Happy Halloween

We all went to the trunk or treat at our church for halloween. Caleb dressed up as a scarecrow and the rest of us tried to match him. We had a good time going around to all the cars and Caleb kept picking out suckers when he could. He had a cute little scarecrow hat but of course that didn't stay on for more than half of a second.

Tucson Children's Museum with Gramma Nora

Adam's mom came in for a long weekend to celebrate Caleb's 2nd birthday. We love that she is able to come visit so often. This time we decided to go do something fun for Caleb while Adam was in school on Friday. We went to the Tucson children's museum and had so much fun. I don't know we've never been there before, Caleb loved it. We were afraid that once he saw the section with the trains, he wouldn't want to go anywhere else. But we were able to go through almost the whole thing.

Summer: Trip to Utah

One more post from the summer and then I think I'm going to be caught up - but I'm never really caught up. Again, I started this post a while back, but you know how it goes.

We had planned to go to Utah after California for a family reunion. The reunion got cancelled but since we already had the tickets we went anyway and visited friends and family. We were able to stay with our friend Debbie who we use to work with. She's a really close friend and she really took us in while we lived there. Unfortunately I didn't take a whole lot of pictures while we were there. But we loved being able to see a lot of our friends and family and wished we had more time to see others.

Summer: 2nd Trip to California

Although the date of this post says Sept 13, which is when I started it, it is now October 20th. I was starting to feel really really behind and then I went and looked up last year's summer post and realized that I posted that one on October 30th. So I'm actually improving! So here's the rest of our summer and then some.

A couple weeks after Adam was home from Russia, we took a trip to California so he could see his family. We figured it was the last time we could take a trip like this before school started and before Caleb turns two. We spent the first week at Adam's mom's house. She has a pool and Caleb absolutely loved playing in it every day. And Adam was so cute with him in the pool. Adam also was able to reconnect with some of his childhood friends, which he was really excited about. The 2nd week, we stayed with Adam's dad. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures while we were there. I think I was starting to get "pictured-out". Plus I had taken a bunch the first time Caleb and I were there. But we had a good time there as well. It's hard being so far away from all of our family, so this was a nice summer to be able to see them so often.

Vacation Bible School

I met a lady at the gym who was the director for a vacation bible school at a local Methodist Church. I overheard her saying that she was needing volunteers and I asked her if I could help. She was thrilled and put me in charge of the pre-school age kids. I taught the daily bible stories and then was in charge of the games. There were six kids in our group and I had two helpers, Emily and Courtney and we took the kids to all of their stations each day. The Bible story that we focused on during the week was Moses helping the Israelites leave Egypt. It was great because the lesson plans were all laid out and it was really easy for the kids to catch on and get excited. It ended up being a lot of fun and the kids seemed to really enjoy themselves. I'm glad that I was at the right place at the right time and was able to participate and help out.

Summer: Girls Church Camp

While my mom was here, she able to stay with Caleb for a few days while I went to girls camp to help out. We had 4 girls from our ward there and we all had a pretty good time. There were about 90 or 100 girls total. The church owns a nice big camp ground towards the top of Mt. Lemon, about 20 miles up and about seven or eight thousand feet up. You don't even feel like you're in Arizona when you're there. It gets freezing cold at night and the weather during the day was great, which was good because we had to wear pants. The girls did crafts, service projects, hiking, certifications in fires, cooking, and other outdoors things. The bishop came up one of the nights and brought dinner and we played games and had a really nice spiritual meeting. I think overall, the girls had a good experience and I enjoyed being there.

From Drop Box

Summer: Gramma Hardy's Visit

My mom came to visit for a couple of weeks to keep us company while Adam was still gone to Russia. We had a really good time. We went to the zoo, we went shopping. We went up Mt. Lemon and got out of the heat one afternoon, that's where most of the pictures come from. I love it when family comes to visit, especially since we don't live near any family.