Road Runner Fun

Road runners are funny little birds.  Yes, little.  Apparently the comment made the most often when people see a road runner for the first time is, “Are you sure that is a road runner?  It is smaller than I thought it would be…”  There are two that hang out around my office, and this one decided it was fun to hit his beak on the window.  He did this off and on for most of an afternoon!

Here is just a photo of the little guy.  The colors behind their eyes are really interesting.  It starts with blue near the eye, fades to white, then to orange.  And it wraps around the back of the head!

Bugs, Bugs, and More Bugs

If you don’t like bugs, you probably shouldn’t look at this post.  Because there are some really, really weird bugs in Arizona.  Some are cool, ones that we have heard about but haven’t seen very often before.  Others look like miniature dinosaurs.  Some are poisonous.  Some are not.  All of them are actually pretty fascinating, if you can get over the gross factor.

There are lots of butterflies here, and they are beautiful to watch.

This is one of those bugs that we have heard about, but never actually seen, stick bugs!  We have seen them multiple times since arriving in Arizona.

Another stick bug, this one outside our front door.

A praying mantis!  This one was much larger than the one that we saw on Kwaj.  He was on the screen when I went to let the dogs out one evening.

This is one that I think looks like a dinosaur.  It was about an inch and a half long.  Blech!

Not sure what type of beetle this was, but it was big and ugly!

Ok, it is technically an arachnid, but it is super creepy crawly, and I’ve now seen five of them.

This little dragonfly decided that the antenna on the Tank is a really good place to rest for a morning.  He would fly a way for a little while and then come back.  He was out there for about two hours!

This was a roach beetle thing that flew at me while Dad and I were working in the garage.  Dad killed it with a hammer.

All those beautiful butterflies have to come from somewhere.  This was a big, fuzzy caterpillar on the front porch!

There have been more, but I think this gives you a good idea of some of the creepy-crawlies that we’ve seen!

J’s Soccer

This weekend marked Jason’s first soccer game that we could all go and watch.  It was the second game that Jason played, the third game for the team.  (Jason was sick for the first game.)  It was fun to watch him play soccer again.  His team name is Velocity, and they were playing the Spartans.  And yes, Spartan colors were white and blue, like they are on Kwaj.  It was a close game, ending 4-3 in the Spartans’ favor.

Jason is number 15.

Jason playing offense, headed down the field.

He told me later that he was trying to slide and kick the ball, but that it didn’t work.  I thought it still looked cool.

The ball was coming down from the sky.  I just missed a getting a photo of Jason cheating the ball…

Getting ready to throw the ball in.

Throw!

Depending on who is playing, one brother wears the other one’s watch and wrist band.  This game it was Reuben’s turn to have two watches.

Headed back to the car.

Reuben, Josiah, and Levi all have games coming up this week, so expect to see photos sometime next weekend!

September? When Did That Happen?

Time is flying in the Grand Canyon state!  We’ve been keeping very busy as all four boys have started soccer practice.  Sometimes they are on the same days, sometimes not.  It makes for interesting evenings, but they are all enjoying it!  Games will be starting sometime next week.

Other interesting things in our lives:

Mom finished her first month of “normal” CrossFit!  She completed the month long Foundations course that is required of all new to CrossFit at Paladin Fitness in July and in August started doing the WODs with everyone else.  (WOD = Work Out of the Day)  She is still enjoying it. (Although you shouldn’t ask her if she likes it right after a work out!)  This last week she met one of her short term goals and is excited to set more!

Kathryn is continuing to enjoy her new job.  She also just took the Foundations course at Paladin Fitness in August, and is feeling a little sore after starting to work out “with the big kids”, as she puts it.  But it is a good sore!

The weirdest thing to us here are still the bugs.  At some point there will be a blog post with lots of photos of the weird bugs that we have seen and gotten pictures of here.

Thunderstorm rolling in over Kathryn’s office.  She enjoys eating lunch outside as long as the weather is nice, and is often rewarded with incredible looking clouds.

Rain over the mountains in the distance.

The sun is hiding behind the smallest cloud in the sky!

Another Week in Arizona

Life is starting to get busier here.  The boys are starting soccer practice, Mom and I have joined a local CrossFit gym, and Dad continues to weight lift.  (Hmm…all physical activities, that was not planned.)  In addition to that, we have occasional hikes, walks with the dogs, and continuing to sort things to be sold in the upcoming garage sale!  Football season is also starting soon, and we are excited to not have to get up at 6am to see some of the games!  

Jason and Reuben both had their first soccer practices this week.  Reuben said he had to do a lot of running, but he is the tallest, fastest, and most flexible on the team.  Jason came back saying that practice was easier than practice on Kwaj.  He said, “We didn’t even have to run any moons!”  While he thinks it will be fun, he is missing Mr. Young, his coach on Kwaj.  Josiah and Levi start practice this week and are quite excited about it.  

Unpacking is pretty much at a stand still.  Mostly we just have boxes of books left.  We’ll sort them for the garage sale, and put the ones we are keeping will go back in boxes until we get bookshelves built.  Dad’s workbench is almost done, and soon after that we can start building the shelves!  Thankfully our living room upstairs is rather large, so there is still space to live with the boxes.  

We still have not found a church home, although the boys have started attending youth group at a church near by.  Prayers as we continue to look and ask God where He wants us to be would be appreciated!

A few interesting photos from the last few weeks:

This is how birds stay cool in the Arizona sun apparently, they hide under cars!  There were over 30 birds underneath these two cars.

We have had some fantastic skies the last few nights.  With Monsoon season being here right now, there are lots of clouds to turn colors when the sun sets.

We also have a fantastic view of the valley when there are thunder storms.  None of us have ever seen  as much lightning as we have seen here!

Alaskan Household Goods

Wow, what a week!  We still have some boxes to unpack, but we’ve made a lot of progress.  Here are some photos from our week of unpacking!

Over 24 hours later than we were originally told it would get here, the truck with our household goods arrived!  It had broken down between Alaska and Arizona, which is why it was late.

It was pretty crazy to see the doors open up and realize that our stuff was right up to the doors.   (Note: our stuff did not fill the entire trailer, they had another stop on the way here.)

We found one of BJ’s old name tags from Camp Li-Wa.  Josiah wore it around for a while.

The pile of blankets kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Mom sat in the shade and marked off the numbers of the boxes and furniture as they pulled them out of the truck.

Looking down the stairs into the kitchen.  This is clean compared to what it looked like later!

We might have a lot of books… There are some other boxes in here too, but most of these are book boxes!

Legos have been found!

Looking down the stairs at the kitchen again.  I told you it got messy!

Flattening paper so that we can then get rid of it.

Levi and Josiah unpacking boxes in the kitchen.

Coda enjoyed a nap on the packing papers.

This is what progress looks like when unpacking!

Part of the fun of unpacking is uncovered some fun memories, like the alien glasses that that Dad and I got on our trip to Huston.  We spent a whole day at the Space Center and had a great time!

We also found the vest that BJ wore in some of the plays, and then with The Cubicle Trogdors and Save the Princess.

Mom found the Food Chopper!

Coda isn’t very excited about all the chaos.

More Legos!  Yes!

The packers packed some funny stuff, like tile from the house in Alaska.

California Rasins!

Nerf guns and some of BJ’s clothes make for the boys being silly and having fun.

And he is down!  Josiah and Levi played football with Mr. Scrubby Bubbles.

At least it rained out, so none of us wanted to go hiking instead of unpacking.

Taking a break.

Unpacking Mom’s candlewick dishes, Jason decided that the candle holder looked like eyeballs.

More rain!  It poured pretty hard for a while.

I sat down in the kitchen for a little while, and the dogs quickly joined me.  They were not big fans of the boxes and chaos.  As soon as someone sat still for a little, they quickly laid down near them.

We found seeds and gardening tools!  Not sure if we’ll actually get to use them, but hopefully we’ll get a chance.

Next on the list of things to do:  Have a garage sale!

More Stuff!

Yes, we got more stuff!  We were really excited to get our stuff from storage in Alaska!  The house is now filled with boxes, but the happiest thing to Mom and I is the dining room table.  We will be working hard for a while to get everything unpacked and sorted.  A garage sale is definitely in the works.  Photos will follow at some point this weekend!

Rattlesnakes, Scorpions, and Tarantulas, Oh My!

Flower seen on our hike up Miller Canyon Trail on Sunday.

Going on hikes, walks, and sometimes even just being in the yard and around the house, can be very exciting, due to the critters that we have seen.

About a week after we got into the house we took our first hike into Coronado National Forest (the National Forest that our back yard is up against), and saw a rattlesnake!  We watched it from a good distance away, and it did shake its rattle to let us know it was there.  I was actually glad to hear it so that I know what one sounds like!  It was in a hole in a rocky area, so we did not get any good photos.

The scorpion was much smaller than I expected, and we spotted him around the fire pit in the backyard.  The boys promptly killed it and have been on the lookout for more.

But the scariest, by far (for me), are the tarantulas.  Our first tarantula siting was when one walked into the garage!  We were working in the garage and Dad almost stepped on it.  I screamed rather loudly, and stayed far away as Dad removed it from the garage.  (He took a piece of wood, let it crawl onto it, and then carried it out to the yard.)  Since then there have been two other tarantula sightings.  Somehow I’ve managed to see all of them.  

I don’t think I need to tell you what this is…

But our hikes and outdoor adventures have not been all scary, creepy, crawly things.  We have seen some great scenery and even some old buildings.

We have lot count of the number of rabbits we have seen here.  They are everywhere!  Coda likes the looks of them too, but he hasn’t gotten one yet.  He came really close in the backyard one day, I’m still not sure how the rabbit made it through the chain link fence!

It used to be a building of some sort, not much is left of it now.

There is even less of this building left.  These two are about a mile from the house.

Levi and I, along with some of the other boys sometimes, like going uphill on the trails, then back down by Miller Canyon Road.  This is from the road as we were heading back to the house on one of our hikes.

Jason and Reuben doing a little off road exploring.

Beautiful clouds outside our house.

Levi and Josiah, on the road, headed home.

Can you find the glass angel in the tree?  We were surprised the first time we saw it!  And it is still there.

About two miles up the trail from our house, back on the road headed home.

Getting dark as we walk back to the house one evening.

The boys and I drove up to the end of Miller Canyon Road on Sunday, and gave Miller Canyon Trail # 106 a try.  It was more challenging than the trail directly behind our house, but still very doable.

Believe it or not, there is an owl in this tree.   It took us a while to spot it, but some other people on the trail told us about it.  I still have trouble finding it in the photo, and I was there!

The wildflowers here are very different from ones we have seen before.  It is fun to see flowers we have never seen before!

Another disappearing building.  This one was much bigger, complete with a tree in the middle!

On the tree in the triangle area under the rock in the middle is a colorful lizard.  This was the first one we saw that was not all brown and grey!

Tired boys, almost back to the truck!  The buildings that are closer in the background are part of the bed and breakfast at the end of Miller Canyon Road.

Cool Cars

One of the admittedly fun things about being back in the states are the different types of cars.  I find different types of cars interesting, although I couldn’t tell you what they are, I can tell you if I like them or not!  And then there are the ones that just make me laugh.  Thanks to my phone, I can take photos of these cars, and just for fun I thought I would share a few of my favorites with you.

Ok, so this one wasn’t the car, it was the sticker.  My truck will have one soon.

I couldn’t decide if they were calling Batman, or if it was Batman in disguise.

Just a cool car.  I embarrassed the boys because I took the photo as the owner was coming towards the car.

Yes, we are planning on going to this.  And yes, there probably will be another post on cool cars at that point!

While this is admittedly a bad picture, this is a Polaris Slingshot.  They are technically trikes and you need a motorcycle license to drive one in the state of Arizona.

And these were just cute.  A VW bug and Mini Cooper convertibles right next to each other.  The only thing that would make it better was if the bug was a classic!

Christmas in July

That is what it felt like when our Kwajalein household goods shipment got here!  We got four crates one day, and the tri-wall the next day.  (Don’t ask, no one knows how they got separated.  We were just glad we got everything in the end!)  It was a busy, tiring, but good day helping get everything into the house and beginning to unpack.

It’s here!  It’s here!

First crate is unloaded.

The boys had a blast going through the boxes and finding their toys and clothes!

A lot of the boxes got put in ‘Siah and Levi’s room, so the boys spent time int here unpacking boxes and putting things together.

Putting together the coat rack that the boys use for their hats.

Levi was super, super excited about getting the action figures back.  We had to keep telling him to be patient, they would be found eventually!

Boxes of stuff to go downstairs.

The action figures have been found!  Josiah and Levi were just a little excited.  (Note that Levi brought his action figures from inside out to reunite with the ones in the box. even though he couldn’t get the ones in the box out yet.)

One bed in place, one bed to go.

One of the movers noticed this moth on the roof over the front patio while bringing things inside.  It was definitely the biggest moth I’ve ever seen, with a wingspan between 4 and 5 inches!  Thankfully it was happy to just sit there the entire time we were going in and out the front door.  I’m not sure what we would have done if it got inside!

Levi got back the blanket that I made him for his birthday this year.

Jason and Reuben worked hard and got the bunk bed put together!

Mom found the iron.  We can iron clothes (some in desperate need of it) again!

Ever flat surface gets covered with stuff as we unpack boxes.

The movers commented on our crates being heavy, and we told them there were a lot of books.  Yes, that is over 20 boxes of books!

  We actually got most of the boxes inside before noon.  We had to hurry up and finish, as there were clouds coming over the mountains.  While it did not actually rain, it certainly looked like it was going too!  Then a quick lunch, which we share with the movers, and then back to unpacking boxes!

Coda was very happy to have his chair back.  He has missed having a designated spot to curl up during the evenings!

Coda came to my room and I told him to lay down.  He looked around at the mess and just laid in the doorway.

We have made a lot of progress unpacking at this point.  I think the main boxes left are the ones that we have started putting things for our garage sale in!  We plan on having a huge garage sale once our Alaska household goods get here.  It will be very interesting to see things we haven’t seen in almost two and a half years!