Meteor Crater

For a while now Chet has been wanting to go on a road trip. I'm not sure why, because my idea of a good time is not sitting in a car for hours at a time looking at nothing. But Chet suggested that we do a road trip through California, up the PCH, because then we would all get what we wanted-- a road trip and a Disneyland trip. ;)

We left Friday when the kids got out of school and made our way towards the coast. San Diego was our first destination but from our house that is a 13 hour drive. No way we were doing that in one day! So we drove to Phoenix and spent the night.

As we were driving through Arizona we saw signs for the "Meteor Crater". Chet got really excited and decided this was something that we needed to see. We took a slight detour and headed towards the crater. Not until we were almost there did a sign inform us that it closed at 7. It was 6:55. We decided to go anyway and made it just in time. As long as you are in by 7 you can stay until 7:30. We skipped the museum and headed straight for the crater.

Fifty thousand years ago a meteor travelling 26,000 MPH hit the earth. The hole it left is 550 feet deep and nearly a mile across! It is a very grand sight...

Meteor Crater from the sky.

That rock jutting out of the top is the size of a 2 story house!

There are several observation decks to view the crater from. It was quite windy at the top deck.

You could see for miles from the top deck. The view was amazing!

Harris wanted to take a picture next to this holey rock to send to Auntie Lindsay...

Beautiful Liv posing on the middle deck.

I'm glad that we stopped to see the crater. After all it isn't always about the destination but the journey.

Schools Out

Yesterday was the last day of school. The kids had a great year! They made so many friends, loved their teachers and learned so much. I was really quite concerned with the kids going to a Montessori school. Their style of teaching is so freestyle that I was worried that they wouldn't learn as much as they would at a regular school. I was wrong. Harris advanced so much more than Liv did when she was in kindergarten. He is reading on a 3rd grade level and was doing long division math and double digit multiplication by the end of the year! Liv was in a combined 4th 5th and 6th grade class and was reading on a High School level and finished all the math through 6th grade! I am glad that we chose this school and am looking forward to what they will learn next year!

Harris and his teachers Mr. Ian and Ms. Erica. Wonderful teachers!

 

A teary eyed Liv and her teachers Mr. Rob and Ms. Megan. She loved them!

 Liv was having a really hard time saying goodbye. Especially to Ms. Megan. In Montessori, to help the kids have consistency in learning, they have the same teachers for 1st, 2nd and 3rd and then 4th, 5th and 6th grades. For next year they were able to hire a new teacher and so they had to move 5 kids from each class to the new teachers class. Liv was worried that she would be one of the ones moved but she got lucky and gets to stay in Mr. Robs class for the rest of her time there. But because they hired this new teacher the classes are small enough, 20 kids each, that the teacher no longer needs an aide. So Ms. Megan will not be her teacher next year, which is why she was having such a hard time saying goodbye. On a positive note, however, Ms. Megan will now be Mr. Matts aide who just so happens to be Harris new teacher for the next 3 years. I'm pretty sure Liv will spend a lot of time volunteering to help in that class. ;)

Have I Mentioned...

...that I love the ABQ Zoo!

Chet has been out of town the last 2 weeks and so when he got home on Thursday we picked up the kids and headed to the zoo. I was really excited to go because the burrowing owls had 4 baby chicks! Owls are my very favorites. :)

The daddy and 3 of the babies.

See where the Daddy is standing guard? There are 2 burrows there each with a chick poking his head out.

After quite a while ;) we went and got some ice cream and then headed to the cat walk. The lions are at the end of the cat walk. The first time we went to the zoo we got a surprise when the male lion started roaring. Unfortunately we only had Chets phone to take video with so the quality wasn't very good. Now whenever we go we are prepared and this time we weren't disappointed!

They were both just lying around when all of a sudden the male stood up and started roaring at the female who was sleeping under the tree. She then started roaring back at him. It was a quick conversation but apparently they both had something to say. :)

Brace Face

This morning at 6:30 Liv came into our bedroom in tears. Why? Well, yesterday she got her braces on. And while the procedure was quick (45 minutes) and painless the actual straightening of the teeth is not.

In the next 6 weeks the special wire that they put in will pull all of her teeth down from the top and up from the bottom so that they are all even and level. To accomplish this, every night she has to rinse her mouth with hot water or drink something hot. This will tighten up the wire which is heat activated (things have really advanced in the 20 years since I had braces). When she goes back to the orthodontist they will put in wires to do the actual straightening. The whole process will take about 8 months.

I love her smile and can't wait to see the finished product! 

Expanded

Today, after 3 long months, Liv got her expander off! I thought that it was just going to be grinding the cement off and then popping off the expander, but I was wrong! It did start with drilling, but when the assistant (whose first day it was!) went to suction her mouth, she stuck it too far down her throat and gagged her. After recovering from the gagging and then rinsing her mouth, the orthodontist grabbed some big plier things and started to "pop" the expander off. While he was working on getting it out, he kept commenting on how tight it was on her teeth. I figured that he would drill a little more of the cement off and then try again, but he just kept tugging on it. When it finally popped off, Liv let out a little scream and as the orthodontist pulled it out of her mouth there was a TOOTH stuck in it!!! He said that this occasionally happens when a baby tooth gets loose under the expander. Since the tooth wasn't quite ready to come out, she bled and bled and bled! She finally stopped bleeding and they were able to clean the rest of the cement off and send us on our way. When got out to the car Liv broke down and cried. She didn't know why she was crying just that she was scared when it happened and that her mouth hurt. Poor girl!!



Poor unsuspecting Liv ready to get her expander off...

The damage..

She gets a week for her gums to heal and then we will go back and get her braces on. Hopefully that goes a lot smoother!!

T-Ball Time

This is Harris' first year of T-Ball.  Harris has always shown some good baseball tendencies (good hand/eye coordination, arm strength etc.) and we had some friends in the Ward that also have a 5 year old boy indicate some interest in getting the 2 boys on the same team so we did a little research and finally figured out how to get Harris signed up for some organized sports here in the ABQ (it seemed much more straightforward in Utah).

When I was a child I attempted to play little league baseball and was so terrible, soooo terrible.  I try my best not to transpose my feelings of baseball inadequacy onto my poor son but I think he will do very well despite me :).  (to be fair, my own father went to the Little League World Series and has serious baseball skills).

Already, it's been a ton of fun to watch him.  On to the pictures! I decided to go with captions that would be typical of what I may have been yelling at him from the bleachers (in parenthesis will be my internal monologue and afterthoughts).  This should be good.

Go get 'em, son!  Grrr.... (he is so cute!)

Nice swagger son!  (I love the hand on hip action here.  So funny!)

Run Harris!  Go!  

Catch the ball son!  Nicely done! 

Nice focus son! (this might be a good photo for his baseball card)

Nice swing!  (we've actually done quite a bit of work with him on his swing.  His last couple times at bat had him hitting it all the way to the outfield) 

Keep going! (he is so fast that I almost missed the shot!)

Run home! (you need to zoom in to see the look on his face, pure joy, priceless!)

That's it for now.  I love seeing him enjoy playing sports and will continue to update as the season progresses.

Chet is out, peace!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!!

So, it's Liv's 10th birthday...

10 years old, holy cow! I can't believe my baby girl is a decade old. Seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital wondering what we would ever do with a baby...

Ah, memories. It has been such a decade of change for us and I feel so blessed to have a daughter such as Olivia to have shared it with me. She is such a genuinely good person and truly brings so much joy to my life.

This years birthday was a little crazy. We spend the actual day driving from Moab to Lehi to have a birthday party before we left the next day for a flight to California to be with my family at Disneyland for Spring Break (but that's another post).

Birthday parties at Jann's house are always awesome. She carries on Lisa's tradition of wonderful family parties and we value them even more now that we don't get to participate in them as often as we would like. Thank you Jann for helping my baby girl feel special on her special day.

We took off the next day for some time in Disneyland to celebrate my Dad's 50th birthday and spend some time with Chrys before he left to serve a mission for 2 years. While in California we got to have an amazing family party to celebrate birthdays and a general get together. Special thanks to Grandma Cheryl for such a great time!

So much activity left no time before Spring Break for Liv to have a party with her friends so once we returned we picked a weekend and had Liv invite some of her friends for a party at the local rock climbing gym.

Liv had the chance to attend a birthday party last year at this gym, called Stone Age, and really liked it so when she asked if she could have her party there we said yes.

With that I will now switch to picture mode and will count each as around 1000 words (that should meet Jaime's word count quota that she gave me)

Liv opening gifts the 2 days before her birthday (she had school the next day and we were leaving right after for Moab and then Lehi on her actual birth day)

Party time with the fam!

Liv enjoying getting gifts.

In California the next day at a party with my family and extended family.  It was awesome!

Liv climbing high!

Harris climbing high!

Chet climbing.  (so it doesn't look high because of the zoom but I was actually, at least, 4 feet or so up in the air)

Liv and Jaime decided on cupcakes instead of the traditional cake.  We get these at a place called Cake Fetish here in ABQ and they are fantastic.

Group action photo of the festivities.

Me lighting the...cupcakes.  It was pretty hilarious (apparently).

I think that people were laughing because the candles were "sparkler" ones and kept shooting sparks into the air.

Group picture of all the friends.  So fun!