The kids must want another dog. I read somewhere in a tip book for manipulating parents that if you beg for a new baby your parents will settle for a dog every time. Nathan periodically has asked over the years for a new baby, but lately they have both been on the band wagon for a sister. I've asked what they would do with one and they excited exclaim "play with her". I tried to remind them they don't feed the hermit crabs they were so loving going to care for. I've even warned them that having a baby doesn't guarantee a sister, Nathan yesterday finally decided he'd settle for another girl 'thing' in the house. I told them I'm positive one of the hermit crabs is a girl. They didn't like that answer, they still want a sister. I told them they have Sam. That's as close as they are getting.

After this week, I think things might return to a more normal pace for a bit. I was in Arizona for a conference last week. Don't know whose brilliant idea it was to have a conference in Arizona in September, it was HOT! I guess hotels are cheap in September there. It was a good conference though. I have another one this week. At least it is local but my company is putting it on so it's a bit more work than just going. The weather here was perfect this weekend and the kids came up with the idea to eat on the deck for no reason at all. It was nice and relaxing, we even stayed out and played Blokus afterward. I got some weird nesting bug and wanted to deep clean the house yesterday and the family helped out. The kind where we scrubbed walls and baseboards, dusted the ceiling and fans and light fixtures and moved all the furniture that weighed less than a hundred pounds or more. I topped it off my having all the carpets in the main rooms steam cleaned today. Feels much better just knowing it doesn't just look clean, it really is really clean.

Nathan has another loose tooth. He is loving school and has gotten perfect scores on all his math, reading comprehension and spelling tests so far.

Tonight Paul had a training so I took the kids to the library (was planning on going anyway) to see the Fire and Ice show put on my Mad Science. It was pretty neat. The guy did experiments with flash paper, ph levels, and dry ice. They were impressive to me and I even learned a few things, the kids had a blast. One of the experiments is tasting farts (carbon dioxide gas) that goes over well with all the kids.

I can see all the leaves starting to change. The actually started over Labor day when were were camping, I think they are going to peak this week so we'll try to head up the canyon this weekend.

Yesterday, we had friends over for a BBQ, Paul wanted to show off the new grill he got for our anniversary. We also had a variety of dishes from the garden. The temperature was perfect and we ate out on the deck. Today we headed up to Snowbird for Oktoberfest. Our renters work there and were going to try and get us on the alpine slide. We made it up the tram and then a storm blew in and it dumped rain. Everything else was closed for the day. The kids did get to bungy-trampoline which they thought was pretty fun. After we got home I took them down to the Tanner Park/Canyon Rim park where their grandpa hikes a lot and told us that some kids spent an awful lot of time building dirt bike trails. It was little boy bike heaven. It was really impressive. It has to be around five acres and it looks like they used backhoes, but from what I hear it was just local kids. Actually, it was I think for kids a tiny bit older but we ended up being the only ones there so they got to really play around and get the hang of it without worrying about getting run over. Andrew is ferocious on his bike.

toothless

We went camping again for Labor Day. We're usually out of town and although we were again this year, we camped near Heber Utah and I finally managed to get to Swiss Days for the first time ever. It was pretty neat. Nathan lost another tooth the first night we were there. That's three teeth in two weeks. He has more gaps than teeth now.

We had amazing sunrises and....

Sunsets.

Played lots of games and had lots of fun!

Now back to school....

We asked Andrew if he liked kindergarten, and he does -but he says there are too many girls in his class.

catch up

Nathan started school last week and is enjoying it. He sure has a lot of homework for 2nd grade. Andrew is excited to start later this week. Nathan also lost another tooth this past Saturday and has another one loose. We were joking that all he'll have for Christmas is his two front teeth - all the ones to the sides are falling out. We had Sam for the whole weekend as well which was lots of fun. For now some more pics from the cruise and hopefully later this week I'll get some up from this weekend.


This is from our excursion - we rented sand rails and riding in Guadalupe Valley.

This is at the Ensenada port. I thought the flag was really big, we found out it is the second largest flag in the country. The largest is in Mexico City. They told us to use it as a guide to get back to port when you were out sight seeing - it works, you can see it from everywhere. We also saw the actual Black Pearl from the Pirate movies - it's docked down here because maintenance is less expensive. It was behind a really big fence so the picture is only of the top half and not really good.



This is from the upper deck, there were twelve decks.

These are the other couples from our dining table. They were all cruising for their anniversary as well. The couple to our right was at 17 years and then next to them was one year.