Air Show

Well, I'm momentarily back in the blog world. It seems like I just completely quit when the school year starts and then start up again as the second semester of the school year enters its second half. This year I actually wrote a few posts but decided not to put them up because of their negative slant--kind of like the maxim, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I've had plenty to be grateful for, but as I imagine most everyone can relate, sometimes the negative seems more prevalent.

Anyway, yesterday I was able to relax a little and go with my family to the Aerospace and Arizona Days air show at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Somehow we missed it the first year that we were here, and they haven't had the show for a couple of years, so when we heard that they were going to do it this year, we packed the van and drove to the base. It was interesting to observe the behavior of the different military personnel. Some of those who helped direct the parking were prone to treat everyone like animals (or military personnel of an inferior rank), tersely shouting out orders; while most those who gave tours of the aircraft were very congenial and informative.

Our kids survived nearly four hours out in the sun as we went to the different aircraft parked on the tarmac and watched the different aircraft stunts and maneuvers.

Here Gabs gets to try on an oxygen mask.


Erik loved climbing all over the aircraft and trying to press buttons.


These were some of my favorite planes. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the simulated bombings done with the A-10 Thunderbolt II, the upper plane.


We were about to head home after a short lull in the program, but we were glad we stayed a little longer. We really enjoyed the precision, speed, and sound of the F-16s.


In one of my sister's blogs, we learned that earplugs/hearing protection is advisable with these birds. It was helpful on a few of their passes, but most of the time they didn't come too close.


After a long day in the sun, Erik was ready for a nap. A thorn punctured one of the stroller wheels, so our trip back to the vehicle felt longer than it should have.


As for pictures of myself at the show, I'll spare you! Debs thought I looked like Papa Bear in the Berenstain Bears books.

Would you just hold still and smile?!

This evening we decided we would try to get some family pictures in our desert surrounding, so we grabbed our camera and tripod and headed for the foothills of the Catalina mountains. There is only a small window of time where you get great lighting during the morning and evening hours, and we were hoping to get enough shots during the evening hours to get something worthwhile.

We'll have to rethink that one. Bells and Erik decided not to listen to their parents' warnings to stay away from the cacti, and as a result, we all had a fairly miserable experience. Even if we had taken a photographer with us, we would have been lucky to get them both to smile at the same time. To add to the problems, I didn't use the remote, which meant that we never were positioned quite right. Oh well! At least with some photoshopping, blurring, and sepia-toning, the pictures are somewhat respectable. Now we just have to re-plan a trip to the foothills for another valiant effort--this time with a remote.



When the younger two would have no more of it, at least we were able to get Gabs to look at and smile for the camera.


And when the lighting was gone--which happened much too quickly, at least I could turn the camera on the desert sunset for a moment while Debs and Gabs herded the whining duo to the van!

Trick-or-Treat

I used to always love dressing up for Halloween and going trick-or-treating. Obviously my children feel the same way. This last week we went to a trunk-or-treat activity a few days before Halloween where a lot of people from our local church parked their cars so all the kids could go around and get candy. Bells and Gabs both dressed up as witches and Erik was a little lion this year.

When we tried Erik's costume on him earlier in the month, he wasn't very fond of it.

He seems to have adjusted over the last few weeks.


Scott Evans put his head on a platter and the kids had to grab the candy surrounding his head. The message was clear, "You better not take more than one or he might bite your fingers!"

One lady had a cannon that she used to shoot out the candy.

The kids would then rush to pick it up. There was just one hitch. The cannon kept shooting the candy into a low-lying mesquite tree, and anyone that has been around a mesquite tree knows that they have sharp thorns that can grow to be several inches long.


I couldn't help but laugh at the little kids that would rush over to the mesquite tree and while repeatedly saying, "Ow!" or "Ouch!" they reached and stretched to get the candy from out of the tree. Anyway, it was fun until the kids started to ask an innocent bystander to fetch the candy for them--I was the bystander. After my hands and arms got more scratches than I cared to count, I started to use my feet to pull the candy out, thinking my jeans would protect me from the thorns. Nope! I was pulling thorns out of my pants the rest of the evening.

So let me explain why the candy kept getting shot into the mesquite. The lady wasn't out to get the children, she just didn't have anywhere else to shoot the cannon without having it hit the surrounding cars. If she pumped just a little air into the cannon, the candy would fall on the ground right in front of the cannon and the kids would be bumping into it. Very rarely was she able to find the happy medium that would make the candy land just in front of the mesquite. Gabs' favorite moment was when the candy flew into the tree, scaring a black cat out like it was a horse breaking out of the gates at the Kentucky Derby.

On Halloween night, Debs and the kids made caramel apples, mummy dogs, and cheese-stick fingers. Although it's hard to remember just how much I enjoyed Halloween growing up, I think I enjoyed watching my kids more than going trick-or-treating myself. I'm looking forward to next year!

Daddy-Daughter Campout

This last Friday evening our church hosted a daddy-daughter campout at Camp Zion. The camp is a little higher than 7,000 feet above sea level, and considering the exceptionally warm weather in Tucson over the last few days, Gabs, Bells, and I welcomed the chance to get out of Tucson for a while. I especially looked forward to the trip, since it would allow me to leave all my work behind me for a little while and spend time with the girls.

We started the trip on the wrong foot, unable to find the campsite. Luckily we managed to get cell-phone reception and get some directions from Debs. When we finally arrived, we went straight to the lodge and decorated sugar cookies with frosting, candy corn, and licorice.

The weather was great, but Gabs and Bells, having spent the last three years of their lives in Tucson, were a little chilly. It proved to be a long night with potty trips to the nearest latrine and Bells getting cold on numerous occasions after getting outside of her sleeping bag, but morning finally came, and with it, a spectacular sunrise (unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me when it was at its best). This picture looks out over Tucson after most the color in the sky had already faded.


From the feel of things, I believe it must have warmed up some during the night. That comes as no surprise, however, since temperatures in Tucson for October 17, 2009 climbed up to 99 degrees, which broke the record high for the date by three degrees. If it had climbed one degree higher, it would have set a record in Tucson for reaching 100° at the latest time of the year in recorded history.

As Gabs and Bells went to play with some friends, I spent the next twenty to thirty minutes packing things up and taking the tent down. As I was folding up the tent I saw numerous crickets and bugs that had decided to bed down underneath us. The last critter I saw as I was brushing off the bottom of the tent made me a little more wary than the others. Since moving to Tucson, this small scorpion is the first I have seen in the wild. Apparently I don't get out enough, because I've only seen one tarantula too.


We I enjoyed the breakfast burritos and fruit that was provided for breakfast, and then we traipsed around the mountain playing tetherball and horseshoes. Gabs, who has seen a lot of pictures of my childhood, immediately recognized tetherball as the game I used to play when I was younger. Now when she is older, her kids will be able to say the same thing about her. It's too bad tetherball isn't more popular!

Before heading down the mountain, we hiked to Inspiration Rock and found a little tunnel in it that we could crawl through. As you can see from the girls' faces, it was quite the adventure!

The winding road down the mountain made Bells sick, so we made several stops to enjoy the scenery.
All in all, we had a great time and we're looking forward to our next grand adventure!

Valued Friends

A little over three years ago we moved to Arizona so I could attend graduate school at the University of Arizona. Previously, my wife and I had been attending Brigham Young University. During that time we met the Yancey family, and I even participated in the production of a play that Jason Yancey directed. He was a year ahead of me in school and ended up going to the University of Arizona a year ahead of me. So, for the last three years I have been the beneficiary of someone who figuratively took me under his wing, helping me prepare for deadlines and deal with the stresses of graduate school. Since he was a year ahead of me, I could always go to him if I had questions about classes I was taking, paperwork that I needed to turn in, or to learn about deadlines that were occasionally so "transparent" that you would never know about them unless someone told you about them. Now that Jason has graduated and the Yanceys have moved on, we are left wondering how we ever would have managed without them. Hopefully, we can be the same type of friend to others as they were to us. So, thanks, Jason and Aleece, for being such good friends. Thanks also to our many other friends. We hope you're all doing well!!!

Fairy Magic

Fawndear has enchanted our daughters with her fairy adventures. Things went into high gear when they watched Tinkerbell just before our trip to Disneyland back in May. They were delighted to meet Tinkerbell and Rosetta while at Disneyland, and since then they have made fairy traps, fairies, and tickets to fairy land--which they plan on redeeming as soon as Gabs loses a tooth. This is how it works: The tickets aren't any good unless they can get them to a fairy. So Gabs plans on putting them in an envelope with her soon-to-be lost tooth. The Tooth Fairy will then see them, read them, and then take them to visit the fairies.

During the last month or two, they have created fairies at pixiehollow.com, where they can choose the color of eyes, skin complexion, dress color, leg and arm position, etc., etc. etc. They have given their fairies names like Emerald Twinkletoes, Flora Flutterflower, Sunflower Prettyshimmer, Twilight Candleglow, and Windy Roseflower.

When they put up a fairy trap (a doll's bed and doll dinnerware) it took a fairy nearly a month to come sleep in the bed and leave behind pixie dust (glitter). The girls were so excited you would have thought it was Christmas.

In addition to all this, they are always drawing fairies or making wands of light like those in Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus. This last July Gabs had a fairy birthday party where she and her friends all got fairy wings, which they decorated with glitter and plastic jewels. It's great to see the girls' imagination at work!

Look out!

The last few weeks our son has begun to do a lot of new things. Perhaps his favorite thing to do is imitate others. After Gabs went around the house spraying everyone with a spray bottle, he found the bottle, and pointing it at us, he used his mouth to imitate the sound of the bottle when it sprays.

In a similar scenario, the girls like to throw me kisses after I put them to bed at night or when I'm about to leave to work and school. I act like they are throwing things at me and dodge out of the way. Erik was always "safe," so if I was holding him, their kisses wouldn't affect me. Well, now he has followed suit by throwing kisses of his own. Now I can't even turn to him for help; however, I'm not the only one that has to be careful with the kid. The girls have always loved to dress him up and continue to do so whenever they can.


And even though he doesn't have a whole lot of say in it still, I don't think it will be long before he can hold his own.