Halloween 2014

Halloween is in full swing over here:

Wed night: the youth had a dress-up party.

Eme and Maddie gutting the pumpkins-the boys wouldn't do it.

Aidan and his friend Jacob

Eme the mummy

Davin getting one more year out of his clone trooper costume.

And Maddie, as Luna Lovegood-complete with spectrascopes.

Phoenix Temple

And six months later we're back for another open house.  The Phoenix temple is a smaller temple, but still quite beautiful.

It's My Birthday Shout Hooray!

Since I had gone to Falling Water last month, I really wanted to go see Taliesin West up in Scottsdale.  Eric and I went for an early bday gift for me (since he'd be gone for my actual bday, up to Utah for the fall clean-up). 

Oh, was it pretty. I especially loved the hobbit door in the garden.  It was different than Falling Water, in that they let you sit on the furniture.  That was a big NO-NO at Falling Water.

And as a final surprise, Eric bought me one of the art glass pieces I had my eye on.  He was fully prepared to buy it online, have it shipped to Ashlee's house, and have her bring it over on my bday! He's a good sweet man.

Fall Break

Fall break was a little different this year.  Mainly because this guy had trek!

Here he is, all ready to go at 6 am.

While Aidan was off on trek, the kids and I found the perfect park for playing "ground is lava".  Seriously, they spent 90% of the time off of the ground and loved every moment of it.

This is the only picture we have of our boy from trek-he had such a great time.

After Aidan got home, we headed over to the Science Center for a cool National Geographic Explorers exhibit.

Bear hugs-albeit a little icy.

I guess we'll never take them in a real hot air balloon-they revolted and Maddie died.

Eme's Birthday

Oh, how I love this girl.  She really has been such a blessing to our family.

For breakfast she wanted smoothies and scones.

After school and more presents from her brothers, and one from mom and dad.

CAKE!!

Check out that pile of gifts! Half are from Nana.

But once she opened the big one, it was all over really.  She was so elated she barely noticed the other gifts :)

It's Kit!

No birthday can go without some new Legos

And her first horse-it goes well with her rider.

Eme's new BFF

And since she's 9, I agreed to a party.  A fairly simple craft party with a few of her good friends.

100 Year Flood

While I was off having fun in Pennsylvania, Arizona had record rain.  Yes, we live in a desert, so just about any rain is "record".  But this was above and beyond record-it was a 100 year flood! Eric sent me these pictures to let me know our house hadn't floated away, yet.

The saddest part about this picture, we had just planted our garden a few days before.  The rain completely washed our seeds away-and when we replanted a few weeks later, we got more rain and almost lost the rest of the seeds (sad crop this year).

And Eric took the kids to Target, for cereal and ice cream.  You know, the essentials.

PA trip

I made a deal with Eric, that once I completed Davin's quilt top I could go visit my mom and quilt it with her.  We had to wait until after our summer trip and after I had recovered enough from my surgery, so it wasn't until September that I could finally take my little vacation.

It was wonderful, 10 days without children!! I got to help my mom out in her studio, got to see my sister (YAY), and I got to wear pants-in September!!

Mom (and dad) treated Julie and I to a trip to Falling Water. It was simply AMAZING.

On another day mom and I went quilt shop hopping.  It was so much fun (especially when I asked Siri for help locating a quilt shop in Lancaster Co).  We had enough time left in our day to stop by Gettysburg.  We opted for the museum tour and Cyclorama-seriously cool!!

Dad then met us for dinner at a civil war ear home turned restaurant-it even had an underground railroad hiding place.

And Chicago's O'Hare airport has got to be the coolest airport.  How can it not be with vintage airplanes and dinosaurs inside the terminal?