Fun times

Aww, my little helper. At school, they focused on the color blue and made blueberry muffins on Friday. Well, Connor wanted to come home and make, what else but more blueberry muffins.
His kindergarten teacher does such cute and fun things with the class. Like, for his first week, they focused on gingerbread men everything and even ate gingerbread men cookies she made. So, of course, he wanted to make gingerbread men at home too. We didn't have that shape of cookie cutter so we made one. We had fun making the frosting, decorating them, eating them and giving some away. Connor liked making "families" of gingerbread.


Here's Connor with his buddy Eli. His family recently moved in and they're our nearest neighbors that are in our ward so they tend to get together quite a bit. It was so cute to see them dress up as dragons. One night, they made shields at his house so here they are displaying them. They were acting out being bad and good dragons. Such cuties!


We went to this place that is dubbed on their website as "Disneyland-like". Whoa...was that an exaggeration. I was very disappointed. But, since it was a Tucson Birthday celebration (Tucson is 234 years old this month), with cake and all, we went- who doesn't like cake!! To their credit, they said they are still renovating and bringing in new equipment. I was just shocked at some of the other, uh, clientele. They were like hard-rock black-wearing college kids or worse, still in that stage but parents of young kids. Sadly, I only saw a few other people I would deem "normal."

Something we really did like, though, was the face painting. The artist was really good. Connor said he wanted a cat and I was amazed she did a very good full-face cat. He loved it.

Kindergartener and losing the first tooth!!

So Connor started kindergarten!! I can't believe he's old enough...and we're old enough...to start! He absolutely loves it and tells us all about his day when he gets home. Ammon usually drops him off and picks him up everyday (he works an afternoon shift at work) and, since he's not home in the evenings, he says it's his "bonding time" with Connor. They get up early to play together and then after school we have scripture study (and my dreaded -yet necessary- shot for the pregnancy) and then he's off to work. It seems to work out, although we miss him in the evenings.

Here's our strong little "coyote" in front of his school!! He's howling, so cute.



These are the coyotes in the main office that made him want to go to this school over the others we checked out- such simple criteria for choosing. Thankfully, Ammon and I looked at several other factors in finally deciding on this school. His teacher is from our ward so he thinks it's cool that he sees her at school AND church.


Our little guy lost his first tooth the first week of school!! Just can't believe it. Here he is showing the gap- bottom tooth. The one next to it is loose now too. He loved getting money for his tooth, although he doesn't know quite what to do with it.

Connor's 5th Birthday Party

We had a "Diego Water Jungle Party" for Connor's 5th Birthday. We had a slip n' slide, 2 sprayer pools with slides, water balloons, dump buckets, water guns, water ball sling shots and a Diego pinata. The kids had a blast and I think the parents enjoyed seeing their kids have fun. It was a hot day but not the hottest we've seen, thankfully. We had the misters and fountain going and lots of water flying in the air to help cool things off. We didn't anticipate where all this water would go so we had some puddles- which of course the kids readily jumped into as well.


Slip n' slide fun


Going for the candy from the broken pinata


We had a rocky mountain cake that we added Diego, Dora and Boots figures to. We had ice cream and otter pops (I think these were more popular!).


There were tons of presents and the kids were all so excited for Connor to open them that many were opened without us knowing who they were from!


One excited guest raided Connor's room for a sword. Arrgghh, pirates. I think that'll be the next party's theme.

Thank you to everyone that came to the party and made this a special day for Connor!!

We're BACK!!

Ok, so we haven't posted in 8 months for several reasons:

1. Namely, our camera was giving us this lens error message and wouldn't work. No pictures, not much to report on. I guess I could have just journaled everything but, that seemed too boring to me. Today, I finally sat down to see if I could fix the camera. I was all ready to mail it in to the service center then thought, huh, maybe I'll call around, do some more searching online and just messing with it to see if I can make it work and I did it! IT WORKS!! Yeah, now we have a camera that we can use, and we don't have to buy a new one.

2. Projects galore-

Balcony

l to r: Before started, underneath (we added twice as many beams for support), me measuring the beams, both of us straddling the ladder working to get a beam up there (Connor obviously took this picture), Ammon putting in more supports at the header, my "stud" on a ladder.


l to r: On top of the roof before underlayment put down, Connor "supervising" daddy spreading concrete, Ammon laying backerboard for the tile (last 3 shots).

We're finished!!

l to r: Ammon excitedly showing off our finished product!!, looking up from the yard, side view, the door showing railing and tile work, Ammon looking out at our mountain view, relaxing- thanks for all your hard work honey!!

Expanded our under stairs area creating more storage space (for food storage)
The edge of the overhang is where the wall used to be. Ammon and I knocked it out when we discovered termites. We pulled up the carpet in there, had the termites treated and decided to finish the area- tile, drywall, texture, paint and shelves!

Installed ceiling fans throughout the house (4 new upstairs, including new wiring), and attempted to install an outdoor ceiling fan (still working on that- it's giving me trouble).
This is the one in our bedroom. It was the most challenging because of the vaulted ceiling.

3. Planned and carried out Connor's first party with all his friends invited. We had a "Diego Water Jungle Party" for his 5th birthday. We're trying to hit the main birthdays for big parties with friends (5- going to school, 8- baptism, 12- priesthood, 16- driving, 18 or 19-graduation and mission; etc). We'll see how we do. The party was a huge success and way fun. Thanks to my friend Teresa for taking pictures (a future post) since our camera wasn't working. :)

4. Trying (and still trying) to sell our house in Colorado. How do you spell FRUSTRATION?

5. And, our most exciting undertaking of them all, trying to get pregnant. We've tried ever since Connor was born (over 4 years) and finally did IVF starting June 1st. Well, we found out WE'RE PREGNANT!!!!!!!!!!!!! It worked! We are just so ecstatic and feel so blessed. We put in 3 embryos and we'll know next week how many we have. We're so excited and happy!! The baby(-ies) are due April 10, 2010. I feel a family reunion and mega party coming on!!
Here's the start of my "belly blog"; 5 weeks pregnant.


This is our first ultrasound. You can see a small black dot on the lower left side. The doctor saw a second that is not identified here. I guess we'll see next week how many heartbeats we hear!!

I was HEART ATTACKED!

My Young Women and the other leaders surprised me with a heart attack just before girls camp. So fun! Thanks girls...and older girls. ;)