Scorpion Hunters!

YIKES! One of the joys of living in the desert is having to share it with scorpions. NOT!!!
Since we have lived in this house we have found around 7 scorpions. Three of them were this month. Shea found the first one in her shower (it jumped off of the curtain when she was getting in), needless to say she was traumatized but also relieved because we had seen our scorpion and figured we were good for another year or two. Wrong! This week we found two more one of them was in the kids bathroom again. Greg wasn't home so I had to be the brave one to capture it. I still have the Heebie Geebies. Meanwhile the kids put on their scorpion hunting gear to search the house and made a "Danger" sign to post on the bathroom door.

A boy and his dog...or in our case, turtle

Surf's Up...Huntington Beach

One of our favorite escapes is Huntington Beach. We could spend days digging holes in the sand, building sand castles, wave jumping, and digging up crabs as the waves roll in. We got bucket fulls of little sand crabs.

Shea wanted me to braid her hair in little braids so she wouldn't have to worry about it at the beach. I told her she looked like Bo Derek and she said "who???"

Shaun found a beautiful brown and white striped clam shell still closed up. He brought it home in a zip lock baggie and put it in the suit case. The clam opened up and WOW BABY, did it reek!

The kids made friends with three boys their same ages who happened to also be from Arizona. I guess with gas prices so high, a 5 hour car ride makes the perfect vacation spot.

Aunt Lynn and Kelly...This blogs for you!

Greg's sweet grandmother Grace passed away July 2nd and our family went to Utah for her funeral. It was great seeing so many family members and laughing over memories of grandma. She will be greatly missed!
While we were there Lynn and Kelly (two of my most favorite people in the world), gave me a hard time about not having a blog. Those of you who know me know that I am not good with technology and rely on Greg to bail me out much too often. However, I also don't like feeling like I'm behind the times. Well, you motivated me and although it's a REALLY ROUGH draft, it's a start :)

I also owe a huge thanks to Tami for walking me through the first steps.

Legoland

While we were in California Greg surprised us with a trip to Legoland. The kids were at the perfect ages for all of the rides. Shaun even went on a couple of the roller coasters but passed on the bionic arm that tosses you around. Shea and Greg went on it but could only get tossed about at a level 2 until Shea grows an inch. The second day was overcast and chilly for us Arizonans, but the boys had a ball playing in the water zone blue lips and all. Another surprise was that Volvo is one of the main sponsors of Legoland which allowed us to park in the front row at no extra charge. NICE!! The kids were incredible. We packed a cooler with drinks, sandwiches, and snacks and told them that if we only ate what we brought they could each pick something from the gift shop when we left. They never asked for a thing or complained.
Greg and I started to get nervous in the gift shop as we saw people leaving with giant bags full of Lego stuff. Well...Shaun chose a pretty cool Indiana Jones Lego set for $20, Shane chose a Lego race car for $6, and Shea chose a mood necklace for $3.99. Where did these great kids come from?

Juicy

Kindergarten, Here I Come!

It's official...Our Baby is heading to Kindergarten!

Shane sang and danced his heart out at the graduation program.

All three kids have gone to pre-school with Miss Neva and sadly

Shane is our last.

"Mamma I'm A Big Girl Now"

Shea just danced her heart out at her recital. This year she took a musical theater jazz class and LOVED it!!!! They did their recital dance to "Mamma I'm a Big Girl now" from the movie Hair Spray. Shea had some really cute parts and they ended with the girls lifting her up in the air. She had a lot of fun and definately wants to do it again next year along with ballet. She has such natural grace, we're glad she enjoys it. Grandma Margo came from Boston to spend some time with the kids and see her dance. Shea was also thrilled that her teacher came too.

Summer Swim Team

To help get us through the "WAY TOO HOT" summer Shea and Shaun have joined the swim team. Other than the 7:30 a.m. swim meets, they love it!

Shane is taking swim lessons and thinking about the swim team next year. Mainly so he can be in the water instead of sweating it out on the sidelines with Mom and Dad.

All City Swim Meet Time Trials