October 28th Masquerade Ball

This week we had the privilege of hosting a sweet 16 party at our house. It was for a young woman in our Ward who was planning on having her party at her apartment complex but their Clubhouse wasn't finished in time for the party. So we were happy to host it here. It was a masquerade ball. Her grandmother made her a gorgeous dress, it was peacock themed. It was very intricate intricate and beautiful. Olivia, Holman, Bella and I had masks and joined the party it was super fun. Plus we did a deep scrub of the house in order to prepare for it 😀 That is always a win to hosting! She had a lot of friends come out and support her and a lot of really personal and thoughtful gifts.

Bella was still at work when we took this pic before the party.

This picture is of Olivia and I sitting on the side of the road waiting for Bella to pick us up. Since we only have two cars right now one car is with Benjamin at work and then Bella and I share the otger car for the afternoon. Usually it works out fine other times it's quite the scheduling juggle. On this day Liv and I went to a doctor's appointment. Bella dropped us off and she went to go pick up everybody else. We finished the doctor's appointment early and thought we could walk the mile to the main road so that Bella could pick us up on the way to Adrianna's Activity Days which starts 15 minutes after school gets out and is 30 minutes away. It was quite fun we sat on the side of the road and took this picture.

Sunday October 21, 2018

Franklin and Parkin after their first soccer game of the season. They both play goalie and defense. They looked great and saved a lot of shots.  Go Bulldogs!!

Fall break October 14th

We had/have an opportunity to host a super fun foreign exchange student from Spain. He is 16 and his name is Guillermo. His regular host family had a family emergency and he needed a place to stay for the week of fall break. The previous week he was staying with friends of ours, but they were going out of town for fall break so they asked us. We said sure as long as he is cool with camping. He attends my alma mater. Bella and Olivia asked their friends at Sahuaro if they knew the foreign exchange student. Their good friend Jordan is his friend so we invited Jordan to go with us. 

We went camping for fall break to Parker Canyon Lake. 

His host family is still out of town. He was supposed to go to a different family but he's been having to move around so much we offered to keep him till the host family returns. We have had him for 14 days now. He is outgoing and loves soccer and can play just about anything on the piano!

Benjamin and I back in school!

On Friday night Benjamin and I went to aa wate harvesting class. It was so much fun. We learned all about water harvesting in Tucson. They showed us pictures of the 1940s when the washes and rivers were running in Tucson and then they showed us subsequent photos of the 1980s when all the washes were dry. The aim of this group is for people to learn how to rain water harvest so that the water table below the surface will rise up and be able to maintain what we naturally should be able to have here in Tucson. People think when they see water running down the street to washes that that's helping our aquifers. But it's not it's really just running past Tucson into Marana & beyond. They want to teach people in Tucson how to capture the water so that we can grow sustainable greenery here. We had an awesome storm today and went out and watched where our water runoff takes place. We can't wait to capture this rain water to change our landscape. They offer a consult to come out for a fee and then they make a plan for you on how to capture the water, we're so excited. Especially because our neighbor does not want to sell her unused well. Now maybe we won't have to buy it from her!

this is at the west side of our property several neighbors use this road that floods every time there's a heavy rain. Can you imagine if we could harness this water before it hits the road?

These two pictures are of our wash. We're going to keep that water booyah!