sink bath

As long as it isn't too full of dirty dishes, we pretty much throw Gus in here after dinner these days.

I thought I should feature my baby today because he is 10 months old today! 

PS- He also took his first official steps yesterday to his cousin Lucy.  

quick nano visit

We always love when Nano comes to visit.... even if it is only on a one day layover on his way back to Hawaii.  

We will take whatever we can get.  These boys sure love him!

Of course, as soon as he did leave, Jimmy wanted to the exact plan and date for when he was coming back.  So get on that Nano.

cardboard city

Well, it all started with one big flat piece of cardboard and a few food boxes.  That was or "town."

Then I went crazy and built a whole city.

Then we started doing a building everyday (usually during Gus' morning nap).  Jimmy loves watching me cut and then he helps tape everything and then color or paint. I am not exactly a tutorial person, but if you are interested in trying something like this yourself, this is what you will need: cardboard boxes (all shapes and sizes), matte knife, packaging tape, glue, markers and crayons, and a lack of perfectionism (that last part is hard for me).  Most of the buildings are just the boxes turned inside out... hence all the different sizes and lack of consistant scale.  I love that a Corona box became a church.

This was our first attempt.  The long roads were helped by the fact that we recently made some large purchases at Ikea.  My nephew Jack was quite helpful and had a lot of fun helping me set this up.   His sweet innocence and ambition about all the things we could make in a few hours made me smile ("Let's make two cities! One could be Phoenix and one could be New York and they could each have an airport so you could fly back and forth!").  He still wants to come back so we can set it up again and do more work.  (Sorry we didn't take any pictures while you were over Jack! You were such a fun helper)  While it may look like a lovely day in these pictures I think we started this project a little late in the summer.  We could really only do it early in the morning and eventually we had to take it down so it wouldn't get ruined by irrigation and sprinklers.

Here is a little tour.
Let's start with the airport since I already have given a full tour of that.

Our Restaurant:
(Jimmy wanted it to be like Postino, aka: Daddy's old restaurant)

Our Hotel
(Complete with revolving door. Thanks Nano for you help on this one):

Our Firehouse 

(designed specifcally for Red and Rescue Squad Mater):

 
Our Gas Station
(built by Baabee, decorated by Jimmy and me):

Our Houses
(both designed by Aunt Erin with help from Jimmy):

Our Cork People
(Thanks Pinterest for letting me find these)

 Our Church.
(It opens too! Jack helped build it. Jimmy helped paint it.  Gus helps knock it over).

Our School:

My cute boys enjoying their city:

For now most of the smaller buildings are being played with inside.  The rest are on my porch along with all the roads and all sorts of extra boxes and scraps.  Maybe when the weather cools down (in December?) we can bring it all back out and do "Phase Three."  

southern az road trip: bisbee

The final destination of our little trip was Bisbee, AZ.

We stayed at the Gym Club Suites:

The weather was great while we were there, but I imagine that the claim below is really a matter of opinion. People in Hawaii may beg to differ.

It is such a cute town with lots of old historic buildings. Naturally, I took lots of pictures.

Bisbee is an old mining town, but we didn't take the mining tour.

Jimmy loved this old mining train though.

It has turned into an artists community these days so there is a lot of funky art to see.

There were a lot of funky cars around as well.

Bisbee is a town of a thousand stairs (it is wedged in a little valley after all) and they have a "1000 Stair Climb" every year.

We climbed a bunch of steps just for fun to see where they would lead.

We ended up turning back eventually, and being the weakling that I am, my legs felt all shaky.

Here was the view from as high as we got.

Then we went to a Vegan Mexican Restaurant for dinner. I will be honest I am surprised my husband agreed to it. Mostly, I was just freaked out that they had "Chorizo" and "Cheese" on the menu (I guess they are made of soy and cashew butter). Mine was a little spicy, but Jimmy's nachos were really good. Our non-vegan bellies did have some after effects from the meal, however, but I won't go into that.

Jimmy got to buy this G.I. Joe at an antique store for being a good boy.

I am pretty sure my brother used to have the same one in his abundant collection. This is Jimmy's first.

This soda was delicious, but Jimmy didn't really share much with me.

We had a great time just walking around and exploring.

The next morning, Aunt Erin was kind enough to hang out with Jimmy for awhile on the porch while the rest of us slept in a little. They had lots of fun taking pictures together. There were a ton of blurry ones that were just Jimmy running. These are actually Jimmy's current favorite pictures and he asks to look at them a lot (He had a lot of fun with you Aunt Erin). These are just a few of their photo shoot.

Jimmy loved the big B on the mountain.

They ate lots of cherries.

And took lots of pictures of toys.

And Erin even let Jimmy take some goofy ones of her.

They even "caught" a hummingbird, as Jimmy likes to tell me. Because "they don't like to hold still for pictures."

We had a nice breakfast before we went our seperate ways.

(The place in the background is apparently a great pizza place, but we will have to check it out next time.)

On our last walk through town we stopped in a gallery/store where we found this cool hiking stick that we thought Baabee would love. We just had to get it as a birthday present for him. Gus was happy to keep it safe.

We had a great time going on another little family adventure. Thanks for getting us to go Erin!

We drove through Tombstone on the way back, but we will have to make that a family adventure for another day when the boys are older. The boys did well on the drive home (all things considered), but by the time we got home we were all happy to be there.