!  We escaped the Tucson rain and cold for the sun and warmth of Disneyland at Halloween and this time we took our friends with us.  I always have fun with just the Goedel 3 but man- you add another 9 year old girl and Disney goes over the top.  We met the Goods at the airport Friday morning at O'dark thirty, made it to Disneyland about 11 AM and didn't stop the whole weekend.  The Goods had only been one other time about 5 years ago so everything was kind of new to them.  We weren't sure if they would be able to keep up with our 14 hour days but they hung in pretty good.

We spent most of Friday at Disneyland but we did wander over to California Adventure so the parents could get a grown up drink.  Apparently, you need one or two of those after a day at Disney.  Everything was decorated up for Halloween in usual Disney fashion.  ( How many times do you think I can say Disney in this post??)  After riding as many rides as we could muster, we headed back to the hotel about 9 to get rested and ready for Saturday.

Because there were 6 of us, we got our own log on Splash Mountain AND our own car in Carsland.  All kinds of fun!

The adults enjoying a grown up moment.

On Saturday, we were up and at it early.  At the park by 9AM.  After a very healthy breakfast of cinnamon rolls and chocolate milk we decided to conquer our nemesis- The Hollywood Tower of Terror.  Da Da Daaaaaa.  This is an elevator ride that takes you up and then you free fall for different distances before being taken up again and doing it all over again.  In the dark.  We have been on every ride at Disney at least once, except for this one.  It just seemed to scary so we avoided it.  But not this time.  All 6 of us were convinced we were going to die on this ride and Mr. Mike swears a maintenance man died on the ride a few years ago.   By the time we finally got onto the ride, it's lucky we were still standing.  Madeline asked the ride operator if the ride was scary and the ride operator looked at her, said "Yes.  It's scary."  And then slammed the door shut on us.  Eeeeeck!

Well, it turns out we all survived and it was a fun ride that will make it into our "ride rotation".  That was decided after we all made our post Tower of Terror bathroom stop though.

The rest of the day was just fun.  We headed back to hotel room about 4 to change into our costumes and then headed back for trick or treating.

We lasted until about 11 and by then no one could walk anymore so we caught the bus back and collapsed into bed.

We got home about 4 in the afternoon on Sunday and this was me in the back of the car.  I'd say it was a good weekend!  

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween and we'll see you in a week!

All Done Settling In?

Greeting everyone- we are wrapping our first weekend that was not dominated by "settling in".  Don't get me wrong now.  There was a little picture hanging going on but otherwise, we kind of just enjoyed it.  

We are supposed to have an extra wet winter this year and I think it is already starting.  We had rain last weekend and yet another softball practice rained out on Tuesday.  Mom kind of hates to say this because we have had such a drought for the last few years, but she is kind of tired of the wet.  We did eventually dry out and cool way off this week and ended up with an amazing week/weekend weather wise.  We even broke out the jackets for our morning commute.

So, we have discovered a small downside to our big oak trees.  Remember the acorns I talked about last week?  Well, they are coming down by the millions now.  All night long.  It's gotten so bad that mom is now sleeping in the guest room.  She and I spent Saturday morning raking up the millions on the ground and now we wait for the millions yet to fall.  Maybe next year, we hire a landscaper for a few weeks.......

On Friday, my school had our Grandparents Day.  We have it every two years and this year Grandpa Vern was able to make it.  We had such fun together and only caused a little bit of trouble.  Because that is what Grandpa and I do together.

Friday night, mom and dad headed out to see Phantom of the Opera and my favorite preschool teacher came over to babysit.  She helped mom out by taking a few acorns for her preschool class and also by making me work on my book report.  Apparently there are certain advantages to having a teacher do the babysitting.

Saturday night, I had my softball games.  Dad has been assistant coaching this year but Saturday, the head coach couldn't be there so dad took over the duties.  Unfortunately, we couldn't deliver him a win on either game.  He did point out that we weren't shut out.  So there's that.

On Sunday, dad and Mr. Mike went mountain biking so Madeline came over for a while.  Mom made us go out for a bike ride because it was such a beautiful day.  Our neighborhood really does it up for Halloween so we stopped by one of the better places.  It's "The Pirate House"!  The home owners spent weeks getting this ready and it's looking pretty spectacular.

Then we rode over to say hi to the donkey we named Eeyore.  We brought him some carrots, which he very much appreciated.

We are wrapping up our weekend watching Jurassic World 3D and getting ready for the week.  We are off to Disneyland for Halloween next Friday!

Slumber Parties AAAAAND More Settling In.

Well.  This was an awesomely exhausting weekend for me.  We had fall break from school this weekend so we only had school for a half day Wednesday and we were off Thursday and Friday.  I went to my friend Lily's house Wednesday after school so I didn't have to hang out at mom's work.  I wasn't quite so lucky on Thursday and ended up having to go with her for a half day.  At least I was constructive and got a bunch of homework done.  I was rescued for the afternoon by my best friend Claire's birthday party.  Mom took me to her house over her lunch hour and I proceeded to have the greatest time with some super fun girls.  You may remember the hugely awesome water slide from their party last year- and it was back!  It was a little chilly this year because it was rainy but we had a good time anyway.

Mom picked me up from that party about 10 which was just enough time for me to take a much needed nap before I headed out to my second slumber party.  This party was equally as fun and the girls were equally as awesome.  At this party, we stayed up until 2 AM and were up and running at 7. The moms were super excited about that!  In this picture, I'm the one in the middle on my iPod.  Mom asked why I was on my iPod when all my friends were clearly not.  I said we were googling ways to get to sleep because none of us was tired.......

We were super busy too- we picked and carved pumpkins, made halloween masks and colored aprons. Mom picked me up from this party about 10 as well and I came home and crashed for 3 hours and then asked to go to bed early.  Imagine that.  I was supposed to have two softball games but they got cancelled because of rain and that was very, very good thing.  I would have been a wreck out there.

While I was away partying, mom and dad were busy still settling in some more.  Dad did take a break though to enjoy the cooler fall weather on our patio.

They also bought some more furniture to almost finish off our project room.  They bought what we are calling our "Bavarian Beer Hall Table".  It a big, heavy, solid wood table with two benches- perfect for drinking beer and eating bratwurst.  We ate out lunch on it today and loved it.  This room is almost done, all but two of the boxes are done and we just have pictures to hang.  It really feels like home now!

 We finally made to "the club" for dinner tonight.  Our neighborhood has a semi-private club and restaurant and I have been dying to go to "the club" ever since we moved in.  The food is OK and it makes for a nice family night out so it was a nice way to end our weekend.

 On a non-related note, mom and dad have been hearing random things dropping on our roof and rolling around in the middle of the night.  They couldn't figure out what is was- maybe an owl or squirrel dropping stuff and running around.  After some investigating, they decided in was acorns.  We have 6 huge oak trees on our property so we have lots of acorns to spare.  It is amazing how much noise this little thing can make.  And they only seem to drop at 2AM- isn't that fun??!

Hope everyone has a fabulous week!

The Man Cave

We continue with the settling in process.  People seem to be impressed at how fast we are getting unpacked but it is seeming like an eternity to us.  We still have a few boxes left but we need to get some bookshelves to have places to put things so that is mom's excuse for not finishing that up.  Dad has been working hard though and got his Man Cave all set up and even mom has to admit she likes it.  Dad is pretty psyched because he used to have just a closet and now he has a whole big room.

While dad was working away at that, I was busy playing with my friend Lily who came over for a bit on Sunday and mom was busy puttering around in the kitchen.  Even though it is still 95 degrees here, she was in a fall mood and was craving apple pie so she hauled out her trusty apple pie recipe (the one in her head) and got to baking.  It looks pretty good, we'll see how it tastes.

So, even though it is still fairly warm during the day, the early evenings are beautiful.  AND the golf course is closed for re-seeding so we took advantage and headed out on our bikes to ride the cart path.  ( Our new house is in a golf course neighborhood).  It was a gorgeous night and we saw a huge blue heron and several coyotes just lounging around on the golf course.  It was a great ending to a good, productive weekend.

More Settling In

Every week seems to get a little bit better- we have most of the boxes unpacked and we have settled back into a routine.  If you know anything about mom, she likes her routine!

We started last week with a bang.  On Sunday, our neighbor down the street had a "Supermoon Eclipse" party and it was totally fun.  He lives on the 16th green of the golf course, so while the adults were doing adult things, a bunch of us kids were running around on the golf course with our flash lights, playing games and just generally being kids.  It was exactly the kind of thing we moved into this neighborhood for.  We were completely exhausted the next day, which unfortunately was Monday, but we soldiered through the day and went to bed early and woke up Tuesday feeling fresh and bright.

I had a surprise softball game on Thursday and it was ugly.  We lost 19-1 and I stunk it up on the pitcher's mound.  But in my defense, all of our pitchers stunk it up and the other team was really, really good.  

We got that night out of the way and on Friday, we headed up to Pine Top for the Tour of the White Mountains mountain bike race.  We met Nana D, Mr. Walker, my friend Madeline and her parents, Mike and Audrey up there.   After years of watching the dad's do the racing, the mom's decided to give it a go this year too.  While most of the group was doing the 35 miler, Ms. Audrey and mom suffered through the 9 miler.  It sounds like the 35 miler was really rough and bumpy and everyone came back from that ride a little worse for the wear.  The 9 miler was just enough for the newbies.  While the adults were out burning up the trails, there was a pack of us girls running amok and having a great time.  We even found someone with a parrot who was willing to let us walk around with it on our shoulders.  We all had a great time and everyone came out relatively unscathed.

We are looking forward to a relatively relaxing week and it should be good!  Have a great week!