Indoor Activities...

One of our favorite places to go when it is hot outside, which it is at least 4 months of the year here, is the Mesa Southwest Museum. It is a 15 minute drive from home and has lots of great hands-on activities for the kids.

Digging for dinosaur bones

Doing a dinosaur rubbing

Playing dinosaurs

Drawing a T-Rex

Being on TV with the green screen

When wrapped in green, they just show up on the TV screen as a floating head

In the copper mine

Panning for gold

Maya's Birthday in the Forest

I know I haven't posted for awhile, so we are going all the way back to May, when Maya had her birthday. She told us she wanted to have it "in the forest" so we went camping for the night up in Payson at our favorite spot. We had a great time and it was a scenic and relaxing place for a birthday celebration. Here are a few photos:

Maya likes the book and video, The Lorax. She got the bird character from it for her birthday and had a lot of fun with her.

She was really into space in the spring too, and wanted a rocket ship cake.

She also got a guitar that she was really excited about. This was taken in the morning, and yes, this is what her hair looks like every day before we brush it.




By the park we like to go to sometimes in town, there is a war memorial we had never gotten a good look at before.

The park is about 15 minutes away from the campground and is right in the town. It is beautiful there and a fun place to play and do skateboarding tricks.

For anyone who has never had a birthday in the forest, I highly recommend it!

Maya's Shopping List

Really Clean Glass

Here is the same image, not cropped. I liked Alison's guess that she wanted it as a pet though. That was close...we have a good-sized empty aquarium at home that we have been wanting to get fish or a lizard for. A few weeks ago, when we were talking about it, Maya told me she wanted a marine iguana to live in it. I thought, since we can barely handle caring for two cats, it might be a bit much to get a marine iguana shipped to us from the Galapagos Islands...Here is a four minute video about marine iguanas if you are curious. The photo below is from Google Images. For now, we will continue to see our huge reptiles at the zoo instead of the living room.

Guess How

Guess how Maya is this close to a komodo dragon without anyone worrying about it...

One Reason We Are Tired...(as a profession)

When you have a few minutes, watch this video. I am taking a history content class on Thursdays for the past few weeks (we have to have 180 professional development hours every seven years or our certificates expire... I guess they figure we don't have enough going against us). Anyway, my teacher showed us this video clip which I had seen on TV a long time ago...totally hilarious.

Obviously I am not on Spring Break anymore and haven't been updating much...I'll add more soon.

For the Star Wars Fans

Pod Racing...