What's up July?

I have only blogged 5 times in July and compared to years past, this is unusual. It just seems there are more important things on my to do list and updating my blog is not at the top. So here's a quick list of what we have been up to in the month of July.

1. We had a low key 4th at home because we spent the 2nd and 3rd in downtown Mesa enjoying the celebration of freedom and all the fun free events they offered. I did blog about this here.

2. Michael started a new job on July 5th! He works for Go Daddy doing security and he is loving it. He works 12 hours shifts from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and every other Wednesday. His schedule is similar to his police days so it didn't take that much getting used to but one perk is he gets off right at 6 unlike when he worked overtime for the PD and we never knew how late he would be home.

3. I have enjoyed spending as much time as I can with some wonderful friends of ours who are leaving in less than a week to move overseas to north Africa. I have had fun helping them pack and prepare for their move. I am not excited about saying goodbye which will come later this week.

4. We celebrated Anna's Gotcha Day on July 9th! Actually we celebrated on the 8th becasue daddy had to work on the 9th. You can read about that here. She also enjoyed a week of Vacation Bible School at church. She had a great time and is still talking about it. We love seeing Anna grow in her walk with Jesus and learn about Him as her Savior.

5. We have enjoyed having friends over, the kids have hosted playdates, and have been going to playdates. Jadon has gone to Sunsplash twice with his friends, and had one sleepover at a friends house. The social part of life is certainly a top priority for him right now.

6. I attended the homeschool convention with my mom, Michael had to work so he wasn't able to go with me. He was pretty bummed as we both look forward to this every year. My mom and I had a great time together and as always, we learned a lot. I came home with $7 to spare from our curriculum budget. That should purchase some school paper and pencils and other supplies we need to get the year started off right. I'm really excited about our curriculum this year! I'll blog about that another time.

7. We still have 3 more weeks of school off before we start the new school year. I'm looking forward to some more down time and relaxing before our busy school year starts up!

8. I've been working on writing a Bible study based on the OT book of Zechariah. I'm really excited about it. It has certainly been a calling to write it and I can't wait to see what God has in store for this study. I posted something on facebook last week to see if I could get a group of gals together that would be interested in reading and doing the study with me as I write it, I had 17 responses. These gals will receive a weekly email with the study attached and they will do it at home and send me any feedback they may have. I'm pretty excited as they will be a vital part of creating this study.
The first email goes out at the end of this next week!

9. Michael and I will be celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary on Thursday. Since Michael has to work we will be going on a date on Wednesday. We decided to do a daytime date. We are pretty excited. Sushi is definitely on the menu for lunch! :)

10. As you can see we have not traveled anywhere this month. Due to living on a tight budget and Michael being out of work for a time, we didn't have any extra cash to go anywhere. Dave Ramsey would be very proud! It has certainly been a lesson on being content as we see friends and family traveling and going fun places. The funny thing is our kids haven't once said anything about it. They seem totally content. I certainly can learn a lot from them. We made a summer wish list at the beginning of summer keeping in mind the things on the list needed to either be free or cost very little money. Our list included these things:

Going to Cabella's in Glendale (check)
Bowling (check, we bowled for free on the 4th and only had to pay our shoe rental)
Swimming with mom and dad (check, we have a pool but it's not very often that all 5 of us swim at the same time, the kids put this at the top of the list, it was obviously important to them.)
Going to the mall (check, check, check)
Going to the movies with dad (check, check)
Going to friends houses (lots of checks)
Playing a family game (check, we played Whunu (sp?))
Bass Pro Shop (check)
Ikea (check)

The things left on our list are:

going to our friends cabin for a few days(we are hoping to do this in August, we need to see if it's even available when we would like to go)
Taking Camden and Anna to Sunsplash (Jadon has already been twice)
Spending the night at a local resort (we are hoping to make this happen sometime soon, the summer rates are great!)
Driving to the white mountains (we may have to do this in the Fall as it would require us to spend the night but we will see?)

And that's all folks! It's hard to believe that July is almost behind us and August will be here before we know it!

Underwater pictures

I really don't know if I like underwater pictures or not. In a way, I find them kind of creepy. I don't know what it is? Michael has a dive camera that he uses when he scuba dives so I thought I would give it a try. I had a hard time seeing the display screen underwater so I was guessing if the subject was even in the frame. As you can see I didn't always get it right. So here is attempt #1 at underwater pictures. I still find them kind of creepy.

It's just so Camden

This picture simply states, "Camden was here."

 Following his trail of evidence, I find this. His broken drill that has been gutted.

 And what did he create? A bomb.

 I can't wait to see what God has in store for my invention creating, motorcycle loving, energizer bunny living, social butterfly of a boy. I know God has great plans and I can't wait to see how they unfold.

Gotcha Day, July 9th!

It's hard to believe that it was 6 years ago on July 9th that we got to see and hold our daughter for the first time. It was one of the most special days of my life and I will never forget how amazing it was. We make a big deal out of this day because it's the day Anna was born into our family even though her date of birth is February 10th, 2005. She was delivered into our arms on July 9th, 2005 at 1:15 p.m. inside Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in front of 40 of our closest family and friends. So this year on her Gotcha day she had one request, to get her ears pierced. So that's exactly what we did. But first we had to do a little photo shoot. 

 We headed to Claire's Botique and of course typical Anna style, she was confident and showed no fear.

 She did get very serious but didn't act nervous.

Not even a flinch or one little tear.

All done! 

 It was a very special day celebrating our beautiful girl. We are so blessed to have the honor of raising our daughter, I'm so thankful for the amazing gift her birth mom gave us when she made the decision to place her up for adoption. I can't even imagine what that must have been like and I do hope someday we have the honor of meeting her.

Holy Haboob!

The other night we went outside and saw this!

It went from daylight to dark night in a matter of seconds, it was so eerie!

And after the Haboob past, the dust was still so thick in the air. The next morning we woke up to this!

And the reason for not posting on my blog in a while, I've been a little busy dusting and dusting and dusting...

Celebration of Freedom

Our 4th of July celebration started on the 1st when we went to downtown Mesa for the Celebration of Freedom. We had a blast despite the intense heat. Thank goodness for misters, snow cones, and water slides. It really was a great time!