Cookies and Popcorn

Hadley and I made some cookies in the morning, pumpkin chocolate chip, and we were going to take the cookies with us to a playdate.  I  was getting things gathered together to take and ran to the restroom.  I was gone about 1 min, and when I came back I found Miles, standing on the stool where he climbed up was eating a cookie.  Smart cookie he is.

On Sundays, we frequently make popcorn and the girls love to help.  Miles just loves to eat the kernels that fall jump onto the ground.  Miles also likes to make a huge mess, grabbing handfuls of popcorn and getting about 1 or 2 in his mouth at a time.  

Beachfront Property

It rained...and rained and rained and rained for about 18 hours and as a result, our house became beachfront property!  Elephant park became Elephant Lake for a few days and after school on the day it stopped raining, the girls ventured out to the park to see the water... which inevitably lead to getting into the water.  Once Miles went down for he second nap, I let the girls change into their swimsuits and go out to play in the water.  Well, 3 hours later and about 75 kids later, we had so much fun playing in the water.  I had a dilemma of which is better... to not let them play in the rain water which probably had some sort of disease in it... or be the fun mom and let them play.  It had rained about a week before and so I decided that maybe the old storm washed away the scum and this water was not as bad.

 Either way, the girls were excited that I let them play.  The water was about up to Hadley's shoulders for the most part, and they had the time of their lives.  I vividly remember playing in the culdesac after a huge storm when I was a kid.  They played well into the evening and I finally had to drag them in to eat dinner.  

 They needed a mid-swim snack, but were cold so they all shared a towel to stay warm.  And graham crackers.

Miles woke up and I tried my hardest to keep him out of the water, because I did not want to get in it!  We played on the playground and made silly faces.  Fun day for sure!

Natural Bridge

This weekend Aunt Melanie decided to pay us a visit. Since she was coming down from the suburbs of the North Pole, we decided to let her get out in the sunshine of Arizona. We went for a family adventure to hike a mountain (since the girls keep asking to go hiking all the time). Melanie was great and rode in the back seat between the girls everywhere we went (and the hike was about a 1.5 hour drive each way). Once we got there, everyone was excited to see the cool views. 

We went to Tonto Natural Bridge State Park where we could hike down into a canyon and see what we could find. The girls were excited to get the day started.

We hiked about a half mile back and forth to get straight down into the bottom of the canyon. We found a cool cave down at the bottom of the trail. Here we all are looking for bats.

The natural bridge is a huge rock arch formation in the bottom of the canyon. 

Here is the crew at the bottom (the extra lady struggling to get out is not actually part of our family, but I don't know how to use photo shop).

A few more pictures of all of us down in the bottom looking around.

Inside the arch, the river formed a giant pool

 (except they don't allow swimming there :( ).

We took a few pictures inside the arch looking around.

The hiking Meldrums.

On the way out Rach decided we should go the long way back up the canyon. This was much longer and required lots of climbing over boulders and jumping over the river. Everyone enjoyed the challenge (the sign at the exit said this was very challenging and not for the faint of heart).

Since it was such a long hike back out, we stopped to play in the river for a minute. That was the only time Miles got to be out of the backpack. You can see he was a little excited for this portion of the trip! (he got to do one of his favorite things and play with rocks) 

While hiking out, we got to walk past the waterfall that feeds the river. The water was seeping out of the rocks and created a natural shower.

It was a great hike up in the mountains. 

Cooler weather, neat landscape, and lots of hard work.

We are the champions...

We have now become the typical suburban family. Allie is playing soccer (and Rachel is the team soccer Mom). I must admit it is exciting that  Allie asked to play soccer instead of doing dance again (this is much more fun to watch, and games are only 30 minutes instead of 3 hours for a recital). Allie gets to experience the excitement of the Friday Night Lights (al games on Friday at 6:30PM).

Getting ready for the big game with a pep talk from the coach. 

This was the team stare down of the opponents 

(that or it was right after the ferocious cheer for the Orange Unicorns).

Allie had a great time kicking the ball and running all over the field.

Miles much preferred to eat rocks and play by the fence.

Hadley just wanted to hang out with Aunt Melanie (did we mention  Melanie was in town?).

Butterfly in the sky...

For our Labor Day adventure, we decided to go see the Butterfly Wonderland (we needed something outdoors for Miles and not too crazy for Hadley's shoulder). It is a newer butterfly aviary located in Scottsdale. We have been to a few of these kind of things before and always enjoyed them. This one was a little different because they also had an active bee hive you could watch the bees inside of and a 3-D movie about butterflies at the beginning. The girls really enjoyed the movie (Miles thought it was a strange form of torture). They had hatching cocoons that we watched before entering the wild butterfly zone.

Once inside it was quite the experience. There were so many butterflies floating around that Miles was enthralled. The girls kept trying to see as many as possible, and we slowly made our way around (especially since Allie took the instruction to walk cautiously very seriously, she didn't want to step on any butterflies). This was everyone just after we entered the cage.

The girls each got to hold a butterfly. They were very excited.

 There were many different kinds of colorful butterflies.

Miles really wanted to hold one too (but we figured that was a bad idea for him).

One tried to hitch a ride out on my shoulder.

It was a good time for everyone.