Beach Stay

During our time in Arizona, the whole family packed up and made their way to Oceanside, California.  All of us kids found a house to rent and stayed together.  It was pretty awesome.  Here was our view.

On the first day, we went to the beach.  I made sure the boys were covered in sun screen and protected. I, on the other hand, forgot to put sun screen on my legs.  Boy that was dumb.  

 Now I know why the boys had sand in their ears.

We also went to LegoLand.   

Both of the boys are a little obsessed with Star Wars these days.  

You can imagine how they felt when we ran into these guys.  

 

 This is the X-Wing Starfighter.  It is the worlds largest lego display.  It took 32 model builders 

17,000 hours to build and has 5 million lego bricks.  It weighs more that 45,000 pounds, stands 11 feet tall and 43 feet long, with a wingspan of 44 feet.  Even I was pretty impressed.

Those were the highlights of our California trip.  

It was fun.  

Irrigation

While we were home my parents had irrigation.  The boys were so excited.  It's something I've grown up knowing about, that I forget some people don't have a clue what it is.  

The boys (even the big one) had a great time playing in the backyard, turned lake, on a hot summer day.

We discovered a little too late that this spot had an ant hill...

More fun vacation things to come.  Stay tuned.

Here We Go...

It's finally the day!  Today is the day we start our journey to Arizona.  

Earlier in the year we discovered that we could fly out of Stuttgart a little bit cheaper than flying out of Zurich.  Since I have some family living in Stuttgart right now, we decided to do it.  We are driving up there today, staying the night and flying out in the morning.

It has been a LONG week for everyone in our house.   I'm ready for a vacation.  I've been doing the laundry, cleaning, doing the laundry, cleaning and doing the laundry.  During all of the preparations I decided I needed a new carry-on for the trip.  I looked and looked and couldn't really find anything I liked and then the thought came, "I'll just make something."  Really?  Make something?  It's Thursday night.  You leave on Saturday?  But that's not how my brain was working.  It was thinking, "Hey! It's only Thursday!  You can make something!"  Well, folks I did.  It's a bit rushed and I'm thinking I won't do that again (but let's be realistic, I probably will). 

Sorry for the crummy picture quality.  The good camera was already packed. Isn't it cute?  

I even made some smaller bags to stick inside.  Didn't get any pictures of those. I ran out of time (big surprise there).  

So now we just do the last minute things in the house, grab our 

passports...

and GO!!

See you in Arizona folks.  

Summer Time

The sun finally decided to make an appearance last week.  It's about time, is all I have to say.  The temperature went right up into the 90's.  So thankful.  I was starting to wonder if we were going to just swing past spring and summer and head right back into fall.  

Last week we had visitors from home.  It was great fun catching up with them.  Our kids are very similar in age and personality.  The visit was nice.  On a particularly sunny day we decided to grab some baskets and head to a local farm to pick strawberries.  The kids had a lot of fun and picked quite a few strawberries.  We finally cut them off and headed off to pay.  We really should have been paying more attention to how many they picked.  We quickly realized we would be needing to turn some of our 26 pounds of strawberries into jam.  Ha!  It was fun and we managed.  

I really wish we lived closer.  It was so nice catching up on our friendship.  I hope that we can have more of these pictures in our future.

Thanks for the visit friends.

Bowling Birthday

This past May Adrian turned 8 years old.  It's hard to believe he's so big.  For his birthday party he invited 3 of his friends for a bowling/pizza party.  They had a blast.  I was tired.

Here is Adrian in action.

He's a pretty good bowler and was even the winner at his party.

After bowling we headed over to our local pizza place - Vulcano Pizza.

I took this picture from inside (just incase you couldn't figure that one out). The weather was TERRIBLE for his birthday.  Thank goodness we picked indoor activities.

  

Adrian doesn't like cake.  But he does like watermelon.  

Thanks to Pinterest, I came up with this friend. 

The kids thought he was pretty cool.  

I think the party was a success.  Adrian enjoyed himself, got some very cool gifts and seemed happy.  

Happy Birthday Adrian!

Everybody Is Kung Fu Fighting...

A couple of weeks ago Adrian had his first Kung Fu test.  

We are so proud of him.

This particular test was a Swiss wide event.  Kids and adults from all over Switzerland came.  Altogether there was about 500 kids in attendance.  It was a bit of a mad house.  However I was very impressed how they managed to keep 500 kids in rows and in pretty good order.

Here is Adrian holding up his certificate for a group photo.

Hold up your certificate!

 Doing a little warm up.

 Looking good buddy!

 There were teachers everywhere helping out the kids and making sure the movements were correct.

Pow!

 After the group photo and all the warming up and practicing, each test level performed their test.  

Adrian did awesome!

 Here is Adrian receiving his certificate (now signed) and his Phoenix badge. 

Here's to a great day of Kung Fu.

Rivets

I finally finished a bag I've been working on for almost two months.  I had someone ask me if I made any bags with leather straps.  I had been thinking about it and went right to work.  I found a place that sells the straps I was looking for and ordered them.  The company wasn't very impressive and it took them 10 days to ship and then a couple of weeks before it finally reached my front door.  In the mean time I went looking for rivets to fasten on my straps.  I found some with a kit and brought them home.  I made the bag and prepared the straps.  When I got out the tools I knew something wasn't quite correct, but I just plunged ahead.  I hammered away and smashed those poor rivets to death.  After smashing three rivets I realized I needed to go and get the correct tools...shocking.  I ordered them and they came today.  

Here it finally is.  It's one of my favorites. 

 It's for sale in my Etsy shop.  

It was awfully tempting to keep it.

I like it.  I think I'll be making another.