Up North Sans Camera

The kids, Ollie, and I are up in Flagstaff enjoying the cool pines. Tom was here for the weekend. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so until Kathy delivers it when she comes up for the weekend, I will have to update you all without visual aids.



Today was Miss Grace's 9th birthday. We celebrated all day long. She had 2 doughnuts for breakfast (poor parenting, I know). Then we went to buy her a gift..a silver Nintendo DS and 1 game. Tom will be happy to know we bought it at Wally World. You can buy everything there. I know because I have been looking all over Flagstaff for trash compactor bags and what do you know, Walmart carries 2 different varieties. I bought both kinds.

Back to the birthday girl. She definitely is my daughter because she wore that Disneyland birthday hat everywhere we went, although I made her leave it in the car when we were in public.

We went out to eat at one of those Japanese restaurants that cooks the food at your table. It was a hit with the kids. Grace screamed when the chef lit the cooktop on fire. We saw a flaming onion tower and the chef lit a plate on fire and sang Happy Birthday to Grace. She was thrilled. We just wish daddy were with us. Then we came "home" and ate some of the birthday cake that we made last night. She got about half-a-dozen birthday messages and calls. All in all, a good way to spend your 9th birthday, if you ask me.

Look for more photos over the weekend.

More photos

Game 3: Tommy's team played again Thursday. Unfortunately they lost 21 to 4. They play another game Friday. Win or lose, it's been a fun post-season experience.

Baseball... Wednesday Game 2...Arcadia Allstars win. Tommy played left field, had some good at bats.

More photos from Grace's party... Grace R, Alex, Grace H, Sarah, Emmie, Mae.

Play Ball

Tommy made the Arcadia All Star baseball team. We are very proud of him. He has realy had a fun time practicing with the team for the past two weeks. Tonight was the first game of the doube-elimination tournament. They beat the East Scottsdale team 17 -4 (or something close to that). Here is the team...I took video of Tommy's at-bats so I will take more photos tomorrow and Thursday cuz we will be playing baseball for at least two more nights (which means laundry every night too!). Go Arcadia!

The Birthday Party

Grace had her 9th birthday party this weekend. It was a little early, but it's is hard with a summer birthday to get everyone in town. We got a HUGE water slide (you can see part of it in the last photo above). It was 18 feet high! I don't know how it fit in the back yard, but it did. She had a few friends over to swim and giggle. We did some crafts with mostly recycled material. Those flip flops were made from cereal boxes. It was a "Go Green" theme after all (see the cake). All the decor was also recycled from birthdays past and I personally crafted the "Happy Birthday" banner from cardboard boxes. Who knew I was so crafty? Hopefully she had fun.