Sand Rail

Our friend Joel let us borrow his sand rail.  We took it out to the desert on a beautiful August day.  It had rained - even rained a bit on us - was nice and cool for August in AZ.  Love the monsoons!  Of course I only took a couple pics...

Don't let her face fool you - she loved it!  Juan took her through a few puddles. :)

The Many Faces of Fia

Sofia has been quite the ham lately.

What started out as a beautiful Butterfly...

Turned into pulling faces...

 More faces at karate...

I don't think she's read the Calvin and Hobbes where he face freezes that way.

Hogle Zoo!

We went to the Hogle Zoo with Suzanne and Isaac.

The Elephants

There's a baby elephant hiding...decided to take a nap when we got there.

We took just a few group shots.

Tortoises 

Penguins

Giraffes

Did I say we took a few group shots?

Not sure what this is - anyone?

A bunch of wannabe gorillas!

Guess I should have taken more pics of actual animals!  You know - the kind that live at the zoo - not the kind that should live at the zoo. :)

Liberty Park/Tracy Aviary

We went to Liberty Park in SLC with Kathrine and Debra.  Inside the park is Tracy Aviary.   We enjoyed seeing the different birds and riding on a few rides.

The pretty birds...

The rides...

Maxx was sad...he got motion sickness on the swings.

Sofia and I on the Ferris Wheel

This little girl is fearless!  She was mad they wouldn't let her ride the swings.

Gorgeous view - I miss the mountains!

Debra and Kathrine

Abby

Utah!

We try to spend at least a couple weeks in Utah every summer.  We have to get out of the HEAT!  We spent the whole month of July this year.  I thought I took a lot of pictures.  Guess not... here are a few...

Suzanne found this doll that's name is SOFIA and looks a lot like her.  They even have matching dresses.

We try to spend a lot of time in the mountains.

Here Maxx made a rock diagram of Berk.  (The island village from How to Train Your Dragon - we saw the movie twice while we were up there.)

Suzanne's friend Lexie Chatterley did a photo shoot with the kids up at Big Springs Park in Provo canyon.

Karate!

In the last 4 months.......

Sofia earned her Ninja Hi-White belt!

Notice the dishelved look - she worked hard for that belt.

Her Ninja Gold(en) belt!

A bit more serious this time.

And just recently her Ninja Orange belt!

This one oozes with humility.

Abby earned her First Degree Black with Orange belt!

Just in time for Halloween!

Maxx has been attending a Black Belt Prep class aka Karate Boot Camp.  Lots of push-ups, kicks at the rail (he spent an hour the other night holding onto a wall rail doing multiple kicks - talk about building leg muscle and leg aches!), line drills, and forms.  Hopefully, this will put him in position to test for his conditional black belt soon.

As you can see, we practically live at karate.  It's a love/hate relationship.... It has built confidence, charactor, and bum sores (bleacher sitting can be rough).

Quarterlies, Biannualies, Annualies...

Ok, so I know those last two aren't words per say, but they do describe the rate of my blogging lately.  Instead of my infamous one-big-blog, I decided for future reference sake of dividing them up.  Plus, if you get terribly bored, you don't have to go through all the photos over and over just to get where you were before you dozed logged off.
Stay tuned for the last 4 months....