June - Playgrounds and Swimming lessons

Summer is all about... playing and swimming (if you're a kid anyway!).

Here are pictures from this week:

CANNONBALL!

Happy Father's Day

To John, my love, you are so far away,
but we are thinking of you extra hard today
as we wish you a Happy Father's Day!

Here are some pictures of our flowers & kids to cheer you (and distract you from my bad poetry) :o)

Joseph's favorite - marigolds

Roses :o)

Holly hocks - almost pure white with a dark pink center

Hollyhocks - light pink with a dark pink center (and look at those ruffles!)

OOH - my new favorite - cream colored with pink in the center!

Look at the hollyhocks grow!

Rudbeckia - a little beat up from the hail storm on Thursday

1st day lily in the yard opened this morning -
guess it wanted to be the first to wish you a Happy Father's Day

These are not plants, but things that grow very well under your care!

How much Miracle-Gro should I feed them again?

What I Do - Part 2

Greetings from Iraq.  Here is another photo of what I do on this deployment.  That is about $42,000 in Iraq currency.  This was a payment for a construction project in Iraq.

Vacation - Part 3 - Tucson, Texas, and back to KS

Now we were heading to Grandma & Grandpa Tucson's house!

Look out Fritz here we come :o)

We had such a BLAST in Tucson! And a few blasts were exchanged between the kids and Grandpa! He had a pool for the kids and some water guns! Hee-hee-hee.

Grandpa had a superior weapon with tactical advantages but still got a bit wet :o)

We went to the Tucson Zoo,

Pinnacle Peak and Trail Dust Town,
Dad gave the kids some old ties to wear, but they got a little scared.
So Mommy wore them both and had them trimmed up by the cowboy before she could eat.
Sorry I didn't get a picture of that, I was too busy laughing!

Old Tucson Studios,

Dad, are you blushing at the saloon girl singing to you?

We also went to Mission San Xavier del Bac, and the Tucson Mall! It was so much fun!!!

Add in daily water gun fights
and pool time and Joseph discovering his first "car" that he lavished with washes, waxes, and tire rotations



Our time in Tucson was over too fast! We headed out to wander about Texas: El Paso, Fort Stockton, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. Whew! It's a big ol' place!! Finally, back home in Kansas....

Now we wait for John to re-deploy!!!!!!

Vacation - Part 2 - The GRAND Canyon

Our vacation continues... but we have a problem. My dad can't acclimate to the altitude (over 5,500 feet in Williams, AZ where we were staying). So after the 1st day, watching him try to breathe with such difficulty Mom and Dad decided the next morning that they needed to get him back to California ASAP! It was a difficult decision, but Dad was much easier once they got him past Phoenix down to 2,000 feet. It was not a good morning for us and I was a little bit lost, clinging to my notebook of plans that had disintegrated.

My Mom and Dad advised me to push ahead to visit Mom & Dad Denson in Tucson arriving a few days early, but there was NO WAY I was getting this close and not going to the Grand Canyon. So we decided to make a 1-day trip to the Grand Canyon and then head to Tucson the next day.
I thought we'd just hop one tram, see the rim from 1 or 2 points and then head back to Williams. I certainly didn't think we could do all of the activities I had planned for 4 days worth.

But, as God would have it instead we stayed up there over 8 hours and did so many things more than I could imagine:
- First stop: Mather Point - only there was so much construction going on that we couldn't get to it and signs were sending us on a detour. I wasn't too sure about hiking too far with Katharine, so we hopped on a tram to Yavapi Point. First view of the Canyon was just AWESOME! Beautiful colors, pine trees going down the side, I must have taken about 50 pictures right there.


We hop the tram back to Mather Point and go to the Ranger Station to see about doing Junior Rangers for the kids and decide to TRY for the 2:30 Ranger Walk and Talk along the Rim. (I was so sure the kids would get tired or bored that I didn't actually think we would get to it). But now there's time for lunch.
We hop back onto the tram and head for the Malawai Lodge Cafeteria. Food was terrific - 5 different stations - Mexican, Italian, Deli, Grill, and Salads, just a nice place to stop and eat and we did a LOT of shopping in the gift shop too. But it took a long time to get to the ranger station and we were almost late.

We huffed and puffed up just as he headed off so we went right after him. The Ranger walk and talk was so funny! The Ranger gave a bunch of really outrageous opinions at the start, then proceeded through all of the stops to explain until you agreed with him. It was hilarious for the grown up. The kids were tromping along and picking up a lot of facts about the GRAND Canyon - it's 255 miles long, over 1 mile deep, and 8-18 miles wide. The Canyon required an extremely rare series of events to be created, which could only happen again on about 1/400 of 1% chance.
The ranger also gave lots of advice on where else to go - for views, for sunset, etc. Now, I had been planning to leave right after this (surely the kids were tired from the mile long hike, it was warm and already almost 3 o'clock), but the kids got very excited to actually get a view of the Colorado River and see the sunset.

Well, they were being really good, so I decided we could keep going for a little longer. We stopped for an ice cream snack at Bright Angel lodge and headed up the Hermits Rest tram - it's now about 5 in the afternoon.
We rode up to Pima Point, and the views were so beautiful - Colorado River was so pretty. It just struck you of the time and patience it had taken and really the power of nature and God to make such a spot.
Now, I had intended to hop right back onto the tram, but next thing I know we're off hiking the trail. Joseph and Katharine running ahead with shouts and laughing, Grace and I walking along chatting and looking at everything. We hiked the 1.4 miles up to Hermit's Rest as the sun was beginning to set. The colors were just amazing.



We reluctantly took the tram ride back down to the main area and headed back to the ranger station to get the kids junior ranger certificate - but Oh, No! The office was already closed - so no certificates, but they did all the activities so they are Junior Rangers to me! We headed onto our last tram, more slowly now, and back to the car.


It was just about 7:30 pm as I headed out of the park. I drove back into Williams, (about an hour's drive), while the kids slept. I picked up Taco Bell at the drive thru and took it back to our hotel. And after that we went swimming -- ahhh, kids! But we all slept VERY WELL that night :o)