Another One In the Books

Another week in the books and we are tired as usual.  Softball season is exhausting!  Last Sunday, some girls from my softball team headed out to watch the UofA Women's Softball play Oregon.  It was my first live softball game ever and it was pretty cool.   Except that it was really hot- 100 degrees to be exact.  But I really enjoyed it and I actually wanted to sit and watch the game.  Danielle O'Toole is the starting pitcher for the Wildcats and we got to watch her warm up, standing literally 10 feet away.  There is a lot of power in those pitchers- pretty amazing and I think I might be a teensy bit inspired.

This past Friday, we went to the Pima County Fair with the Goods.  It was great fun as usual and thank goodness Ms. Audrey likes to go on the crazy rides because mom and dad sure won't.

My main goal of the evening, besides riding all the twirly rides I could, was to get a selfie with a llama.  Mission accomplished....  Don't you love his teeth??!!

The other fun thing that came out of the fair was this cool "thing", for lack of a better word.  You supposedly can blow it up by just running and letting the air fill it up.  Not quite that easy and we ended up using the gas powered leaf blower to fluff it up.  It sure is comfy though.

Saturday night, we had another round of softball games.  We lost the first one in true Crusher fashion, 8-1.  There were a few flashes of good playing but it was mostly just us looking bad.  The second game was different story- we didn't actually play all that well but the other team's pitching fell apart so we took advantage of it and it was great!  We have now won two whole games and are on a roll.  4 more left until play offs.

After the game, I had my friends Ella and Isabel spend the night.  Here's how it worked- because of the way the duct work is set up in our house, mom and dad can hear everything from my room in their room.  It normally doesn't matter but when I have friends spend the night, it doesn't work so well for mom and dad to be violently woken by 11 year old girl squeals all night long.  So to solve that, dad went and slept in the RV, mom slept in guest room on the opposite side of the house and us girls took over mom and dad's room.  It was a pretty sweet deal and I've already decided that's how it should be every time.  We ate popcorn, watched a movie and I told mom that we had lights out by 1:30, which isn't terrible really.

Today was Nana's birthday- we didn't get to celebrate with her but sent happy thoughts her way!

And finally, we had another new visitor.  Mom found him in the crook of our big oak tree out back.  He's got a cute face, really.  We named him Jeff.  We think he hangs out with Frank and Alice, our resident raccoons.

That's it for us- have a great week!

March and April

It hasn't been an especially busy 2 months but we do have some things to report.  My softball season officially got under way in March.  I ended up on the same team as my two good friends from school, thank goodness.  Ella is my catcher and her number is 99 so when we are on the mound and behind the plate, we are known as triple 9.  Which is kind of cool.  Our team is kind of stinking it up this year but in our defense, we are a very young team with several girls who have never even set foot on a softball field.  We play Circus Ball as I like to call.  That's where no one can make a throw, no can catch and the ball ends up all over the infield and the outfield and the other team just keeps running the bases and scoring.  We did manage to finally win a game last week though so that was kind of cool.  I'm actually doing OK on the mound.  I'm playing up a level this year so it was a big adjustment to the bigger ball and longer pitching distance but I'm striking people out and no one has gotten a good hit off me yet.  We still have 6 games left though so we'll see.....

In March, mom had a continuing education class on myofascial release for 3 days over a weekend.  In order to recover, she took some days of work and went for a hike.  It was a beautiful spring this year with lots of wildflowers and lots of run off from winter snow.  She kind of wants to win the lottery so she can do this every day.

I also had my Heritage Night at school.  That was actually more fun than we thought it would be.  Everyone in class has a different country and we had to research the government, the culture, the geography and we had to make some food from there.  I picked South Korea, where Grandma Sue is from and actually learned a thing or two.  Grandma was amazing and made my favorite dumplings which, I can't lie here, were a hit.  Mom and dad left so stuffed from sampling all the food- meatballs from Italy, cheese quesadilla from Chile, arroz con pollo from Costa Rica, strudel from Germany, bread from Ireland.  It was all delicious- ask mom.  Her mouth was never empty.

So, we bought mom a pasta maker for her birthday like 5 years ago and she never used it because it seemed kind of intimidating to her.  I've been giving her a hard time about so she decided she would try it but I would have to help her.  Turns out, it isn't all that hard......
We made spaghetti the first time around and the next week, we made ravioli.  It wasn't always pretty, but it sure was fun and tasted delicious!

For Easter, we headed out to a new campground with our camping friends, the Goods.  It was a spectacular weekend.  We got in late Thursday night so we had two full days of relaxation.  We camped right next to a lake that was nice and cool which was a good thing since it was like a bazillion degrees. Not really.  Only about 93.  We had shade, a picnic table, easy water access and beer.  What more could you want?

Madeline and I spent almost zero time on our electronics.  We spend most of both days catching tadpoles.  We even got Mr. Mike in on the action.  We decorated Easter cupcakes and then decorated Easter eggs and then had an Easter egg hunt and then crashed hard into bed every night.  It was great!

 Even Ginger got in on the action.  This will be her only bath for the rest of the year so we made sure she stayed in a good, long time.  She had a ball as well and slept for three days after we got back.

So that's it for now- hope you all have a great week!

Spring Break: Round 1

Whew- it's been a whirlwind of fun around here!  I am wrapping up the first of my two spring breaks.  My second one is a week and half in April over the Easter holiday.  I guess it's kind of a pain in the butt for adults trying to find something to do with us kids for 2 but I sure like it!  

We started our vacation off with a visit from Nana D and Mr. Walker for the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo mountain bike race.  It's turned into two separate events, with the boys heading out to race and the girls staying behind to eat and shop.  Everyone is happy so it's all good.  

Mom and Nana spent their time shopping down on 4th Avenue and mom gave her calorie watching for a day and had a big ol' slice of chocolate bourbon pie.  It was fabulous!  We also met Ms. Audrey and Madeline out for dinner on Friday.  Saturday was very lazy and quiet and that was OK by all of ladies.

The boys on the other hand, were out drinking beer and riding mountain bikes until it all went to hell.  Mr. Walker got in one lap and dad got in one lap and then a huge winter storm moved in and it started raining.  And it didn't stop for like two days.  Dad and Mr. Walker packed up and came home a few hours early but they were well rested.  So there is that.

Everyone got back to our house Sunday afternoon and dad got the RV cleaned out and restocked and did all the RV laundry so we could be ready for next adventure.  We were up at 4:15AM, said our good byes to Nana and Mr. Walker (who stuck behind to get Ginger put away, do their laundry AND vacuum for the house sitter- awesome!) and headed out for our trip to Death Valley.  Once we got out of Phoenix, it was a really pretty drive and mom was ooooing and aaaahhhing the whole way.  We made a quick detour to Hoover Dam since neither mom nor I had set foot on it.  It was super cool and I loved it.  We lucked out and beat the traffic- we got down and parked with no problem but on our way out, the line of cars to get in was about a mile long.  Ugghh- I don't think we would have had the patience to wait through that!

After a few more hours, we pulled into our campsite at Death Valley National park.  As you can see, I wasn't too impressed initially and had a deep burning desire to finish a movie I had already seen 10 times......

Since we got in kind of late that day, we waited until the next day to start our exploring.  We started out in Badwater.  It is 282 feet below sea level- the lowest point on the North American Continent.  You can see the the Sea Level sign waaaaaaaayyyy up there as we were standing on the once ocean floor.

They let you walk out as far as you want too and we went a long way out.  The further we went, the more water and salt you ran into and the less people too.  I wanted to walk all the way across but in the end decided that wasn't a super brilliant idea.

After Badwater, we headed to the Natural Bridge hike.  It was short and little anti-climactic but the parking lot was pretty dramatic.

After that, we headed to Golden Canyon for another hike.  This one was about 3 miles round trip and it was aaaaaahhhhmazing!  It was literally a gold color the whole until the end when we ran into a big red wall.  For the intrepid hikers, you can squirrel up a rocky, kind of slippery, kind of steep path to the top of the canyon wall.  And since we are intrepid hikers, we did it and it was kind of scary but so worth it.  The view from the top was aaaaahhhhmazing.  ( Mom needs to find a thesaurus).  We got the top, turned around and surveyed the view.  The only word that came to mind was "WOW".

We only ended up being able to spend about a day and half in Death Valley but totally want to go back and would highly recommend it to anyone.  It was beautiful!

Now because we were so close, we couldn't pass up a trip to Disneyland!  Because half of Tucson goes to Disney in February, we ran into our good friends (and mom and dad's godson) and spent one day with them and then the next day, we met up with another family we know for a quick dinner.

So that was my/our Spring Break and it was pretty amazing.  It's back to real world tomorrow- mom to work, me to school and dad on a business trip.  Deep sigh.  Softball practice starts next week but it's supposed to rain again, so we'll see what happens.  Have a great one!

Forgot...

So, we're just going to knock this out quickly tonight.  We can't really remember what we've been up to over the last two weeks but it's probably not very exciting, since mom didn't sense any great urge to help me with the blog.  So here are some highlights.....

Mom finally got her electric juicer so we've been having fresh squeezed OJ for the past two Sundays from the tree in our front yard.  It's pretty darn tasty but a little pulpy so I have to strain it extra.

Let's see- what else?  We had "player evaluations" for softball last Saturday.  All us softball players had to show off our skills on the field for the coaches before the draft.  There will be two teams in my age division, with Coach Tricia coaching one and a friend of ours coaching the other.  We were a little worried I might end up with the other coach (who is a super nice guy but not Coach Tricia).  It would have been a bit awkward, since Coach Tricia is also my pitching coach.  But good news- Coach T., asked dad to be her assistant coach so then I could stay with her.  Now, we just have to make sure my besties, Ella and Isabelle end up with me too........






On Sunday, Ella and I got to work on our Edible Car for a contest at school.  I've done this every year but didn't bring it up this year, so mom was hoping I forgot about it.  No such luck.  She got a  text from Ella's mom on Thursday asking if I wanted to do the car.  Deep sigh, from mom.  We actually had a great time and made ours out of a huge squash, rice krispy treats and pretzel rods.  We ate a good amount of our car ingredients ( except for the squash).

Once we finished that, Ella and I spent the time making videos on what to do with all your left over squash.   I posted it to my Youtube channel if you are interested.

Our car came in third in the school contest in case you were wondering!  That's it for our lame blog post for the week- we'll catch ya' later!

Annual Rituals

Well, hello again!  Hope all is well.  We had a kind of busy week/weekend here.  We started this week with a super cold few days.  Lows of 29 and highs of 52.  And it was terrible.  Mom was pretty dang ticked about the whole thing.  But we persevered and survived.  It was kind of tough.

On Wednesday, my school had it's 6th grade information night for parents.  My school is K-8 but the 6-8 grades are in a completely different part of the school, with lockers and everything.  Mom is a little overwhelmed with the realization that she and dad will soon have a middle schooler.  That same day, she got a random email from Shutterfly (where she stores all her photos) with a "look at 10 years ago!" group of pictures.  They were pictures of my very first time on a swing.  And I was so cute and little and it made her a little sad:(  But on we go.

Saturday, I had my pitching lessons.  I think I was a bit tired this weekend because, well, I was tired out there but I did OK in the end.  After that, mom and I headed out to meet Ms. Audrey and Madeline and few other girls at the Gem Show.  Ms. Audrey gets vendor passes/wholesaler passes from her sister which means we get in  earlier and get to buy stuff at much lower prices than the regular folk. Us girls took full advantage of the lower prices and bought purses and fuzzy pom poms and keychains and clip on animal ears.  The moms got some stuff they thought was pretty cool but we weren't impressed.  After THAT, we headed to the Good's house for dinner and then we finally headed home.  It was a super fun, exhausting day and we all slept until almost 8 on Sunday morning. That was kind of amazing!

Sunday was a much more relaxed day.  Since the morning was already over by the time we got up, we lounged around, read the paper, took Ginger for a walk.  Dad headed out to play golf and since it was finally a nice day, mom dragged me out of the house to enjoy it.  There were a few open houses in the neighborhood and mom loves those so we hopped on our bikes and rode to a few of those and then hit the Tanque Verde creek.  This is our annual January picture in the water.  It was a really pretty day and it's always hard to come back inside.

So that's it in a nutshell- hope you all have a wonderful week!