Hooray for Last Week!

We saw the BEST exhibit at the Desert Botanical Gardens! We always have a really memorable time whenever we go there! Stanton and Noelle said it's one of the places they will miss the most when we move. Me too, it's really given me an appreciation for the pretty parts of the desert. 

 

There were colorful statues all over the gardens, but the flowery season people were our favorite!

 We also got to go in with the butterflies. They were everywhere, all around us, and they kept landing on Noelle's flower headband.

It was fun finding all of the different colored ones. Stanton liked the black and teal ones the best cause they're as "tough as butterflies can be" but the the orange ones were the only ones we could get to pose for a picture.

 Winnie was very careful not to step on any with his big monkey boots.

And here is our "magical" bubbling brook. I had to get a picture of it. It's the pond there that I told them a couple years ago was the gateway to our own special Narnia. They're not quite sure how the portal works or where it leads, but they're still convinced that the pond only makes bubbles for us and that nobody else knows it exists. I'm happy to keep it that way, special just for us!


 We had lunch and played at the park with friends. The girls spent some time climbing trees.

 And that made the boys wanna spend some time up in the trees.

 I took the kids to climb Hole in the Rock. It had rained in the morning, but had cleared up by noon, so we had lunch up there and explored around.

Noelle and Winston found a comfy spot to rest in.

 Stanton dug around in the cave puddle. He found a shiny rock and a bottle cap, treasures to a kid.

We had the whole mountain to ourselves, so Noelle danced in the hole, but she wouldn't sing cause she said she was too embarrassed. I tried showing her that she should never be embarrassed so I sang as loud as I could in my craziest, highest opera voice.
Then a man peeked his head in from the other side of the hole (oops, didn't know he was there) and I felt a little awkward myself, but not awkward enough to stop my performance because I was trying to prove a point and teach my children to be who they are and not to worry so much what other people think of them. I'm pretty sure all they got out of my little lesson was that I sing funny.

Eventually the thunder started back up, and we finally realized that it was actually thunder and not airplanes, so we started to head back down the mountain.
This is Winston's sad "I don't wanna go home face."

This is his happy "we'll come back soon face."

It rained on us all the way back down the mountain. We got home soaking wet, and this is what we found in our backyard a couple hours later, crazy snowish hail weather!!!!!!!!!

Robert and I and some friends did the Survivor Mud Run. It's a 5K mud run and obstacle course. There were so many crazy things you had to do like swim in mud with a super heavy net on top of you, go across monkey bars, climb a giant wall, squeeze through muddy tunnels, etc. 

I actually peed my pants from laughing so hard in the very first obstacle. I kept getting stuck in this thick muddy quick sand, and I could not get out. I kept falling on my face, and Robert kept making me laugh so hard that I totally peed.

 Gross I know, but I probably wasn't the only one, or I guess maybe hopefully I was. 

Mari seriously wooped me, and so did Kathy, but Robert stayed with me the whole time, so romantic! He helped me up all 20 times that I fell down, and we helped each other pick rocks out of our sandals about every 30 steps...shouldn't have worn sandals. I was really happy to have him run/walk/crawl/fall with me for the whole hour and a half. It was intense, and not just cause we're out of shape. It would've still been so intense to The Incredible Hulk, or Hulk Hogan!

It was so much fun getting dirty and feeling like a soldier, especially since being tough is my secret dream! I'll admit it, there were times during the race when in my head I was pretending I was running from the enemy. (In my imagination, my enemy is even more out of shape than me, and he/she has no weapons. My imagination prefers hand to hand combat.)
Best race ever, best week ever!