Make it pink

Leslie and Sabrina have requested that the blog background be pink as this is their favorite color.

Trick or Treating

Excellent Halloween Decoration

When we trick-or-treated a home in our ward, they pointed out the scorpion stuck in the spider web above their porch. We were very impressed.

Before church

While Russell was waiting for me to finish getting ready for church on the morning of the Primary Program, he took the kids outside and took their picture.

Posing with the Principal

Leslie's principal dressed as a scarecrow for the carnival. Russell could've gone as Smokey the Bear, as the PTA president was practically begging him and all the other men to, but he stoutly refused. Pity, it would've been a great photo op. (On the other hand, it did get up to 106 that day!)

Piloting the helicopter

For the school PTA carnival, the kids got to see and sit inside an actual helicopter, then watch it take off later.

Honor Roll Award

Leslie's school decided to start doing Honor Roll awards for the lower grades. Her teacher Mrs. DeGhetto awarded her for getting 100% on all her reading comprehension tests.
(The black marks on her upper lip are scabs and bruises from where that horrible, horrible dog bit her lip. And this was 5 days afterward! As Leslie put it, "I don't like dogs anymore, except for new, newborn puppies. And dogs that are asleep. But that's all.)
(She's wearing that particular shirt, rather than her usual school uniform, because it was school spirit week, and Thursday was "wear your favorite team jersey day." Leslie's favorite team is a German soccer team, because that was the jersey they had in her size at Other Mother's, and anyway, we probably know as much about German soccer as we do about the Phoenix Suns, which is what practically all the other kids were wearing.)

Sabrina and Miss Dawn

Sabrina loves preschool at Miss Dawn's house. She learns a new letter every week, and she can still write quite a few of them. She loved passing out gummy sharks to the other kids on Halloween.

Dr. Russ, PharmD. to be

As he left for his first day of rotation, I thought, here's how Russell will look every day from now on!

Right for carving

Pumpkin farm

Leslie, being an artist, chose all the pumpkins which had something special about them. The more deformed, the more she liked them.

Fierce Sabrina

Here's Sabrina's costume with accessories--she has a sword to slay the dragon (in her case, an eight inch stuffed pink dragon) and the horse banner of Rohan on her dress.
We had a lot of fun making these--we took a dollar store sword, stripped off the ugly skeleton designs, painted it gold and silver, and added a horse symbol made of spray painted fun foam.

Leslie's Galadriel dress

Ward Halloween party outfits

Arwen dresses

Just for fun, I made some dresses for Melissa, Cassie and Jessica.

Here's how they're supposed to look.

Dresses

Our state fair is a great state fair!

We went to the AZ state fair. It got up to 96 degrees outside. We heard it snowed in UT the next day. So choosing between the two, we'll pick AZ!

Look tasty?

One of the more creative geology exhibits--everything is made from rocks and minerals.

Legoland

Leslie built a castle, then helped a couple toddlers build one too.

Driving the kids' cars

We loved the games in this building--it had A/C!

Sabrina's true love

Sabrina absolutely loved the petting zoo goats, and we think they loved her back.

The too much fun house

When they saw the mermaids painted on the outside, Leslie and Sabrina just had to enter the fun house. They got a little confused by the moving "hamster ball," so I came into rescue them.

Thrills and fear

Sabrina was excited for every ride. Leslie, not so much.

Brave Sabrina

Sabrina rode the pig on the merry go round all by herself!

Merry go round

Hints from my daughter

After being told for 3 Sundays that her white dress was still dirty and she could not wear it to church, Leslie decided a little reminder was in order. When I came in her room in the morning, this was on her desk. The smiling figure is saying, "Wash this."

Princess Sabrina Eowyn

We decided to be Lord of the Rings characters for Halloween, so I am getting a head start on sewing the costumes. I have already finished an Eowyn costume for Sabrina and an Arwen costume for me; next up we will do an Aragorn for Russell and a Galadriel dress for Leslie.

Leslie and Sabrina as LOTR characters

Holding their props--Sabrina holds a sword, as Eowyn is a knight princess; and Leslie has the light of Galadriel.

As a comparason, here is what Eowyn is supposed to look like

I tried to do a dress similar to the white dress pattern, but with fabric like the green dress.

Arwen from LOTR

Here is what I was aiming for with my costume.

Halloween dress

here is the dress I sewed, pre-dye

The back of the dress

Our awesome trip to San Diego!

A park near Mission Beach

If the children weren't sunburnt and exhausted, we would've made them get out of the car and pose to be in this picture. Leslie has decided she wants to get her endowments out here. Fine with us!
At the aquarium, we were surprised to learn these are animals, not plants.

Waves!

San Diego Beach!

I can't believe the beach was this close all along, and it took us two years of living in AZ before we visited the coast. Now we know where we'll spend weekends next summer!

Imperfect storm

We enjoy watching the houses on our street being built.
We had huge winds and a lot of lightning Thursday night. It snapped our three inch thick tree stake off at the roots, and the tree fell down. At least we didn't have it as bad as other parts of Phoenix though.