The Last first day of School

Senioritis...

Today was Dax's last "first day of school".  He was so excited, he said he was as excited to be a senior today as he was back when he started kindergarten.  During the summer his senior class voted on shirts that all the seniors would get.  It has their last name on the back.  When I initially saw a picture of these shirts I thought they were crazy to pick these because they look very hot. Now that it has arrived and I have seen it, it is a lightweight although long sleeve.  I think it will be ok. Dax is excited to have it.
Leading up to this day, the seniors are pretty much in charge of making smooth transitions for the rest of the school.  They had a few rehearsals of the little skit they did "Oh the places you'll go" then they did small presentations in the classrooms to get the kids acquainted with everything.  Dax did a great job (the teachers told him) he didn't need any guidance or corrections from the teachers, which it sounded like a lot of the seniors did. He had a great day.

Dax in his Senior Shirt

Derek was off to Bogle for 8th grade.  All went well.

Trey was back to Hancock for 3rd grade.  He has two teachers "team teaching" Mrs. Bovard and Mrs. McCall.  It sounded like both teachers wanted to spend more time with their families so they hooked up with a part-time teaching gig.  I'm not fond of this setup.  I never know who is in the classroom which day, communication is a pain.  The kids seem to do ok with it.  The parents don't.  When Trey came home I asked him how his first day went and if he liked his teachers.  He liked them ok, not so sure about Mrs. McCall because she refers to the kids as "sis" and "brother" for example "Hey Sis where is your homework",  "What's up brother"

It rained the first day of school.  I don't remember this happening before.

Trey at his desk, a few familiar kids from previous years in his class.

My three sons.  First day of school 7/24/17

Dax's Big day

July 13th 2017

The time has come... We all felt that Dax was ready to take his drivers/road test to get his drivers license.  He really wanted to get it done before his 17th Birthday next week.

I recently met a new friend who used to work at the DMV, the location where Dax took one of his permit tests and where we planned to go for the road test.  She gave me a few tips to pass on to Dax.  Make sure you look over your sholder (check your blind spot) before you change lanes. Absolute complete stop, she even gave me the route and what they look for on that specific route/road test.

We went in for the road test, there were lots of teenagers that day.  My friend told me she liked to test teenagers the best.  They were always excited, and on their best behavior.  She didn't like testing older people, and she said foreigners were the worst.  They would drive out of the parking lot and start driving on the wrong side of the road.  Anyway lots of teenagers there.  They were all coming back with smiles and signaling thumbs up to their parents.  I was sitting next to a few of the parents waiting for our kids to return.  We all decided that we were more nervous than our kids were.  I didn't see where Dax ended up in the waiting area, I didn't even see him leave to take the test.  I just looked at the window and saw that our car was gone. Then I got really nervous.  I overheard a few of the other kids talking to their parents about the road test.  They said they drove mostly through residential neighborhoods.
A few minutes later Dax came back flashed me a smile and a thumbs up. I was so happy for him.  This was such a long road for him.  He had to take the permit test 4 times, we even renewed his permit once because it expires after 12 months. We didn't feel he had enough practice hours to let him loose at that time. We even spent some time in the private thrid party testing area practicing 3 point turns.  Now the time was right. He said the road test was fairly easy, he drove through neighborhoods as well (not the route my friend told me) and the person administering the test was nice.  YEA YEA YEA driving is more freedom.  So happy to have this done.

17th Birthday

LEGO Batman dive in.

Someone brought these huge Peacock and Flamingo floats.  The kids loved throwing each other off.

Dax is 17.  I know I say this every year but I can't believe it. He is about to start his Senior year. WHAAAT?
We did the dive in movie again.  I don't know that he enjoyed as much this year as last.  The first year we showed Jaws and I thought it was a bit of a disaster with the rain, and low turn out.

The second year we showed Jurassic World, and that was great.  Good turn out, perfect weather lots of fun for everyone.

Third year we showed Lego Batman.  I think Dax was annoyed because I don't think we gave the kids enough time to play and interact before the movie started and there was a lot of chatter, pool dunking etc during the movie.  It is hard to time this right because we have to wait for it to get dark enough for the movie, yet early enough to show up with some day light to get food and get settled etc.  Also finish the party before it is too late. This year we failed to time it right.  I think all the kids had a great time, Dax was mostly annoyed. He was also mad that I invited "extra" people that he didn't even know.  Not really true.  I invted all the youth in the ward (same as last year)  One family has a non memeber foreign exchange student that we don't know because she doesn't come to church, but we know her host family.  They asked if  she could come, of course I said yes.  That annoyed Dax.

It was still a fun night, I told him likely the last time we would do that for his birthday since he is growing up and getting ready to leave home.

Independence Day

We wanted to do something different for the 4th of July this year.

We usually stay home for the 4th,  One year we went to San Diego for the 4th.  It was fun, but we realized a good percentage of  Phoenix goes to San Diego for the 4th.  It was so crowded, long waits everywhere and we saw many familiar faces.  That seemed to be the norm for other areas close to Phoenix, but cooler than Phoenix.  I didn't want to deal with the crowds, so we always stayed home. I do like that it is quiet (pretty much a ghost town here),  and we can see the fireworks from practically our front yard, but I was tired of my kids not knowing what a fun holiday it is.  It is too hot to do anything besides stay inside, watch the Nathan's Hotdog eating contest and play video games.  My kids were never too excited about watching fireworks either. I wanted them to know that Fourth of July is a fun Holiday.  We didn't want to take a big trip far away (trying to stay away from all the places Phoenix flocks to ), so we settled on Prescott, about a 2 hr drive north and about 20 degrees cooler.

The kids got out of the car and they said "this feels good, we're not burning up"  Still 95 degrees but cool to us.  The nights were perfect. Not crowded at all.

We watched the John Adams movie and got our 4th of July history fix.
We went to the Prescott Rodeo, the "Worlds Oldest Rodeo"  Dax and Derek liked it, Trey kept saying "what's the point".  I told him the calf roping etc is what real cowboys have to do all the time, they just turned it into a contest.  He seemed ok with it then.   The bucking bronco and bull riding were out favorite events.  The announcer kept saying "those cowboys are tough" as they would get thrown off and nearly trampled by the 1500 lb angry bull.  I kept thinking they may be tough but they're pretty stupid to mess with that angry animal throwing them around like rag doll.

Ice cream at the Rodeo

Flag shirts



The kids swam in the hotel pool and had a great time with the other kids staying at the hotel.  They didn't want to get out and go to fireworks.  They finally got out, but still not interested in Fireworks.  Curtis and I left them and drove to a hill and watched the fireworks ourselves.  It was great.

My annual "Patriotic pedicure"

Tucson

We didn't have any big plans for a summer vacation.  We usually don't.  Dax and Derek each went to their own camp, Trey took a few summertime classes to keep him busy.  The Tucson Temple was doing their open house. Since it is so close we decided to go down to the open house, stay a few days and have fun in Tucson, although no escape from the heat.  Last time we went to Tucson we stayed at a resort with a fun water park.  I took my time making the reservation (who really goes to Tucson this time of year) apparently people do, because all the water park resorts were booked.  We ended up staying at a Vacation Rental very close to the temple.  It was a great house with a pool.  The home was built in the 50's, had a vintage feel, it was on a large lot in a very quiet neighborhood. We loved it.  I think Tucson gets a bad rap.  It is very brown and desert-y but to me it doesn't look that much different than Scottsdale.  I don't love the brown desert look, we always have a great time there.

Tucson Temple- very different look with the dome, I like it because it's different

The temple was nice, much smaller than we expected. They did a great job of getting the people in and keeping everyone comfortable in the heat.  Curtis and I took a nice long walk from our rental up to the Temple one morning.

Sunrise from inside our vacation rental.

 The Earthquake

When Curtis and I were kids, there was this ice cream chain called "Swensen's" There was this sundae on the menu called "The Earthquake"  it had 8 scoops of ice cream in it, and all the sundae fixings. I never knew anybody that actually ate one, just everyone talked about it.   Curtis' birthday was a few weeks back and he was wanting to go to an ice cream place and get a great sundae.  We couldn't find one.  The ice cream place near us got shut down by the health department, everything else seems to be frozen yogurt. Nothing extraordinary.  We said how we wished "Swensen's" was still around.  While in Tucson we found this ice cream place on Google called Sullivan's, it had great reviews and was very close to where we were staying.  We show up and Curtis and I both agree that it kind of had the look at feel of a "Swensen's"  we look at the menu and they had something called the "Super Bowl" with 8 scoops of ice cream.  Turns out this place used to be a Swensen's, ownership changed, corporation broke up, copyright etc.  They location stayed just changed their name and the names of the menu items.  We finally found the long lost "Earthquake" and it was good.  Fun to share with the entire family.

Derek and Trey chowed to the last bite,pretty much licked the bowl everyone else tapped out.

We took a little day trip down to Tombstone.  We thought the kids would enjoy it there and see a bit of AZ history. It is an interesting little town. It was quite rough in its day.  Lots of shootings, hangings, and prostitution. There was one intersection where 19 people were killed in one year.  The deadliest in the country.  Very much the "Wild West".

Our boys with some Tombstone Characters, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday etc.  I think there was a gunfight re-enactment every 15 min someplace in that town.

Actual location of the shootout at the OK Corral, which didn't actually take place at the OK Corral

Inside the Bird Cage Theatre, a happening place back in the day.  Several bullet holes throughout due to gun fights. "Take it outside boys"

Biosphere 2, because the Earth is the original Biosphere

On our way home we stopped at Biosphere 2.  This was a science experiment built in the late 1980's for $150 million. It was supposed to be an indoor re-creation of the earth with  6 different climates (biomes/ ecosystems). They had 8 scientists that were sealed inside for two years from 1991-1993 to see how they could survive on their own from the outside world.  It was interesting to see how they re-created the rainforest, ocean, fog desert etc.  They explained how they had to recreate the atmospheric pressure using an artificial "lung" etc.  In the beginning, they didn't have the atmospheric pressure right because of how it was built (lots of concrete curing etc.) the people and plants were not getting enough oxygen.  They were getting sick, and the food was minimal.  They had to figure out the problem and make adjustments.  It sounded like the first year the people were constantly hungry.  I was surprised how technical the entire thing was and that the living quarters were a very nice apartment with all the amenities. They had TV's, phones, appliances etc. I thought they were totally cut off from the outside world, not so much.  I think I expected it to be a giant greenhouse and the people would be living like Tarzan.  Not at all.

I remember when this was being built and my Chemistry teacher making fun of it.  It was kind of a big deal back in the day, they made a movie "Biodome" (it should have been called Bio-dumb, it was such a stupid flop).  Jokes were made on TV shows etc.  It was interesting to see, but as we were going through this I kept thinking what a waste.  They were trying so hard to re-create something that has already been done, we already have an Earth with plenty of food and oxygen and it works perfectly for humans to live on and it's FREE.

artificial ocean

inside the rain forest

overlooking the ocean.