The other Boydell family

Craig's younger brother Brett, his wife Mandy and their 4 wonderful kids came and stayed with us for ten days. They live in England and the last time that I saw them, we only had two kids and they only had one! It was really nice to get to know them and spend so much time together. The kids all got along really well and a lot of tears were shed when they left (and for Jessica that continued throughout the next day). We have now been able to get to know all of our family on Craig's side in the past couple of years. This has really made me appreciate how much he gave up to marry me and come live here. I don't always appreciate the sacrifice he made and continues to make by living so far from his family. But I do appreciate it, because the alternative is that I would have to live away from my family. Here are a few pictures of the cousins.



At the Desert Museum


Rose, Jimmy and Zach at the Pima Air and Space museum

Zach and Rosie

Faith--it was fun to have a little one around.

Kieran holding a bull snake that we found on our back porch--definately not something that happens in England!

Rose and Jimmy at the Zoo.

Rose and Zach on the motorcycle combining Halloween and Easter into one!

Zach, Rose, Faith and Kieran.

Dress-up!

Jessie and Lois eating s'mores--they don't know about s'mores in England!

Incentive

O.K., so I admit I am a real softy when it comes to getting my babies to sleep. I did acutally try the ferber method a few times but I just can't take it. My feeling is that it is O.K. for babies to want to be held and cuddled. So, I always ended up with the babies in bed with us. With the older kids, once the next kid was ready to come into the family I worked at slowly getting them used to sleeping in their own bed. All three of them sleep great. With Zach it has been a little harder. There are no more babies coming, I've been in school and been very tired (it is so much easier to just let him come in and snuggle than to get up and put him back in his bed and try and keep him there!) and he's my baby and I love to snuggle with him! However, he is getting too big and I can't sleep well with three of us in bed.

So, I'm trying to convince him to stay in his own bed all night long. We had a nice talk about it and I told him that we could make a chart and if he stayed in his own bed all night he could mark it off. Once he had 2 weeks marked off he could get a new transformer toy. So the first night he was all ready to try. He came in and I took him back and he came in again later and I took him back. The next morning he tells me. "I don't really want anymore transformers". Apparently it just isn't worth it! When I ask him why he won't stay in his bed all night he says "I just love you sooo much!" I think he is getting too smart for my own good!

December 2009

O.K. so, life has been INCREDIBLY busy for a couple of years now and this last semester of school I just gave up trying to write on my blog or even keep up with my friends' blogs. So, I realize that no one probably even checks this blog anymore but I might as well keep trying to write every now and again to at least have something to remember things by.


Craig and Zach doing a little yard work.

While Craig's parents were here we went hiking out at the Cienega creek Preserve.

Ben and Jimmy looking cool.

Our Benny

Beautiful Jess

Craig and his lovely Mum.

Jimmy helping Zach to cross the stream.

Craig and Zach after Zach was tired.

While Craig's parents were here we also went down to the 4th Avenue street fair.

Jessie with her face painting.

NACHO!

Our little short bus that took us to the fair--I think this was Craig's first ride on a real American school bus and he was pretty excited! ;)

Zach serenading us with his new guitar.

The highlight of my month--Graduation from nursing school!--More to come on that later.

Finally!--Let's have lunch!

After about a month of requests I finally managed to invite a little friend of Zach's over to play. I just told him that his friend will be coming over tomorrow after lunch. His response--Leans back in his chair and throws his hands in the air "Finally!!!---Let's have lunch now!"
So, I'm thinking that maybe I need to work on providing him with more playdates! Also, don't we all wish that we could control time like that--in his mind it just makes sense that if we eat tomorrow's lunch now then it will be tomorrow! It sounds tempting but I'm not sure I would really like to skip through life because like it or not, we actually do learn a lot along the way--sometimes it is only patience but often it is much more.

Summer wrap up

I like the short summer we have here in the Vail School District because the kids are ready to go back and I really like the 3-week break in the fall. This year summer seemed to go by really quickly. Here's a little wrap-up of the last few weeks.

We went geo-cacheing a few times. This was at the top of a hill off of Pistol Hill Road. That's where our new title page photo is from also.

My sister lives in Sahuarita and they have a fun waterpark. We spent a day there the week before school started. There is a huge bucket that fills with water and then dumps down--the kids loved it--they are waiting for it in this picture.

Jessie looking stylish with her new school gear.

The boys rocking out to a little Led Zepplin!

Zach feeding the giraffe at the zoo.

"A puppy will feel me better!"

Zach and I sent the kids off to school and then realized that Jimmy forgot his lunch. On the way back home after dropping the lunch off Zach was complaining that he had a sore toe. Here was our conversation.

ME: "When we get home we can put a band-aid on it--will that make it feel better?"
Zach: "No, not really"
Me: "Well, what do you think we can do to help your toe feel better?"
Zach: After a short pause "A puppy will feel me better!--a REAL one--a REAL puppy will feel me better!"

Our poor little kids suffer so much (note sarcasm) because Craig and I don't want any animals to take care of. Comments like this don't make me run out and buy a puppy but they kind of make me wish I was more of an animal person. Of course there would just be something else that they wanted that we couldn't give them.

Jessie's theory is that EVERYONE, except us, has a least one of the following: a pet (namely a dog), stairs, a trampoline or a swimming pool. The reality is that they are very blessed and like most kids (and many of us adults) just don't always realize it. In the meantime we can enjoy all the ways they try to convince us that we really, really need something more! So far, Zach's sore toe theory is my favorite!

Big Lake

For the past couple of years, my parents, brothers, sister and I have spent a few days up in the White Mountains camping, fishing, hiking, mountain biking and relaxing. This year, only one of my brothers and his family and our family could make it. It was a little cold and windy this year but still a lot of fun.

On the way! We saw deer, elk and Jimmy even saw a wolf!

Hanging out in camp.

We recently learned about a really fun activity called geocacheing. Someone hides a box of little "treasures" and you use GPS to find it. We found 7 up at Big Lake. It gets us out there together hiking around and we found places that we hadn't seen the other years we were there.

Zach loves to hike and goes full-throttle until he is exhausted.

Ben found the fist geocache just when we thought we were never going to find it.

The second geocache took us up near the fire-tower.

We found 3 geocaches but ended up hiking double the length that we thought we would--Zach was so tired he fell asleep in Craig's arms about a mile from camp and slept away for over an hour.

Ben, making a walking stick.

Zach and his cousing chillin' out in the hammock.

We spent a couple of mornings fishing from the shore--it was too windy for the boat.





Ben loves to clean the fish--good thing because noone else does!

The girls and their pet worm.

Craig getting ready for our next geocache adventure.

Out last geocache hunt was Monday afternoon. It was such a beautiful hike and a fun adventure. We had to climb rocks, cross a stream and Jimmy rescued Ellie's favorite sock from the bottom of the waterfall.

If you look closely you can see Ellie's sock at the bottom of the waterfall.

Jimmy's foot after rescueing the sock!

The boys trying to warm up their feet on the way home--it was rainy and cold as we packed up.

It was a really fun time. I especially loved the hike on Monday and sitting around the campfire playing madlibs with the kids.