A Talking Flower

Victoria was inspired to go out in the blazing heat of September to gather flowers in her little plastic basket. She was jumping around thinking it was a fantastic idea. I have to admit that first,I thought the type of flowers she would find outside...lantana. If you know what lantana is they are these little, miniscule, teeny, cute flowers that I guarantee will fall through the openings of the baskets. This is what flooded through my head in a matter of seconds. "Mess on the floor". How sad of me. I quickly suggested that she draw her own flowers and cut them out to put in her basket! Great idea? Don't you think so? Clean floor, no dried up, shriveled lantana all over the house. So instead we have little snippets of white paper all over the kitchen floor. I don't think I am supposed to be thinking about the mess. I usually don't but it is almost time to start dinner. It's been a long day. Either way, the flowers she is drawing are adorable. I managed to get one away from her before she cut it up. Though she did tape the stem back on. I love little kid drawings. It has been so long since I have seen girly flowers. With having two boys in between the girls, our fridge displayed aliens, trucks and explosions for quite some time. Aahhh, back to flowers and butterflies. I guess I will have to wait for grandsons to get my dose of trucks and dirt again.

Masking Tape

This is only one of Daphne's many creations from...yes...masking tape. If you are ever looking for the role of masking tape, just ask Daphne. Some people just have the knack. Me? I could make a sticky ball!? The first sculpture she made was of a T-Rex. She created the jaw with it's numerous teeth while watching a movie. I looked at it thinking "that's nice honey". By the end of the movie she had a complete T-Rex head. It was incredible. I will have to look for a picture. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree with creativity and ability. The Paternal tree that is.

Toby

Toby got caught in a dolly bed. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he is really too big for the buggy bed.

A What?!

It isn't everyone who has a 10 ft Moses in their garage. You know most people park in their garage. Not us. Our garage holds the multitude of art supplies now housing a "hot knife" and polyurethane hard coat to make styrofoam hard. When Kirk said he was planning on sculpting a "Moses" out of styrofoam I said "yeah, okay, whatever". I never really know the magnitude of the project. And I always underestimate his plans. And the mess it makes in the process. Do you know what happens when you sand styrofoam?! Oh, and it gets better! How is he supposed to transport this thing up to Cave Creek 22 miles away!? I suggested we rent a U-Haul for the day and make a field trip out of it. Once he gets it up there it has to be attached to the wall 10 ft up in the air with the parting seas behind it. How do you ask that will happen? That is where I check out and let "the Man" do his thing! I have learned to not try to understand how Kirk thinks. It is a scary place. I just let him do his thing and all is right in my world! This Moses is so bright reflecting the sun Kirk had to wear his sunglasses to work on it. Now that is the glory of God at work!

Camping

We decided to return to the White Mountains and camp beside the White River once again. This young cow was walking down the middle of the dirt road and came head to head with us. I guess we looked bigger because he got off the road first. As we passed a few others Victoria noticed that their ears were tagged and blurted out "Hey, they're on sale!" That's my girl. She knows a good deal when she sees one.

Daphne's favorite animal in the whole world! A wooly caterpillar! The boys found about 10 of them all over the ground next to the river. Daphne hates caterpillars but she did come close enough to see atleast one at a distance. So now we need to find out what kind of caterpillars these are. The perfect place to hang out and read a book at sunset. (Daphne took this picture) Oil and water...oh wait, it's Daphne and Kaleb! What a nice big sister. She already carried Victoria and went back to help her little brother across. Here are the other two peas in a pod. They were having a little chat with each other on the other side. It was cute. The kids were using large pieces of bark as boats and sending them down the river. Water is always so fascinating. I never get tired of watching water. Here is Victoria telling me all about her "bark boat". She is always so animated when she talks. It reminds me of Jared when he was her age. The more he moved the more he told me. Ahhh, the colors of Fall. It was clear all morning and rained with thunder for about 15-20 minutes. Not too bad. Well, a half an hour later it started to pour buckets of water! No problem, we're dry under the awning. We are well known for going camping in a tent and end up in a down pour. That's why we got the tent trailer. We were tired of our sleeping bags floating in the tent. So no worries now, we are in the trailer. Still coming down! Now things are starting to really get saturated! There are standing puddles everywhere. We decided that after two hours of rain that we were going to pack it up and go home as soon as it let up. The clouds were looking way too dark, thunder and lightning all over. It is our experience that when it rains this much it isn't going to let up. Sure enough it let up long enough to pile everything sopping wet into the back of the van in trash bags. We almost got stuck in the mud trying to drive out of our campsite. It brought back alot of jeeping memories from when I was a little girl. We got a little nervous when we we started to slide around but managed to get enough traction and made it out. For the next few hours you could see that it had either rained heavily or was raining. The trailer electrical plug had jiggled out of the socket on the dirt road and dragged on the asphalt and disintegrated it. We knew that it was going to be dark by the time we made it home so we were thankful to see an Autozone on the way out of Showlow. We were lucky that all of the main wiring was intact and not ruined in any way. By the time Kirk was done with it, it was as good as new.(Okay, wait, this is the before picture!) As we were coming down off the rim the clouds were amazeing. This is the best I could get.

Silk Screening

Daphne used her prize money from the Geiko poster contest to purchase her own silk screening set up. She decided to make her Dad some shirts with his business logo on them.

They turned out perfect! They looked like they were professionally done. Her Dad was quite impressed. The kids have had years of practice with their art teacher Larry. But this time she was doing it all on her own and from her own memory. She really got to use her talent. Now we all want to come up with our own designs. The gears are at work!

I Love School!

Victoria loves school! She loves the challenge and there isn't anything that she can't do or atleast try!

Nothing like eating your name. She is perfecting her letter sounds and sliding them together to make words. Though Victoria was only able to eat the first 3 letter pancakes. Kaleb ate his and the rest of hers. They loved to see their name in pancake form. It was fun.

First Day of School

First day of school started with a bang as usual. Nothing like jumping in with both feet!

All of the kids have grown and matured. It won't be long before Jared will be towering over all of his siblings. We have a High Schooler, a Middle Schooler, an Elementary Schooler and a Pre-K Schooler. Whew! Their old Mama is going to have a hard time keeping up with this crowd! I better take my vitamins!

Peach Pie

One of the library books the girls and I checked out was a pie baking book called Farmland's Favorite Pies by Amy and David Butler. Perfect timing for the case of Utah peaches we picked up from our produce co-op. Okay, I know this may sound a little far fetched. This was the second pie I personally have ever made in my entire life! Yes, I know, hard to believe. Kirk is the pie baker. I once made a pumpkin pie (I don't like Pumpkin) long, long ago. I think he had to work late before Thanksgiving or something. So being that I am completely new to this, it turned out almost perfect! I had my ever faithful 4 year old helper in the kitchen. We peeled peaches and ate all of the skins. The crust was so flaky it was incredible. So of course two days later I had to make another one to take to Pastor Phil and Abby when we had dinner together. If you want the recipe for the crust let me know. I will share with you. That was the first thing Kirk wanted was the crust recipe. It's really good!

The Swimmer

Victoria mastered the snorkle in a mere few minutes and spent the summer down below. I don't know how she did it. I have never been able to breathe through a snorkle. I always felt like I couldn't get enough air or for fear that a sibling was going to pour water down the tube. Not sure which. But Victoria would putter around the pool with ease never having to come up for air.

Daphne Sewing

Daphne has been busy sewing trying to finish up projects before school started again. Her stuffed horse was not only complicated but a challenge to sew. She did an awesome job and really stuck with it.

I had this kitty tapestry in my stash. We both sewed a tote bag. You can never have too many bags. The lining is brown with light blue paw prints. They turned out really cute.

Cleaning Up

Victoria and I were cleaning up her room so she could actually get into her bed. I am sure no parent knows what that means! She volunteered to hang up some clothes. I wasn't really thinking as to whether or not she could reach or not. I turned around and found that she had climbed into her armoir. She is very proactive. There is no challenge that gets in her way. I don't think I have ever heard her say that she "can't" do something.

It's Raining

Yes, It is raining in Phoenix. September 5th to be exact. Actually it poured. It was wonderful. Makes you want to open the windows and let the cool air flow in. BUT...in Phoenix it isn't cool. Well not yet. It was pretty muggy but it was still pretty awesome to have something other than beautiful sunshine.

Busy Baking

We were inspired at the library the other day. The girls and I poured over all of the cook books. Of course I was looking at main dish cooking and the girls were drooling over anything that would put 10 pounds on their mother! Daphne baked this yummy Pizza Cookie. It really tasted good. It had way too many calories but the raspberry jelly was a good choice for the sauce.

Victoria, Kaleb and I made homemade noodles. We have decided that we would like a pasta maker to get the noodles thinner. It was quite a challenge. But boy did they taste so much better than store bought. And it was pretty easy too. The only challenge was hanging the dough. Everywhere we thought of we saw the dog eyeballing where ever we went. We finally hung them by wooden spoons out of the cupboards. Kaleb took a picture but I thought our cupboards looked a little messy. I guess I should put that on the "to do" list...organize the cupboards!

Kirk's Mural Work

Kirk has been painting at Desert View Bible Church for the past month. He is painting their hallway to their children's classrooms. Everytime he does one of these jobs I think it is his best yet. Well, this one has to not only be the biggest job but the best one! He has done an incredibly awesome job of bringing the real heroes of the bible to life once again on these walls. This is a real ministry and definately driven by God himself. Kirk is so talented. I am so pleased that he can use it in a way to glorify God in his everyday life. We have seen pictures all along the way of what he has been painting. It was time yesterday for the kids and I to see it in person. We knew the characters were huge but seeing them in person was incredible! Kaleb couldn't help but to pretend he was being eaten, squashed or pulled. He also had a big sister to egg him on.
The tongue on the fish that swallowed Jonah actually looks like it is sticking out from the wall.

This puts Noah a little more in perspective about how "grand" this job really is. He is water skiing beind the Ark.

Here is just a small assortment of paint for the walls. The blue bin looks pretty. Two areas are 20 feet high. Kirk thought he was going to have to rent a lift until he found out that the church owned their own. What a blessing. He could have never done this with a ladder. He doesn't look like he is way up there. But he really is. A little spooky, I don't like heights.Putting the finishing touches on the fish. What a beautiful eye! The white really makes everything pop. The kids thought they would take a rest on Joseph's hand. Kaleb hanging on for dear life. Kaleb...about to be squashed. If you want to see more pictures look at the website at www.liquidairstudios.com . The website is still being built but has pictures of this project on it.

Big Brothers are good at...

Big brothers are good at dressing up as a horsey and giving horsey rides. Victoria dressed Jared up to look like a horse...well sort of. He was wearing a deer skin shirt with fringe, yellow gloves that only fit on his fingers, a bird hood with feathers, a viking helmet, a shirt for a saddle and puca shells for reins. He was a good sport. He made a great horse for a famous Roman Soldier equipted with a shield and sword!