Camping

Two weeks ago we finally committed to a camping trip. Eric's company took a week off this week for "shutdown" and so we had a mandatory vacation on our hands. What to do with the time.... home projects... yuck... especially when it's 110 outside. Lake Powell... way too expensive for gas. We'd been waffling about going camping for weeks, but I finally got online to see what kind of spot I could get and I was shocked to see that there were still a few spots open at Mather Campground in Grand Canyon National Park. We booked for 4 nights... one of the longest camping trips we've taken by ourselves in a few years. We prefer camping with extended family or friends, but we were going solo on this one. I was worried that we'd have a hard time keeping our kids entertained for so many days at a place like the Grand Canyon. It's beautiful and all, but kids get bored with this kind of thing so quickly!

Monday was our pack up and travel day. We didn't get on the road until 11:30 a.m. By the time we stopped for lunch and sat through a 15-20 minute delay for roadwork, we didn't arrive until 4:45ish. Luckily, we still had 3 hours of daylight to set up camp and cook dinner.

Tuesday was our first day to explore. We've been to Grand Canyon only once before. It was with Jeff and Molly's family and we had less than a full day to see the sights. It was also in October and FREEZING! We ended up going straight to the "general store" and buying beanie hats and mittens for people who didn't have any... it was that cold. This was the opposite. It was near 90 degrees every day and normally we would find that "cool", but at 7000 feet, that feels warmer than it should! On Tuesday, we explored the Eastern Half of the South Rim Area, spending most of the day riding around on free shuttles or walking.

Of course, Brayden figured out that it was easier to ride on Dad's shoulders... which he did most of the week. This kid knows how to work the system....

Wednesday: We were going to take the kids on a short hike down the Bright Angel Trail, but with Brayden refusing to walk and Ian less than enthused about it, we decided to pass. Instead we rode shuttles out to the Western portion of the South Rim and took millions of photos. Then we went to Tusayan and watched the IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon and had dinner at Wendy's. When we got back to camp, we hopped another shuttle and went out to Yavapai Point to watch the Sunset. It was incredible!

Cute couple posing for a photo, but check out those teenage boys out on the rock outcropping... not sure how they made it out there, but it's definately prime real estate for watching the sun set.

Thursday: We took a car ride out to the Eastern Entrance of the Grand Canyon. It's a 25 mile drive. At the Desert View Visitor Center there is a stone watch tower that you can climb to the top of and look out over the canyon.

After several stops at different view points... this is how everyone felt... tired and grumpy!This squirrel had no fear of us and even tried to nibble off the end of Taylor's shoe. For the record, we were NOT trying to feed him.

Friday: Home!!! We had the most cooperative kids this morning packing up camp. Usually, they play or sit in the car and wait while we work by ourselves to clean up and take down camp. This trip they finally understood that the more they helped, the sooner we'd be off. We had breakfast at 7:30 this morning and were on the road by 9:30. One quick stop for gas, soda and the potty and we were home at 1:55. We had a contest to see who could guess our arrival time the best... my guess was 2:00. Ian guessed 1:57. He won!

Last but not least, I'm wearing myself out trying to get all the laundry done after coming home. The joys of coming home from camping... laundry, laundry and MORE laundry!Stay tuned... tomorrow I'll post the best of the best "scenery" shots from our trip!

Saguaro Lake

Here's some fun photos from our trip to the lake yesterday. All in all, we had a great time. Taylor got out first so he could work on his WaterSports Merit Badge. (One of the products of being the son of a Scoutmaster.) After a few attempts, he did the hardest thing on the list - cross each wake back and forth 4 times... so he had to cross over from side to side 8 times. It's harder than it looks, but he finally did it! I'm not sure I've been able to do that yet, so we are darn proud of him!

One of our favorite things to do is to anchor the boat in a cove and swim... well it often turns into a canonball contest... something we can't do in our pool at home because we don't have a deep end. Yesterday they discovered that belly flops don't hurt when you have a lifejacket on, so we got some great shots of belly floppin' supreme!

We tried a new type of tube yesterday and everyone loved it. We even got Brayden out there with Eric for a short run.... I was only going 4 mph, so it was a super safe adventure for him!

I'm so glad Ian is smiling in this photo. It seems we always have a "glitch" of some kind at the lake. Maybe this is normal, but we've never owned a boat before last year. We've had everything from flat tires on the boat trailer (with no spare and no store for 30 miles) to snapping the tube rope because we weren't using the right type of rope. Yesterday, Ian was in the water waiting for me to circle around and pick him up after kneeboarding and he almost got run over by another boat. It was a close call. Way toooo close. He was fine... but Eric and I were pretty shaken up about it. We still are today. We don't know if the other guy driving just didn't see him at all or if he was just a jerk who didn't care if he whizzed right past a little kid with less than a few feet to spare. We don't know because he never came back to see if we were okay or to apologize... and there's no way he didn't know what he'd done by the time he passed our boat. Eric was screaming at him like I've never heard him yell before. No profanities, though... I was grateful for that. :) I was very proud of Ian, too. After we swam for a bit (in a safer area, no wake zone), he got back on the horse and rode the tube around with Megan and Taylor. We also had a "safety lesson" on what to do if you are in the water and you see a boat coming. Everytime we go out, we have a new "learning experience" it seems. I guess that's life. I'm just so grateful that my baby is okay.

p.s. Mom, the boat photo at the top is for you! Sorry about the water spots on the lense... I took it from the water!

Adventures in Tie Dye

This week we tie-dyed pajamas. It was a lot of fun! We bought cheap white tee's at Joann's and some white broad cloth which I spent all day Sunday afternoon sewing into pajama shorts for all the kids... well not Taylor (he's too mature for such things as matching pj's), but I had enough fabric to make me a pair, so I did! (I couldn't have buzzed through this project so quickly without my serger and recent experience making pjs for the YW at Enrichment last month!)

We picked up a tie dye kit at Joann's that had three colors - fuchsia, yellow and turquoise. It always amazes me what you can do with just three colors... Brayden's pjs for example - they turned out lime green because we blended the turquoise and the yellow. This is one project that you just can't screw up!

Megan wanted to go for the "Uncle Jon" look. Years ago we did a tie dye birthday party for Ian and Uncle Jon did the craziest pattern with rubber bands and die but it turned out super cool, so Jon, I hope you are impressed... I think Megan's turned out the best and she didn't care one bit about what it looked like because she remembered how cool yours looked after everyone made fun of you for being "different"!

Ian wanted a "Power Ranger" theme... we did our best to create a yellow "V" in the center of his shirt and he is very happy with how it turned out. He was the most particular about how we rubber banded it all, so I was worried that he would be disappointed with the outcome, but he liked it. Whew!

For Brayden's, I wanted a green/blue Ninja Turtle look. I ended up using an old white tee of his that he stained yellow all down the front spilling top ramen on him. You'd never know this shirt was ruined before, would you?

I'm declaring this project a total success - four sets of light weight summer PJ's for under $30 and the kids haven't taken them off in the last two days! They love them! The only bummer was not being able to do this with our good friends who decided to go to San Diego and play in the cool weather and the ocean instead of tie-dying with us! :)

Dirty Little Secret

Yesterday I heard my first cicada for the summer. They are this ugly little bug that sit on the tree branches and "sing"... but for us it's just any annoying buzz. When my father in law first came to visit us (in August), the first thing he said, was "I think the street lamp in your court is broken... it keeps buzzing." It took us a few minutes to convince him it wasn't the streetlamp. It was a bug... it wasn't until I walked over to the tree that was buzzing and shook the branches, that the cicada shut up and my father in law "believed". After 3 full summers, and well into my 4th one, I've discovered that when you hear the cicada's buzzing that means Monsoon is here. It's the part of summer that I love and hate all at the same time! The Monsoon is Arizona's "dirty little secret". When I told people I was moving here, I can't tell you how many times people would say, "well, at least it's a DRY heat." Yes, that's true... in May and June. But July and August (and sometimes even September?!?) Fuhgetaboutit... it's anything but DRY! Until this year, the monsoon was declared after we'd had 3 straight days with a dewpoint of 55 degrees or higher. Honestly, until I moved here for a summer, I'd never even paid attention to what a "dewpoint" was! (Click HERE to read more about "dewpoint" and how it works.) Dewpoint typically begins around July 1st give or take a week or two in either direction. With it come humid days, afternoon thunderstorms, crazy rain (not as often as we would like) and dust storms. I look forward to it because it's a change from the same old thing we've been dealing with for weeks, but I dread it because of the humidity. It's so dang miserable. And it know it's not as humid as living in Florida, but they don't get to 110 on a regular basis either... like last summer when we had 32 straight days over 110 or something like that. Let's just say it gets old after a while! I also don't enjoy getting woken up by a thunderstorm at 3 a.m. That has happened several times since I've lived here. I love thunderstorms, but I want them to be done when it's bed time. It's hard to sleep with lightening flashing through every window and thunder booming every 30 seconds. This year, the weather "gurus" have decided to change the monsoon starting date... it's now June 15 every year. Very early for most years, but they are using hurricane season as an example. Official hurricane season usually starts weeks before any real hurricanes develop, but it still reminds local residents to be "on their guard." I guess that's a good idea with monsoons, too. I was just hoping to get a couple more weeks of dryness before it began! Click HERE for some amazing Monsoon photos... I was going to copy a couple and paste them here, but there are too many good ones to steal them in good conscious! Enjoy!

It's Not Easy Being Green

I finally did it. I finally caved and bought some "reusable" grocery bags. They're bulky and awkward, but I did it anyway. Then they sat in my car through at least two grocery trips, because I forgot to take them into the store with me. Then I finally took them to Walmart and the poor checkout ladies had bagged half my stuff before I could tell them I brought my own bags. They seemed annoyed and flustered about moving all my stuff into the reusable bags and who can blame them... they don't fit very well on the walmart bagging carousel. And I've heard from a friend that using the reusable bags with the "self checkout" is a lot of work because the weight sensors freak out when you put them on the pad. The jury is still out on whether or not I like doing this, but quite frankly I feel bullied into it. Everywhere I shop (maybe with the exception of Walmart), I'm being asked when I check out if I'd like to purchase that store's reusable grocery bags. (Maybe Walmart doesn't ask me because I use self checkout 95% of the time I'm there.) When I finally did buy some, it was at Sprouts, my local Farmer's Market/Grocery store and I bought them because they didn't have any particular store logo on them. I don't want to buy them at one grocery store and then feel weird about bringing them into the competition. I already feel weird about bringing them anyway. Am I alone on this issue?

Speaking of "green living", I've also invested over $50 in CFL lightbulbs. The jury is still out on this too. I'll be perfectly honest... I didn't do this to save the environment. I did this to save $$$ on my electric bill. I don't like the harsh white light from CFL's and especially in my "earthtoned" house, they make my painted walls look... well, just WRONG. But, once again, I'm feeling bullied into this as well. The other day I counted the number of light bulbs in my house. It was shocking, even to me. 59 regular bulbs and 22 recessed bulbs. To change all those out will cost me a small fortune, but now that I have some done, I feel like I need to do them all so that I have a uniform lighting look. You can tell that my kitchen is still lit by incandescent bulbs and my nook is CFL. It's kinda weird in a room that's all connected. Here's my other beef with CFL's... in the 40 I've bought (bulk packs at Sam's Club) at least 2 didn't work right out of the package. That's over a buck a bulb. Then I've had 3-4 burn out after using them for just a month or two. Ouch! And did you know that you really aren't supposed to throw these away in the garbage? They have mercury in them and can poison the air in a room if they burst in the garbage can. Hmmm... maybe the environmentalist groups will wait 5 more years before most people's CFL's start burning out around the world to let us know what the proper disposal method of these babies are! One more gripe... they don't do so well with ceiling fans. Anyone in the desert knows that ceiling fans are a lifeblood in the summer (spring and fall, too) and if I have to choose CFL or fan, it's definitely fan. No question about it.

One more thing.... I drive a gas guzzler. I have to. We have 4 children, a tent trailer and a boat. I have to be able to tow and go on a road trip with six people and room for suitcases in the back. I actually love my gas guzzler and I figure if I'm willing to pay for the gas, no one else should be able to complain about it. My Chevy Suburban is equipped with a "flex fuel" option. This means that I can run my car on regular unleaded or E85. Our first E85 station just opened up 20 miles from our house. Three weeks ago they were selling E85 for $3.42 a gallon and Unleaded for $4.15. So, for fun, we drove the 20 miles and filled up on E85. What a waste. I got 4 mpg less with the E85 than I do with regular gas. I figured it out and it was costing me 34 cents per mile to use E85. At the $4.15 price, regular gas was 29 cents per mile. Reg unleaded would have to climb to $4.80 while E85 stayed at $3.42 for me to break even in the cost. So, I will never get E85 again. So, I have to wonder with such poor efficiency, why on earth are we using up our country’s food supply making a very crappy gas alternative? I love what Glenn Beck says on the topic of SUV emissions: "Just the increase in the amount of coal that China will burn by 2020 will send as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 3 billion Ford Expedition SUV's. At it's current pace, it would take Ford 15,000 years even to sell that many."

Here's my take on "green living". Moderation in ALL things. I think it's important to "do our part" to help conserve resources, but I don't condone all the extremism. And I really get annoyed by all these "celebrities" who fly all over the world in their leer jets promoting conservation. Do you think people like Cameron Diaz ride on commercial flights? (If you know the true answer to this, inquiring minds want to know!) Hey, in my mind, by choosing a commercial airline carrier when I travel, I'm essentially "carpooling", right? I loved the blip I heard on the radio from John McCain a couple weeks ago. He suggested that he should be joined by Barrack Obama at some town hall meetings around the country during the campaign season. He even suggested that they share a plane while they travelled around to the different locations. What an awesome idea!

I challenge Al Gore himself to buy a Prius (one of the ugliest cars ever made), drive it himself to AZ and live here with his thermostat at 85 degrees in July. I don't think he can do it!

Not Enough Hours in the Day

Now that my teenager is home from his week long trip to BYU, I have a never ending struggle on my hands... I never get a chance to get on the computer for more than 5 minutes without someone standing over my shoulder nagging me to get off so they can have a turn. We did get enough equipment to run a second computer downstairs for the kids, but the desk we ordered last month still hasn't arrived, so we haven't set it up yet. I'm so sick of fighting for computer time, I'm about ready to set it up on a cardboard box, just to get these guys off my back!

I have lots of things I want to blog about this week, but it's late and I was up at 5:30 a.m. If I can ever get this darn 3 year old to go to sleep, then I can crash and go to bed! More tomorrow, I hope!

Survival Swimming

This was the best money I have ever spent. I've never had a child who could swim at age 3 before. I think some of my kids have a fish gene somewhere in their DNA makeup. Brayden is one of those! He has absolutely no fear of the water and thinks he has superman-like powers or something. The entire goal of this class is to teach the kids to swim to the side and climb out (without the help of stairs or ladders.)

Here's some pictures from his last couple days of class. I have the video of him getting tossed in with clothes on, but it's too big for blogger to upload, and quite frankly, it's not a happy moment for him. He knew that "street clothes" weren't supposed to be in the pool, and try as she might, Miss Michelle couldn't convince him for anything to jump in with clothes and shoes on. (Secretly, I was rejoicing at this moment, because it gave me some hope that he won't ever willingly jump in with his regular clothes on.) She eventually just gave him a push into the water (9 feet deep). He did struggle more than normal to get to the side, but he did it. He was angry, too... came out of the pool screaming like I'd never seen before. But we stripped off the wet clothes, threw on his swimsuit and he was more than happy to finish his lesson with all smiles. That's my boy! (And yes, he is grinning at me under the water!)

Today we went to a pool party out in Queen Creek. Wow, that's the sticks! Anyway, there were a bunch of neighborhood friends at this party with probably a dozen toddlers. EVERYONE was amazed at Brayden's new skills and I enjoyed bragging about this class we just finished. Halfway through the afternoon, one of the other three year olds fell in sans water wings (not sure if he fell or jumped). Two adults saw it at the same time and jumped in after him. He was okay, shaken, but fine. It made me so grateful we did this class. And the poor dad who jumped in the water had his garage door remote in his pocket (yeah, it was in a swimsuit, weird, huh?) That was their only means to get back inside their house after the party, so in the end, they finally called AAA to help them out!