Family Reunion Time!

I think we have recovered from our 2 in row whirlwind weekends.  We're not as young as we used to be so recovery is slower.....

We spent last weekend in Ohio for the McConnell Family Reunion.  We hopped on a plane out of Tucson at 6AM and met up with the entire Albuquerque Walker Clan in Chicago to fly to Cleveland.  All 9 of us boarded the plane and invaded Wellington.  Mom always loves going back to the farm and seeing Grandma.  I have finally overtaken her in height.  Poor Grandma, she's such a sport!

Once we got settled, we headed to Fort's, a Wellington institution, for their Friday night fish fry.  We met up with cousins Jack and Cait and ran around like crazy kids.  Mom was able to corral us for about 15 seconds to get this picture.

After dinner, we headed back to the farm and did our annual "walk around".  We had to check out the creek, the back 40 and the barn.  We will never stop being amazed by how green it is.

On Saturday, we headed up to Vermillion and Main Street Beach for a day of fun in the sun on Lake Erie.  The water was so warm and we enjoyed it until someone suggested that brain eating ameoba live in warm water.  Waa waa waaaahhhh.  That freaked everyone out just a little bit but we still had a good day.

Nana D and Mr. Walker took Grandma home and the rest of us headed to a cute little local restaurant for a late lunch with some local brewskis.  The food was good, the beer was decent and there were a few outdoor games to keep us kids busy so it was a win, win, win.

We left Sunday morning but before we headed out, we got in one last breakfast with the family.  We managed to get most of the crew in for one final shot but Sophia's agent forgot to tell her about the photo shoot so she decided not to participate.  Maybe next time!

We didn't actually make it to the reunion but Mr. Walker sent us this super cute picture of Aunt Hazel, Grandma and Aunt Ida.  We love these ladies!

We spent this week just recovering.  I had a civil engineering day camp and I got to build bridges, earthquake and tornado proof buildings etc.  I decided I liked civil engineering over bioengineering but either way, I had a good time.
Dad spent his week ramping up at work - he was named acting director which means all of the work but none of the pay.  Hopefully, this will be short term and he can be named "official" director.
Mom's week was nothing exciting, which is really a good thing.
We have one more quiet week and then I head off for softball camp next weekend so we'll have a more exciting post then!

We Survived!

We survived!  We made it a whole week without the whole family unit being together!  That hasn't happened since our Denver days when dad had to head out to the great white north for days on end.  At least this time, it was much more fun for everyone.  We did miss each other though.

Last we checked in, dad and I were driving away, leaving mom standing all by herself in the middle of the street watching us go.  She had a relatively relaxing week of eating cheese and crackers for dinner with a big bowl of ice cream for dessert and an even bigger glass of wine.  She did also eat all the fruits and veggies that were loaded into her grocery cart from the previous blog.

Meanwhile, dad and I were whooping it up good at Disney.  We are such experts at this now.  

We do make an effort to try one new thing each time we go.  And yes, as much as we've been, there are still new things to discover.  This time around, we found a new restaurant that had ribs!  I loves me some ribs!

We also rode Guardians of the Galaxy several times.  That is a brand new ride and we pretty much loved it.

 Believe it or not, we also headed to Knott's Berry Farm for a day.  That was just so-so except for the biggest wooden roller coaster on the west coast.  Dad didn't think it would be all that bad since it was just a wooden coaster but holy cow, we both about lost our breakfast on it!  It was super fast, super tall and kind of scary.  But we survived.

The next day, we headed to their water park.  That was a whole lot better.  We had our own cabana and spent the day screaming down water slide, being lazy in the lazy river and washing up in the wave pool.

This is just a random picture of the cake mom took to a 4th of July party.  She is impressed with her artistic talent....

While we were amusement parking away, mom headed up to Portland, Oregon to go to a co-workers wedding and meet up with her college roommate for a girl's weekend.  Mom has never been to Portland and it was perfect timing because it was 111 degrees the day mom left Tucson and about 70 degrees in Portland.  Sweet relief.

 Mom and Heidi did tons and tons of walking and really got to explore the city.  They found and ate Voodoo doughnuts, walked to the Japanese Gardens.....

headed to the wedding (which was super fun by the way)...

 woke up Saturday and walked all over again.  This time, they went to Pok Pok for some amazing Thai food and then walked about 12 miles back into downtown to go to Powell's book store which is an amazingly huge (like really super huge) used book store.  They spent some time being completely overwhelmed by the shear hugeness of it all before heading out to do a little shopping and then a beer tour and history lesson of old Portland.

It was an impressively busy weekend considering that Heidi was sick (their weekend also involved a quick stop at an urgent care for drugs to deal with a sinus infection and cough.  They got to see all sides of Portland) and both of them were exhausted from lack of sleep.  Just like college!

Mom got back to Tucson Sunday afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to see it was only 100 degrees.  Ahhhhh!  That's the good stuff.  We were all so very happy to see each other again.

And finally, Monday night, our monsoon kicked off with a bang.  It started at about sunset with everything turning pink and then it started raining and didn't stop until 7:30 this morning.  I think we are through the worst of the summer heat.

The Heat Goes On

We are still roasty and toasty here- whew!  Good thing for me, I had my first and only swim meet of the year.  I've going to swim practice 4 days a week for the past 6 weeks and the only way mom talked me into swim team was the promise that I wouldn't have to do swim meets.  I claim to hate swim team, but I actually kind of like it.  Anyway, I agreed to ONE meet and the only reason I agreed was because my friend Claire was on the team we were swimming against.  That and I was promised a big ol' Kona Ice.  It also turned out that half my softball team was on the other team as well, including my softball coach's daughter.  Which means my softball coach was there.  Which means she and dad were thisclose to having an impromptu softball practice.  I had just an average night but as mom likes to say- "It's a good learning experience!"

Friday night, Claire and I had a sleep over- it was even more fun than usual because Claire just got a kitten!  A kitten is my wildest dream and so really,  I spent more time with the cat than I did with Claire but we both understood.

On Saturday, mom and dad picked me up from Claire's and we headed to the grocery store so dad and I could do our food shopping for our week long Daddy-Daughter Vacation!  Woot-Woot!  Mom did a very good job keeping her mouth shut as we filled our cart with cookies, chips, gravy, Lucky Charms.  She did sneak in some carrots and strawberries but those will probably be coming home with us.

Saturday afternoon, dad invited some St. Michael's dads to go golfing (in the 109 degrees heat) and us kids and the moms hung out at the pool.  I was exhausted from the sleep over with Claire and the boys were all exhausted from a sleep over they had the night before too so we were all just kind of floating around but it was fun either way.

Dad and I were up bright and early to head off to Disneyland.  I got to sit in mom's seat and be the co-pilot.  She told me my job was to keep dad awake by talking the whole way.  I kind of like it in the front seat but I was told to not get used to it.  Bummer.

So now, mom is on her own until Thursday when she leaves for a weekend in Portland.  After we left, she headed to the store to do her own shopping for the week.  Her cart looked a little different then our did.

She spent the rest of the day wandering around the house and then tooled around the neighborhood in the golf cart taking pictures.  It was an elderly person, retirement kind of day.   There is a fire burning the mountains not too far from our house so she got a picture of that and then some pictures of this amazing century plant.

 We will fill you in on all our adventures next week!  Have a great one!

June 2017

It has been hot, hot, hot here and we have been correspondingly lazy, lazy, lazy.  No bathroom remodels for us this month!

We started off June with a trip to the White Mountains to get out of the heat and see Grandpa Vern early for Father's Day.  It wasn't the most exciting of our White Mountain trips because it was too dang windy to do much.  We went fishing most of the time because it the water was too cold to swim in if it is 75 degrees outside with 30 mph winds.  We did lots of sitting too and were getting a little restless toward the end of it but a weekend in the mountains beats a weekend in the heat hands down, no matter what you end up doing!

The next weekend was Father's Day weekend but first, mom had to go to a bachelorette party for one of her co-workers.  Thankfully, it wasn't a night of drinking and debauchery 'cause mom is too old for that nonsense!  The ladies went to Tucson23.  Tucson's new source of civic pride is their claim to the best 23 square miles of Mexican food in the country.  To celebrate that, the Southern Arizona Council for the Arts hosts Tucson23 which invites Mexican restaurants in this radius to bring their signature dish for sampling.  It was kind of amazing.  So. Much. Good. Food! And drinks.  Some of the best green corn tamales mom has ever had.  Everyone left fat and happy and with lots of business cards of new places to try.

On Father's Day, we tried to make it special for dad.  We made him crepes in the morning and then he went out and did yard work and cooked his own dinner:(  In our defense, he wanted ribs and he makes way better ribs than mom does AND he invited the Goods over for an afternoon of swimming and barbecuing.  It ended up being a very nice day and the moms did try to let the boys relax......

On to this week.  Mom took me to see Wonder Woman with my friends Ella and Isabel.  Oh my gosh!  What a great movie!  The moms all walked out of the theater high kicking, karate chopping and spin kicking.  Actually, it was a little embarrassing but oh well.

The rest of the week passed kind of quietly.  Both mom and I were a little under the weather with stomach stuff and it was 115 degrees.  All three of us had Friday off and we spent the day lounging by the pool, relaxing.  It was great.
Saturday, was another slow, quiet day and we were all getting a little bored.  Mom was up at 4:45 for her run, so she was done with her "have-to's" but 6:30AM and dad didn't sleep well the night before so he was kind of dragging.  We rallied that night though.  Mom and dad headed down to the club for a beer and dinner pairing with a local brewery out of Phoenix.  They had one or two beers they liked and the rest were either meh or weird but it was fun night either way.

To keep me company, Ella spent the night so while mom and dad were drinking and eating, we were swimming and eating and making slime and glow in the dark snow cones.  It ended up being a super fun night for us too.

Sunday is our recovery day.  Dad got in a round of golf, starting a t 5:48, so he was done by 9:30 and now we are spending another day out by the pool.  There are thunder clouds building as we write and its supposed to cool off some this week so I think we weathered the storm!

Productive But Not So Fun.

Not a super exciting weekend in the old Goedel Household but we did get a lot done.  I was in day camp and swim team all week and by Friday, I was ready for a day of relaxation.  Mom had other ideas though because it was Housecleaning Friday!!  I totally got put to work vacuuming and dusting- which I have to admit, wasn't horrible.  And the house looks better.

We met dad that afternoon to see Pirates of the Caribbean movie and we all really liked it so Friday wasn't a complete dud.

We woke up Saturday and mom headed out for her run and dad and I putzed around the house.  When mom came back, she got a wild hair and decided it was a good day to paint the bathroom.  It was just one small wall and didn't take long.  It was all good until Dad asked if mom wanted to do the mirror as well.  Well, of course she wanted to do the mirror as well!  So they took down the old plate glass mirror which left several big glue spot areas that needed to fixed.  Which led to repainting that wall.  And then dad said we should replace the light too since we were in there already.  Which led to a trip to the hardware store to pick one out.  And by then, it was dark and time for a beer so we woke up Sunday morning to continue painting, patching and hanging.  And you know what?  The whole thing looks pretty nice.  And considering mom's lack of painting expertise and the fact that she was working with navy blue paint, there aren't too many flubbies to report.  Well there is one, but it is down behind the toilet so if anyone is looking there, they deserve to see it.

And while all that was going, dad started organizing the garage as well.  Part of that involved me going through three huge tubs of old toys that we had stashed in the garage.  I sat down and went through all three tubs and condensed it down to 1/2 of one tub.  (Look out Uncle Adam and Aunt Erin- you have a load of dinosaurs coming your way!)  Everyone was super impressed.

 We are headed to my friend Ella's house for a barbecue this evening so the weekend is a total loss although we did get a new bathroom and more garage space out of it.....