It's always fun for everyone when Grandparents come!

Two weeks ago Dave's parents came down to visit- we had such a good time with them!  We tease them about visiting Arizona in August- it's not really the best time to come down- but we managed to find plenty to do despite the heat.  Several days Dave spent time driving them around the area and showing them our neighborhood and such- we are trying to talk them into retiring down near us!  We went to a few of the builders and looked at model homes together.  Dave and I have always liked looking at model homes, even if we're not in the market to build or buy, so it was fun to go around with Bill and Bec and discuss the pros and cons of different floor plans and such.

On Wednesday we pulled Ellie out of school and all drove down to Kartchner Caverns, a big cave about an hour south east of where we live.  They have a nice museum that we browsed for a while, then we rode the tram up to the cave and took the tour.  Sadly cameras were not allowed so no pics of the interior, but it was a neat cave with some beautiful cave formations including a massive six-story column formation in the main cave.  

We did the Pima Air and Space Museum on Friday.  We rode another tram around the outdoor part of the exhibit and saw a whole bunch of historic aircraft ranging from tiny unmanned drones to the enormous Super Guppy - a blimp looking plane used to haul large loads across country. Then we went indoors and browsed around the hangers with the indoor exhibits.  All the volunteers were really helpful and shared a lot of fascinating information about the exhibits.  We saw tons of neat aircraft and space stuff.  My favorite things to see were the Aerogel and the prototype one-man helicopter.   Aerogel is a solid substance that is one of the least dense materials on Earth- you can see through it like smoke but it can hold an incredible amount of weight and it is an incredible thermal insulator.  It is just kind of cool to see what we can make with science these days.  The helicopter was basically a backpack with a column coming up the back and blades on top designed for individual use.  They tested them during WWII, but gave up on them because the idea of using human legs as landing gear turned out to be a problem.  If your legs buckled on impact and the blades hit the dirt they became masses of shrapnel.  I guess that didn’t work so well.  It was a pretty cool idea though.  

We spent hours there and probably could have spent several more if we weren't hungry and on a deadline to get back and pick Ellie up from school.

  

As you can see it is a lot of work to have so much fun.  Beckey and I couldn't resist this little photo op of Dave and Bill grabbing a quick nap.

On Saturday we all went up to Mt. Lemmon for a picnic.  Mt. Lemmon is a huge mountain at the north end of Tucson with a gorgeous scenic drive up to the top.  We drove part way up and had our picnic lunch and let the kids “hike” around the mountainside a while.  They also collected rocks.  The mountain is all this quartz with a high mica content, so ALL the rocks glitter.  I think we had a few pounds of rocks come home with because they were all so pretty.   We went the rest of the way to the top where there is a tram that is a ski lift in the winter and a little village.  Dave, Ellie, Bill, and Beckey rode the tram, but I didn’t feel comfortable taking the little kids on it so we stayed at the bottom.  After they got back we got some fudge at the general store which I reluctantly shared with the kids and then it was time to head home.   

It was so nice to have Bill and Beckey down, and especially for our kids to get to spend some time with them.  The kids just loved having Grandma and Grandpa in town and were pretty sad when they had to leave to go back home.  We love you Mom and Dad and hope you had as much fun as we did- thanks for visiting and come back anytime!

Twice the fun

I wanted to get a few pictures of my "twins" so I asked them to smile and give each other a hug.  This is what I got.  It cracked me up to see how silly they were together!

Back To School

Yeah, I'm a bit late on this one. Here are my beautiful girls- Ellie started second grade this year and Amari finally got to start her preschool last week- she loved it! She could hardly stand it when Ellie started school the week before she did and asked me repeatedly every day for weeks when it would be her turn. I got her a pink backpack that she loves to load up with books and toys and take to school. When the big first day of school came she was all ready with her pink outfit, pink backpack, and pink shoes. Can you guess what her favorite color is? The only thing better than pink is pink with sparkles.  She had such a good time at school this week and I think she will really enjoy the rest of the year. She is not shy at all and when I dropped her off she ran upstairs without a backwards glance to play with the other kids. I was saying goodbye to an empty stairwell- I was probably more anxious for her than she was! They learned the letter “a” and the number “1” this week although when I asked Amari what they learned she said “we learned apples.” It’s good to know apples too.

Ellie is enjoying her second grade and was elected as a student council representative for her class.  She loves riding the bus but has a hard time getting up at 6am- she is not an early morning person just like her mommy!

I love my smart girls!