September Recap

September has come and gone, and I still have more to say about it. So here's a bits-and-pieces recap . . .

My 10-month-old baby is no more. How short a month is, and how much she changes and grows.

I've been meaning to do an update on Clara for several months now. I think I have at least three or four to catch up on! Hopefully before she turns one I'll manage to write about her doings and sayings (yes, meaningful sounds/words now!). She is so cute and such fun, as you can see from the photo above.

Over Labor Day weekend we braved the traffic (and were stuck in it, both up the mountain and down) to go to Flagstaff. Everyone enjoyed seeing the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins! We celebrated Emily's birthday and scouted out Seven West, the area Jeremy is assigned for elk hunting (on the border between the Coconino and Kaibab forests).

Grandma and the girls exploring

The view

Hiking with Grandma

Look! A fun ditch!

 

Scott taking aim

Lauren the sharpshooter

Dortha surprised herself by enjoying it!

Back at home, the kids have become obsessed with drawing. I don't object! (The only downside is the piles of treasured masterpieces that no one wants thrown away. I have to do the dirty duty at night after bedtime . . . and Lydia is still mourning and looking for her "picnic" that she drew on a piece of blue construction paper about six weeks ago.)

Abby drew mountains and then realized horizontal lines made them into A's!

Josiah especially has honed his skills in the last couple months. He loves drawing battle scenes, of course. As you can see from the pictures below, in early September his people were heads with arms and legs protruding. Since then he has progressed to more realistic-looking stick people, often accessorized with backpacks, hats, swords, bows, etc.

The extra protrusions from the arms are weapons--swords, mostly; 

one guy here is in jail (see the bars?)

Here you see some landscape elements: mountains with snow, sun, little hovel/house

I believe that's a bridge spanning the mountaintops. The guy below is in jail.

Some guys here have axes, not just stick-swords . . . (I drew the knight)

 

The girls like to attempt to copy Josiah, but they haven't his battle-focused imagination, skill, or patience yet. They often draw meandering shapes and lines and then add faces: "Look, Mama! I made a Llama!" Abby told me after adding eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth to a shape (not pictured, sorry).

Some people floating around . . .

 

When they do take the time to make a character, some turn out pretty well, as you can see from Lydia's drawings below:

"Pa in Flagstaff" by Lydia (later she added a mustache)

"Grandma in Flagstaff" by Lydia

The artist herself with her portrait of Pa

My mom came for a short visit before she flew back to Dubai. She helped me get organized enough to start school with the kids after she left, for which I'm very thankful! Of course, she obliged the kids with lots of games--the "little lamb game" and the rabbit game (accompanied by the "In a cabin in the woods" song) were popular. She snuggled with the kids early in the morning, did laundry, babysat so I could run errands, let Jer and me go on a date . . . lots of good grandma stuff. :)

 

Outtake photo . . . Clara was done!

September here is usually quite hot still--thus all the indoor activity (drawing)--although we had a somewhat milder September this year, I think. The mosquitoes have been so bad in the back yard that outside play time was often abbreviated. But irrigation is irresistible! Josiah, Lydia, and Abby love playing in the water and in the aftermath of mud.

Lydia on the left, Abby on the right

Abby

Lydia

Josiah hosing down

Clara longs to be a big kid and join in their games. Every time they run out back and leave the door ajar, she tries to escape. She doesn't like crawling on the grass much (she does a funny crab crawl on hands and feet--keeping her knees off it), she does love to be pushed around in the coupe car! Josiah, Lydia, and Abby vie for turns pushing her . . . but they're speed-demons!

What would a month be around here without some sort of injury? Abby fell when balanced precariously to pick flowers. She smashed her face into a table. Thankfully the wound was below her eye! The bruising spread to her eye, though, and looked pretty bad for about a week.

Josiah always wants to play war games with PVC pipes outside

The girls long ago mastered the balance bikes Grandma and Pa gave them for the second birthday. They whiz around on those little bikes with superb balance and steering. Lydia developed an interest in Josiah's old blue bike, and she practiced pedaling around the yard. Abby tried it out, too.

One evening at the park, Jer decided on a whim to remove the training wheels and see if the girls could combine their balance skills with their newfound pedaling ability. Sure enough, they could! Lydia was initially more confident than Abby . . .

Lydia

Abby tries Josiah's bigger bike

After that initial foray into riding a two-wheeler, we found two more "bigger" bikes at Goodwill and on craigslist. So Josiah has a "new" green bike, and the girls use his old red one and the "new" pink one Jer found. They're doing so well riding--they've taken some falls, but nothing too terrible, and they're quite confident now. They have yet to learn to start by themselves, though, so the process is still dad-intensive.

Clara loved the swings at the park!

Bathtime got crazier in September when we added Clara into the mix! She loves being part of the crew in the tub . . .

Grandma and Kezzie came down for a few hours one Monday in September! Anna had a meeting here in Phoenix, so Dortha drove with her and did her conference calls from our house. The kids were thrilled to have Kezzie here! And Grandma got to spend some time with them when she finished her work. Here she has them enraptured with a book!

Can there be too many pictures of Clara? I think not. She took her first steps in September. She loves to cruise along the furniture and walls and is tentatively stepping from one object to another, though she can't take more than two or three steps before falling. She loves to be with me in the kitchen when I'm cooking. She pulls out the mixing bowls and metal lids to make lots of noise, and she pulls all the kitchen towels off the oven handle. We love this happy sweetie!

So--there's a little hop through some of our September!

Summer Fun in Flagstaff

In late June to early July, we had an unexpectedly lengthy stay in Flagstaff due to our van's transmission's demise (as explained in a previous post). But what better place to be "stuck" than Pa and Grandma's house? We all enjoyed our time with family and were happy to trade Phoenix heat (record temperatures one weekend!) for Flagstaff cool and monsoon rains!

The Three Amigos in the neighborhood forest

Jeremy rented a car to return to Phoenix for a couple long days at the office. Then he drove back up to Flagstaff with a work computer and worked remotely the rest of the time we were there. We were thankful he only had to take a few days of PTO for the almost-two weeks we spent waiting on our car repair!

(We were surprised to discover Flagstaff rental car companies do not allow for one-way rentals, nor do they typically have cars that can fit a family of six with four car seats. It was just too complicated to try to get our whole family back down to Phoenix with the van stuck indefinitely in Flagstaff.)

We're so thankful for Scott and Dortha's gracious hospitality. We so enjoyed our vacation with them, from scrumptious breakfasts to hikes on Mt. Elden to daily trips to feed the chickens next door. None of the kids wanted to come home once our van was finally fixed, nearly two weeks later.

The kids liked eating meals at Grandma's little picnic table or the patio table in the yard . . . 

The hikes in the nearby forest and our beautiful day at Buffalo park were so fun and refreshing. We all loved the clouds, cool weather, and rain!

Lydia and Abby loved balancing on fallen logs, and all three kids liked climbing the bike jump dirt piles and sliding down. They clambered up rocks, listened for birds, skirted around ant hills, poked at holes along the path, and Abby even sat on a cactus--twice!

 Abby in black shirt, Lydia in pink

As you can tell, they made good use of Grandma's cowboy hats!

I enjoyed seeing some lovely flora after the rains--and Elden was quite green!

What fun it was to have time with the cousins, too!

A, L, K

We saw a lot of Kezzie and Elias while in Flagstaff. Both were over at Grandma and Pa's quite a bit, what with their parents' work schedules and Emily not feeling well. We did see their parents, too; Grandma hosted many dinners for everyone. Our kids enjoyed playing at Kezzie's house one morning before Anna, Justin, and Kez left for Alaska. And Emily and James hosted everyone for a Fourth of July marshmallow roast--a sticky and memorable event! (Unfortunately our camera had run out of battery by then, so I only have phone pictures. Maybe I can upload them--not sure how the quality is for the blog.)

 Abby and E

 Lydia and Elias sporting Grandma's good cooking

For some of the crew, Shashy was another highlight of the trip. Lydia especially dogged Shashy's every footstep. The poor old dog was worn out by all the attention she got while we were there. Abby warmed up to her, but never felt entirely comfortable with her and would still sometimes let out a shriek of terror if Shashy ambled by.

And we can't forget Clara! She loved practicing her climbing skills on Grandma and Pa's stairs, and even could get up a few by the end of our time there. She army-crawled around the house, was fascinated with Shashy, and got over more of her stranger anxiety.