Responsibility, what's that?

Not sure if you've caught on, but I have some great ideas. Like tonight, I decided I'd just post all my pictures with a quick explanation. Quick being the key word... and quick also being the problematic word. I'm rarely, if ever, quick with words. But I decided I don't need to go to bed early tonight. After all, day long trainings are best attended while sleepy... right?


Fortunately, I haven't just been busy with work; we've been doing lots of fun things too. We begin on a quiet Sunday evening at my parent's. The kids decided to jump of the table onto pillows. Clara wins for the best expression, Lucy wins for the highest jump, Elsa wins for the most multi-tasking jump (that's a phone between her right shoulder and her ear... she wouldn't let go of it) and Jack wins for keeping his legs the straightest.
Clara also enjoyed donuts with her boyfriends after dinner one night. I would tell you their names, but I can't exactly remember which is which. In person I can tell, I just have to feel the backs of their heads. :)
Are you jealous your birthday was void of these special little fairies?

Jessie's reception (doesn't she look lovely?)

The Zoo... My membership expired two months ago and I just renewed it. Lily and her friend came with us and we picked a great day to go. It was a bit overcast and fairly cool considering it's the beginning of July.

What's the big deal about a snake at the Zoo? Well, it wasn't exactly in a cage. It was just hanging out. Lily saw another one too a little later.

Clara loves Lily and seems to think she's much older than she is. If Lily and Madison got too far away, she'd run after them. She also spent a good five minutes chasing this one bird around. It would jump away from her, she'd run after it, it'd jump away. It seemed to be teasing her and Clara was so determined to get it. She was running through the bushes and everywhere. I wish I had it on video.

Playing by the wallabies. Yeah, the Phoenix Zoo has wallabies. I had no clue until Lily showed me.

Jason and I both had Friday off, which was a nice change. We took Clara to San Tan where she met a little boy who obviously decided he wanted nothing more than to give her a giant hug. Her reaction was hilarious. I didn't ask the boy's mom if I could post this (don't even know which one she was), but she didn't ask me if her son could attack Clara, so I assume we're even.

We had lunch at Grimaldi's. I loved my pizza and thought it was so clever that they gave Clara some pizza dough to play with, which she obviously enjoyed too.

For the Fourth of July, we went bowling with Angela and Clint. Clara has a book that mentions bowling, so she's been wanting to go for a while. She loved to "help" me bowl. Actually, I shouldn't have help in quotations. The only two strikes I got the entire night were when Clara helped me bowl and we rolled the ball together, granny style.

She was also everyone's favorite fan. She'd get so excited... and for no reason. The ball rolling in the gutter was reason to rejoice according to Clara.

After bowling, we went back to our house for dinner: shish kabobs, lemon tortellini salad and grilled zucchini. It was a great meal. We haven't grilled for over a year because we didn't have propane. Now that we're so rich, we can afford to fill our propane tank. ;) We watched the fireworks on TV as we listened to our neighbors have an hour long firework show of their own. I'm still surprised no one called the cops on them. I found myself getting a little choked up when I was explaining to Clara why we celebrate the 4th of July and as we sang some songs about our Country over the weekend (we sing a lot around here...). We really are blessed to enjoy the freedoms that we do and I am grateful for our founding fathers and the inspiration they followed.

Life has been busy, but fun (mostly). How could life not be fun with Clara? Seriously.