Last day of summer

The kids have been living up the last couple of days of their brief summer break.  After almost a year of hard work and lucky deals, we've finally gotten our backyard as fun as we can get it.  Las Vegas may not be very family friendly, but I've been thinking the fact that we could afford a house with a yard more than makes up for it for these guys. :)

Zach's bi-annual vacation week coincided perfectly with the kids' school break, and all of the grandparents met us in St. George to go see Aladdin at the Tuachan.  We even got to go backstage and see the sets and costumes.

Anya was the only kid who would stop and pose for me! 

Zach's brother and sister-in-law came to stay with us for a few days while they did a wedding show in town.  He's been making personalized statuettes as cake-toppers.  They're fantastic. 

Zach was determined to find a cheap Guitar Hero set on Craigslist and found one just in time for their visit.  We figured out how to dress the characters modestly and went to town.  One week later, we think Zach realized his true instrument talent wasn't the guitar.  He's played this thing for four days and is already on expert level on drums- ha.  Mia loves the drums, too- I'm thinking we might have to invest in real electric ones someday.  

 

We went to the K12 Back-to-School carnival at the JW Marriot where the girls got to meet their teachers and go on bounce houses for hours.  Even Kael got to go on some, thanks to some awesome K12 volunteers.  I didn't bring my camera, darnit.  I wasn't sure we'd see the teachers, and I was really worried that even without the extra baggage I wouldn't be able to make the long walk from the parking lot through the hotel and casino to where they set up the carnival. 

Their teachers were so sweet- we'd talked with Anya and Bree's that morning so she could assess their reading level, having no idea we'd be seeing her later that evening.  She kept hugging them and telling them she was so excited to have little smarty pants in her class.  Bree regaled her with the story of her toothfairy visit, and like usual didn't stop talking for a good five minutes straight. ;)  

 

I'll have to snap a pic at the next field trip. I'm such a wuss.  Just three months, three months....

Growing

Our family has been looking different lately...


She started complaining about her eyes hurting so Zach just did an at-home vision screening, and sure enough- she's near-sighted. Our doc gave us her Rx and we found an awesome website where we got three pairs of glasses and shipping for about $25. She's got these, some with clear wire, and her funky purple ones. Kael wants all of them on himself.


The obligatory bump shot

This kid lost her first tooth this morning! Actually lost it. She came up to me with this confused look on her face, "Mom- my tooth is gone..." She thinks it came out while she was eating breakfast, ha. Who knows. I'm not gonna go searching, that's for sure. :)

Score!

I can't get over how awesome Craigslist is.  We've been looking at swingsets for a year now.  I've come very close to spending over $100 on a new metal Walmart set, but none of them had a slide, and looked kind of lame compared to some of the nice wooden ones I was seeing on Craigslist.  The problem with those was that we needed Zach to be able to pick it up, and the sellers always said we would have to dismantle it.  Between time and distance contraints, none of the sets I've run across in my sporadic searches have ever panned out.
Last night I happened to see this, the family happened to respond this morning, Zach happened to get work off for a few hours (this has happened once before in the year we've been here, I think) and they happened to want it gone so badly this afternoon before they got in their moving truck, that they gave it to us for $75 and helped him take it down.
It's in pieces in the mini-van.  The kids have no idea we bought it. I can't wait to see what it looks like in our yard.

Yay!