The day AFTER Phoenix's big Tornado Warning...(Back Blogged)

Normally, it's during the "Monsoon" that we get to go play in our parks, er, lakes!  Last night's storm was pretty crazy around here!  In fact, I'm not sure what was crazier...the Tornado Warning, or the fact that EVERY SINGLE one of my shows was interrupted every 5 minutes or so, letting us know how much rain had fallen...still think it was under 3" btw:)  So I thought before the sun dries up the park, I would let the girls try out their "rain boots" that I got for a few dollars at Target!  They were so EXCITED!  It's such a beautiful day!!!

As you can see, Seattle lost a shoe...but believe it or not she came home dry! 

Just another reason that...I LOVE PHOENIX!

Give Thanks!

Since we moved out to Arizona in 2005, it has just worked out that every year my family, Pittson side, usually comes out for Thanksgiving. This year Shavonne has had some complications with her pregnancy and she's on complete bedrest at her home in Utah, since Halloween. My mom, Sky, and Blake have all been taking turns making sure she and Haven (her 18 mo old) are well taken care of. So since Mom was staying in Utah...Sky, Blake, and Tyler live there already...it made sense that they would stay there this year.

So we were cool with just not cooking a turkey (remember, I hate meat, and Phil is not a turkey fan) and sticking with Prime Rib (Phil's favorite) this year. Most of Phil's family lives in Utah so it's kind of expected that his parents usually stay there and do Thanksgiving with everyone there, but this year they surprised us and said they wanted to come to our house! It was pretty sweet.

We started out the day by going to "JIB" which is our slang for Jack in the Box for breakfast. We knew they would be open and Phil's dad has a routine of going to the nearest fast food joint to read the newspaper every morning...so we decided to join him. After breakfast it was back home to chill and play some games. Normally there would be cooking involved...but we decided a couple of weeks ago to make reservations at Claim Jumper this year for dinner! I'm a fan of being with family on Thanksgiving...but where...doesn't bother me!
My mom sent us a "Stick the hat on the turkey" game, which the kids had a blast making everyone take a turn!

Papa had more fun sticking the hats on the kids than the turkey...

but he finally made it!
Gramma Debbie was a great sport too! She had no problem wearing the beatiful bow for a blindfold! Boston someday I'm sure...will be mad about this photo.

This is where we all lined up. Can you guess which hat is Madison's?

Seattle's new trick! She pretty much does this with all pencils, pens, & straws. Where does she find these things?

Our dinner reservations were at 2:00PM and I was surprised at how many people go out on Thanksgiving! They had a "Thanksgiving Menu" that had 3 courses. You could choose from Soup or Salad...then a sourdough roll served with your choice of a main course 1)Turkey Platter with stuffing, 2)Prime Rib, 3)Salmon, or 4)Vegetarian (roasted veggies on a skewer). They all came with your choice of mashed potatoes or a baked potato. Then dessert! You could choose from Apple Pie (with a couple scoops of vanilla ice cream) or Pumpkin Pie with whipped cream on the side! The kids were all in heaven because they had the Turkey platters and their dessert choices were the "build your own Sundaes"! It was a platter for each of them that came with ice cream in the center and then all these different toppings in their own cups for them to choose what they wanted! I was really jealous! Then to top things off...they gave all the adults $10 gift cards to come back. Since there isn't a Claim Jumper in Utah...we scored his parents too! So, we'll definitely be going back soon! So for any of you ever interested in venturing out...I have to say just for the clean up...it was way worth it!!!!

Later that evening, we got the Christmas lights started. I should have taken a picture of that! We had to stop...because we got a serious thunderstorm that dropped a huge amount of rain and drenched everything for like an hour! So this is take 1. I'll put the updated pictures up soon.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend! Thanks Gramma and Papa for visiting...it was fun!

What the..."hail" is going on here?

Who says you can't live in Arizona and walk out to "snow" on your front porch? Okay, maybe it's a little harder than snow...but it gives the same appearance!Yesterday I was in the middle of making dinner when Brooklyn says...Mom look outside! I look out the backyard to see just blowing "white" stuff. Upon closer inspection, I could see it was flipping hail! (Nothing like ice chunks being hurled into a 85 degree pool! I'll have to check later to see if it brought down the temperature!) We immediately brought in Chloe (our little dog) and then I remembered my car! I always park it in the garage, but today after picking up the kids from school it rained just a bit, and got it all spotty. So I saw some more dark clouds and thought...maybe we'll get a downpour and we can get a free car wash! Talk about a wash! I tried three times before I could get out there with out being knocked out!
All my top soil for my new plants...was washed out to the "river de Cordes"!
This is one of the hail pieces I got pelted with on my "test" run to get the car! I had a flipping welt from it! Phil says he could have gotten out there fine, (of course he wasn't there and missed out completely) but I would have liked to see his reaction when things this size were being thrown at his head from the sky!
My dad told me that I should put the hail next to money so you can tell the size. Some were bigger and broke, others were the size of bb's. I won't be able to tell until I go out in the sunlight today, to see if there's any damage to my poor car! On first inspection... in the poorly lit garage, my "Tina" (car) looks okay.

I finally got my car in the garage, as it was slowing down. That newspaper in the middle of the road was literally floating down the road a minute before!


As the rain subsided to a sprinkle, we surveyed some of our street damage.


The pretty rainbow in a gray sky!

I don't think I've ever seen the park that full after a storm! Now that it's over...we can look back at all the damage that little storm packed and smile:)

Yay! Our gazebo will live on...

That last over-night storm we had a week ago or so, totally ripped our gazebo roof! I was so sad. We've only had it for about a year and a half and it's survived everything so far...up until last week:( Atleast we know that it never "set sail" , which we were worried about originally. Anyway, we bought it from Target and neither the store or their corporate head quarters stock the "roofs", but they were nice enough to give me the number to the manufacturer! After a 10 minute conversation with some sweet girl...we're getting a new free roof! Yay! So I thought I would post a picture of our sad, ripped, and "ghetto" gazebo! Poor thing, it does such a good job shading us all summer and I couldn't even find 1 good picture of it. Well atleast it will be good as new in a few weeks!

Dancing in the rain!

On my way home from picking up the kids from school, I noticed some "T-Storm" activity just south of our house! I knew we only had a few minutes until we would be engulfed in the storm so I grabbed my camera so that I could snap a few shots of the beautiful cumulonimbus clouds that were quickly surrounding our neighborhood. I know our Monsoon storms are growing to an end, so I let the kids hang out in the craziness that was about to begin. All these pictures were taken within about a 20 minute time period. Dad...I knew you might appreciate these!

They're better when you can flip through them fast, anyway...within a couple of minutes the downdrafts caught up with us and we had some pretty hefty gusts of wind! Boston was holding an airplane...you can't tell but the propellers on this thing were flying! Unfortunately, the camera makes them seem entirely still!?

Check out the clouds below...don't they look friendly? It was totally sunny to the west of us, so the sun was able to highlight everything. It was pretty cool.

Yes, that's my child wearing a shirt, diaper, and mix matched shoes! I couldn't find her shorts before we left to go pick up the kids...so I took her like that. She found shoes, because she's already learned you don't go outside without shoes on unless you want your feet to melt! Smart kid! No one was driving by, so we were good!

I took this picture of the down pour through my doorway of the sun illuminating all the rain drops! It looks like it was snowing! My kids had so much fun! The rain only lasted about 5 minutes or so, but the kids had a blast getting wet without being cold!

"Extreme Weather"

We also visited our other favorite exhibit on the 3rd floor. It's the "forces of nature" exhibit, that actually lets you sense the extremes! They have huge flat screen T.V.'s to picture what's going on and then in the case of a hurricane they mist water, rain, and wind. In a tornado it's just the wind and they have lights that flash for lightning, and heat lamps that turn on when there are forest fires! The floor rumbles when there's an earthquake, you get the drift. Well the last time we were here Madison opted out of this one, but this time, Phil decided to take her with him. As you can see, she didn't like it! I wonder what she thought would happen? My other kids loved it, of course. They even have a section about our own "Arizona" extreme weather monsoons!

She pretty much hated her extreme weather experience!

Since I'm such a nerd and can't get enough about weather facts and trivia. Phil got me a sweet book on weather at their bookstore! I haven't finished it yet, but so far it's pretty sweet! Soon I can quiz you all on more random weather facts that lie in the head of Summer!