Turtle, turtle, turtle… May 29, 2009

I don’t know how I forgot to blog about this!

We went to visit family in RV the 7th-11th this month. While we were visiting with Chaz’s sister, Becca, he came and asked me if we wanted some turtles. I immediately thought of chocolate turtles and thought SURE!

Well he meant REAL turtles! Real BABY turtles! The moment I saw them I fell in love! They are so cute and little and of COURSE we will take them!

She had three and we ended up bringing home 2 of them. The kids love them! They love feeding them! But of course the cleaning of the tank falls on Chaz and I. Me more so since I don’t have to work all day. But I don’t mind. It is time consuming and not enjoyable. But the turtles are just so cool that I don’t mind at all!

Well we got home with them and I immediately started searching the net for care guides and what was needed for properly raising turtles. I knew they were not going to be simple pets but I definitely wasn’t prepared for all that I found!

Sooooo…I set out with a good idea what we needed and the hopes that I could do it somewhat inexpensively! I found a great deal on a tank w/hood. We used a desk lamp and flagstone for a basking spot. A not so cheap UVB bulb and an inexpensive filter that doesn’t work great but does keep me from having to clean the tank every other day.

And here they are…Speedy Squirtle and Dude Crush (renamed Spikey but I like Dude Crush better!)

The first pics of the little guys. These first 3 are Speedy Squirtle.

These three are Dude Crush.

 

Ashlyn holding Dude Crush, I think. They are easy to tell apart but not in a small pic.

Little swimmer…they love swimming around!

And when they aren’t swimming they are basking.

It cracks me up when they do this! It looks hilarious!

And pics from today…they have grown a little bit and of course they still love swimming!

Their Turtle Home! When they get a little bigger we will add pebbles on the bottom. I have been told and read that it takes them a couple years to grow to be 3 or 4 inches. So this tank will last us awhile, hopefully!

The filter is a fairly new addition to the tank…they love hanging out on it and climb up on it from time to time.

So we have lived in Arizona… May 27, 2009

All our lives…and Charlie had never been to the Grand Canyon! When we moved to Prescott Valley we decided we were going to take the kids there. Almost 8 years later…we finally went!

Sunday we were sitting around the table eating brunchfast and I suggested we go since Monday was a holiday and we had nothing planned.

It’s a 2 hour drive from here so we took off early…and it was a beautiful day! It was warm and partly cloudy…and a nice breeze now and then.

We ended up walking around for a few hours and the kids were hungry and tired so we didn’t see as much as we had liked to but we still had a good time!

The kids had just woke up from the ride and weren’t in the mood for picture taking…

 

I didn’t know it when we were taking that picture that it was in the same spot this old one of my fam was taken. I thought that was really cool!

  
Sage was still in a daze here…

Yes trees are more exciting than the GC!

 

It made me so nervous when there were no railings or walls between the kids and the edge!

This California Condor landed on the lower deck of the Lookout Studio and just sat their and pose for everyone for several minutes. Even with people starting to crowd around and creep closer and closer! It was pretty cool!

Ashlyn got right up by it and got some great pics of it!

 

There are interesting buildings to check out there too

El Tovar Hotel

 

The Grand Canyon Railway Depot

The Lookout Studio

And we are outta here!

Congrats Ashlyn!! May 23, 2009

Ashlyn graduated from Kindergarten yesterday! She had been counting down the days for weeks!
She was so excited!

The Kindergarteners put on a cute little program. They sang songs they used to learn their phonograms. They sang the Days of the Week song…And the Months of the Years…complete with the Macarena. Even if the song and dance were pretty dorky, the kids looked really cute doing it singing “”January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December! These are the months of the year!”

Ashlyn getting her Diploma from their Principal Mrs. Franklin.

And with some of her classmates…

Ashlyn’s teacher Ms. Goodwin.

Settling in… May 23, 2009

WARNING!! This is long and RANTISH!

 

I wish the title meant we were settling into a new life, in a new home, in a new town, in a new state…

But it doesn’t…over the last few weeks it seems like anything that can go wrong with anything electronic in this house has gone wrong! Well…mine anyway.

A couple weeks ago I was writing up a blog about our trip to Meteor Crater. Everything froze up and my computer hasn’t worked since. It had been giving me fits for a couple weeks before that too. And of course it is out of warranty… :/ So I have a nice paper weight of a laptop for who knows how long…if not forever. Luckily or unluckily depends on how you look at it, I still have a desktop that is mostly used by the kids. It runs…barely. It will die any day now…but until then at least I have a computer, right?!

Then a week ago I was sending music to my sis…it was all on my external. It froze up and DIED! Every last pic I have taken over the last 7 and a half years and all of the pics I have scanned from many many years longer than that…ON THAT DRIVE! And…yeah…no I hadn’t backed it up for TWO YEARS…I CRIED for two days…especially after I searched for recovery prices… :’(

Well I finally found a place in the Valley that is considerably cheaper but it still makes me sick to think if I had just kept up with backing up to disk this wouldn’t matter! And I could go spend a hundred bucks on a new drive and be done with it! LESSON LEARNED! Only now…I am finding that the DVD-ROM on this lovely computer doesn’t work…so yay! I can’t back anything up until I get a new external…

ONE MORE THING TO BE IRRITATED ABOUT!!

Well…anyway…someday I am buying myself a nice new iMac!  And if it isn’t as wonderful and great as all you Mac Freaks out there keep saying… I know where you live!!

But that is long time off…so I’ll just cross my fingers that this machine decides to keep working!!

 

And just for the fun of it and to lighten the mood…my girlies playin’ with their cousin in his John Deere!

Meteor Crater… May 23, 2009

When we travel to RV we always go up through Flagstaff and across I-40. And every time we pass Meteor Crater we always want to go but it is always too late or we don’t have time. So this time when we passed Chaz asked if I wanted to go and of course I did! The kids were all asleep so when we got there they were all a little confused why we had stopped out in the middle of nowhere. They were pretty excited when they realized where we were!

Here they are post wake up still a little sleepy…

It was really funny when we got out to the crater…they were all wonder “Where is it?!” haha! It wasn’t quite as exciting as they were expecting. But they had a great time looking through all the telescopes!

I insisted we go up to the top look out point…and wow…can we say out of shape!? I almost died and it wasn’t that far. Ugh… It was really cool from up  there and I am glad we went up there! I got a nice pano of the entire crater!

It was really windy up top!

I didn’t have any zoom so this is a not so great picture of the stuff down in the bottom of the crater…there is a shaft in the middle and an Astronaut cut out next to a US flag to show scale.

The big rock on the top of the ridge is the size of a house!

Everyone really liked the museum and the movie. It was more exciting than a big hole in the ground I guess. Corbin blew up the moon in a create a crater game. He thought that was awesome! LOL!

This is the Basket Meteorite…

Meteor Crater News ~ March 23, 2009
BASKET METEORITE
IMPACTS TWICE!
Meteor Crater, Arizona – For the second time, the Basket Meteorite has come to rest at Meteor Crater. The first time was during the impact that formed the Crater some 50,000 years ago.
In the 1940’s, local rancher Ernest Chilson found the meteorite on the Bar T Bar Ranch, a few miles from the impact site. During the 1960’s the rock from space was displayed  in the museum at the Meteor Crater Visitor’s Center.
On August 12, 1968 the meteorite was stoleen, not to be seen again until 2006 when it was reported to have been bought at an estate sale in Wisconsin by a local resident. He thought it was brass or copper, and at a weight of 49lbs., hoped it might bring a good price from a recycler.
For some time it was used as a counter-weight for his grandson’s basketball backboard. Then, after watching a television program about meteorites, he suspected that he might  have on on his hands, and eventually made his way to the Chicago Field Museum where Paul Sipiera examined the artifact. Paul identified it as a meteorite, and recognized it to be the Basket Meteorite that had been stolen from Meteor Crater several decades before. The Chicago Field Museum has one of the largest fragments of the meteorite that formed Meteor Crater.
On March 23, 2009 the Basket Meteorite returned home.

 

This is the Holsinger Meteorite…

The largest discovered fragment of the 150-foot (45-meter) meteor that created Meteor Crater.

 

Yummmmm… May 6, 2009

Last week we spent the weekend in  RV! But before we left we had a bunch of fruit and cheese that needed to be eaten! So for dinner Wednesday night we had watermelon, kiwi, cheese, tomato and mango! It was so yummy! The kids kept saying it was the healthiest dinner they have ever had! LOL!