Friday, June 1, 2012

Trains! Trains! Trains!

Empty Nesters
Monday, April 16, 2012
Day 323

Our baby birds are all grown up and have moved on. The only thing that's left is a big mess. Typical teenagers!

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Here comes the heat
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Day 324

Getting hotter and hotter these days. We've resorted to carrying umbrellas for the walk home from school because the afternoons are starting to reach 100 degrees.


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Be Our Guest!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Day 325


My brother Ryan arrives tomorrow for a visit so we've spent the week taking down the office and turning it into a guest room.


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Our home is always open to visitors so come on down!


Good Morning!
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Day 326

Ryan's plane arrive this morning during the wee hours-which means I had to get up way to early in order to go pick him up at the airport. My only consolation is that he had to get up even eariler in order to get on that flight.

The drive to the airport usually takes about a 45 minutes in good traffic. But, of course, everybody tries to beat the heat here so rush hour starts at 5 am. So it took me a good hour and a half.

This picture is courtesy of guest photographer Ryan. Me-bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the airport!

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Picture by Ryan

But, of course, we needed a picture of our guest, as well.

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Welcome, Ryan!!! So happy to have you!!!!

Trains, Day 1
Friday, April 20, 2012
Day 327


Today we dragged Ryan to our favorite train park. Because the kids want EVERYBODY to experience (and love) the train park.

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Ryan brought his camera so, for the most part, I took time off from being the official family photographer and let Ryan have the pleasure of trying to heard my kids for pictures. Here he is....

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....trying to get this picture

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Picture by Ryan

Trains, Day 2
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Day 328


Last time we were at the train park (not yesterday, but the time before that) I picked up a flyer for a Garden Train event. It's basically like a parade of homes except instead of touring homes you tour their train layouts in their backyards. There were 25 displays throughout the whole valley. Today we made it to 10 of them.

Yes, you read that right, we saw TEN different model train layouts today. Trust me. That's  A LOT! Especially because it was hot. But the kids, Adam especially, didn't seem to notice or mind!

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Picture by Ryan 

Trains, Day 3
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Day 329

We didn't make today an entire day of trains but after church we did go hit 3 more that were close to our house. If you went to at least 12 layouts, and got signatures at each location, you were entered into a drawing for some cool prizes. So by visiting these last 3 we officially had 13 locations under our belt and could enter the drawing!

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Picture by Ryan

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As a side note-we actually won a prize in the drawing! A really good one, too. We won 2 tickets to ride The Grand Canyon Railway. Wahoo!

2 comments:

ME Moon said...

what are those black things by the sidewalk on the walk home from school? sandbags of some sort?

love whatever it is you were wearing to pick up ryan from the airport.

yay for winning the prize! :)

orangemily said...

The Parade of Trains looks cool!