Top 10 Tuesday & 4th of July Update

Today I was getting my toes done and I read this little article in Woman's Day magazine asking how patriotic we are as individuals.  It was interesting and it sure made me thankful to be living in this free country and the blessings we get to enjoy that others do not.

For the 4th we were going to go out of town but had a change of plans at the last minute and had to stay in the Valley and suffer through the heat.  Saturday was 119!  Yes, that was no typo.....the girls and I were going to fry and egg on the sidewalk but it was overcast and humid and it wouldn't have worked.  I'm sure we will have plenty of extra hot days to test the "egg on the sidewalk theory".

Saturday night we went over to my cousin Amy's with all my cousins and Aunt Janet and Uncle Pete and all the kids and extended family.  We lit off a ton of fireworks and then watched the Mesa Firework Show right from her front yard eating popcicles and telling 4th of July parade stories and memories of our youth.  Fun times and what a memory maker even though it was blazing hot!  When you are with good company you can endure pretty much anything♥

So for today's Top 10 Tuesday I'm going to post the questions I read today in Woman's Day and see if you can answer them...."To become a naturalized citizen, immigrants have to demonstrate that they can read, write and speak English.  They also have to pass a 10-question civics test, the likes of which you probably haven't seen since 11th-grade History.  Here, are 10 of the 100 questions in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database"..............are you ready?

Top 10 Questions: Could you pass the U.S. CITIZENSHIP Test?

1)  What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?
2)  How many amendments does the Constitution Have?
3)  How many voting members are in the U.S. House of Representatives?
4)  In what month do we vote for President?
5)  Who is currently the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court?
6)  Who is currently the Speaker of the House of Representatives?
7)  What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance?
8)  Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
9)  Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States.
10) In what war was President Eisenhower a general?

How many did you get right with out looking at the answers?
What did you do this year for the 4th?
Was it hot where you were?

Answers: 1) speech, religion, assembly, press, petition the government.  2) 27 3) 435 4) November 5) John Roberts 6) John Boehner 7) The Flag and the United States 8) Thomas Jefferson 9) Mississippi, Missouri 10) World War II

Happy 4th of July!

credits: the perfect card

Our Non-Traditional 4th

This 4th of July weekend was quite disappointing.  I don't want to sound negative because there were some high points it just wasn't our normal 4th of July traditions that we did so it was a little disappointing.

First off we didn't go out of town like we had planned.   We were supposed to go to Missouri for a family reunion but that got pushed back to a later date (that is undecided at the moment)

2nd we didn't get our annual family picture in red, white, and blue.  This is one of my favorite traditions.  Even if it's a snapshot I love having a this picture.  If Ashley wasn't about to have her baby any minute I would run over there and beg and plead to have her take our picture in front of her big flag.  See HERE

Here are some of our past photo's:

2008 in Colorado.  Oh the fun we had.  Thanks to Suzanne for taking this picture.

2009
OK we aren't wearing red, white and Blue in this picture either and this wasn't taken exactly on the 4th but it was in July and we had so much fun in Utah!

2007Hmmm maybe I'm feeling better about my non-picture-taking-weekend.  Looks like I don't have a picture of us in red, white, and blue for each year after all.  Weird I thought I did.  I guess I'll have to start the tradition next year.

2008
My favorites were the ones Ashley did for us in 2008.  Seriously...this girl has talent and I soooo hope she gets back into these mini-shoots that she does.  She is amazing and I am hoping to get some more good shots of my girlie's soon.

See all the pictures HERE

OK back to our lovely 4th:
Another disappointment was that we missed the fireworks this year.  We left 10 min. before they were to start to go to our secret location (the 5th floor roof of Tom's parking garage)that is 2 min away.  They started the fireworks early - the rats and when we got to the roof there was a security guard who wouldn't let us stay.  We tried to tell him we own office space and have every right to be there but nope he made us leave so we got to see exactly 30 seconds of fireworks.  LAME.  Don't worry though, I have a call in to the building manager with my complaint. 

I also didn't make one all American anything to eat.  I made orange chicken and rice one night, tacos one night, pizza one night.  There was no hot dogs, hamburgers, mile high apple pie (which I have a killer recipe for) or ice cream.  See how lame it was.

Now for the positive, we did get to spend all weekend together as a family.  We went on a memorial field trip on Monday (more on that later ).  We did a lot of swimming and napping and movie watching.  It was fun, I promise it was fun and I need to remember the fun instead of the lack of red, white and blue that didn't happen over here this year.

Colorado Part 6 - Going Home

The last day we went to the Russel Stover Factory and can I just say I have NEVER seen so much candy in one place at one time. Amazing! The girls had fun eating all the samples that were EVERYWHERE!

Then we spotted these Tee-Pees...........So we had to go and investigate.

It turned out to be the Ute Indian Museum. (Do you like the cheesy picture of the girls and I in front of the museum?) The girls had fun playing in all the tee-pees.

The also LOVED trying to all fit on this big bear statue. Even little Heidi got in the picture Ü!

On the way out of town we stopped in Telluride Co. I totally fell in love with this charming town. Everything about it was unique and cute and friendly. My favorite thing was all the flags that lined the main street. I felt the towns patriotism. Everyone had a dog or a stroller. LOVED IT!!! We went up the mountain a bit and saw Bridal Veil Falls. It was beautiful.
We ate a yummy breakfast at Maggie's out on the sidewalk while watching all the people walking up and down the street.

This picture doesn't do the main street justice but I love how the mountains are all around and the hanging baskets line the streets with the flags outside every shop. I loved how there was no fast food, no gas stations, nothing commercialized there. Reminded me of Carmel Ca.

And who wouldn't love a town that had a cafe with this to greet you? Flower boxes, a fun bike and a nice dog. Welcome!!!

Lastly we stopped at Four Corners and took a picture. I'm sure I will never be there again so this is proof that we were able to be in four states (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado) all at the same time.

The End!

Colorado Part 5

O.K. I am going to wrap up this Colorado trip here. I have other things to blog about but feel like I can't because I need to finish up our trip.

The morning was spent with all the girls - Sheri, Suzanne, Me, Taylor, Jane, Cassidy, Jill, Abby and Heidi antiquing in town. I thought that each time we walked into the cute little antique stores that were in cute little houses the owners blood pressure went up about 200%. I have to say that I would have never thought the girls would have liked doing this but the LOVED it! They didn't want to stop! They thought it was so fun to look at all the "treasures" and even found a few that they couldn't live without. In one of the stores I found an old bed that I about died over and wanted to bring home with me. It was amazing (I'm so sad I didn't take a picture of it) but, 1. I don't need a bed 2. I had no way of getting it home. So no bed. My usual obsession in finding a treasure every time I go somewhere did not pan out this trip. The bed was the best find of the day and I couldn't have it. So I didn't buy anything. Shocker I know! At the last place we went they had this cute little cabin playhouse set up with art supplies, cards, pens, stickers and such. The girls went to all the shops then decided to stay in the little cabin for the rest of the time and had a blast! Who ever thought that up is brilliant!


On the 4th we went to a parade on Main St. and we were slightly late and missed most of it. The kids had fun getting candy and seeing all the different floats and cars that went by. While walking back to the car I spyed the biggest dandelion puff I have ever seen. They were growing in someones front yard so I picked a few for the girls. Of course they made wishes and blew those little seed puffs with gusto!! I then made the girls run to the car before the owner of the house came out since we just made about 1027 new dandelions to grow in his front yard! Ooops


Thanks to Suzanne we got a nice family picture on the 4th. I love having a 4th of July picture each year along with a family picture at Christmas time.




We had a B-B-Que with a whole bunch of fun people and ate salmon that had been caught that day at the lake. Who knew there was salmon in Co. and it was de-lish!! I was very impressed! We then broke out the fireworks and Tom was the star of the show. He dropped some cash on a big box of fireworks and was like a kid in a candy store. The littles surrounded him the whole time and his grin while setting them off was sometimes brighter than the actual fireworks!

We then took a break and went to see the town fireworks. They were fun and very exciting - the hill caught on fire in two places! The kids were very worried but it was fine. We then went back to the house and finished off Tom's fireworks. The picture above is just SOME of the fun we had.
(Thanks John & suzanne, Ben, Sheri & Rick and Sheri's sister & family for all the fun! We loved it!!!!)

Colorado Part 4

On the 3rd we went down Main Street in Montrose Co. to Main in Motion. This is a small town folks (18k) I think half of those people were on main street!

Every charming little shop and store was open with offerings of hot dogs, ice cream, face painting (which as you can see we took full advantage of) sodas, candy, stickers, people on the street singing and playing their musical instruments. It was a lot of fun! We stopped at the bouncy house and the girls also did hula-hoops. I would have totally done the hula hoop because I am a secret hula hoop champion (you would not have guessed that would you?!) but my knee had just been kinked up for the last 3 hours and I was lucky to be able to be walking on it. I didn't want to ruin my luck and have it go out again (darn joints!) so I passed on my opportunity to shine with the hula-hoop!
On the way to the car I saw this mural painted on the side of a building. It reminded me of the big mural they had painted on the side of the rodeo grounds growing up in California. I had to take a picture of the girls with it. All in all we had a great time exploring Main St in this cute little town!

Some Time at the Park (Colorado Part 3)

This is Cassidy having the time of her life with her friends at the park- I think she may have been a little disturbed at me watching her with my camera. What do you think? When you go on vacation do you tend to do the same normal things? I am not a fan, I like to explore and see as much as I can possibly see while I am somewhere new. However with kids....that isn't always possible and sometimes we do whatever we need too to make the littles happy. Here we are at a fun park down the street from our friends house (John and Suzanne, Jane, Jill and Heidi) Jane and Jill are like my second set of girls - I love them so! The girls had fun playing together and just well.....being girls at a park on a warm summer day!
Jane and Cassidy owning the playground. They are so funny thinking they are so "cool" and big!
Abby loved this spinning pole. Remember when we were young we had that huge spinning thing on playgrounds. What happened to those? They were both fun and scary!
Abby also loves to swing and since she is truly "Miss Independence" she loves to "pump" the swing and I don't even have to push her! She can swing for hours!!! I told her swinging will be her favorite when she goes to kindergarten!

Little Jill is such a cutie! look at that smile Ü Her and Abby had fun on the tire swing - I had to push them on that one. It's not a do-it-yourself kind of swing.
I love this shot of Miss Abbs - her hair blowing in the breeze with a smile on her face!
Even Suzanne and Heidi got to swing!

The Drive (Colorado Part 2)

I loved how I could look ahead and see mountains and trees and look behind us and see nothing but the same. It felt like we were being swallowed up into the mouth of the mountains.

The only draw back of this trip was the time in the car. I do not travel well due to my arthritis which makes me very, very uncomfortable when standing (or in this case) sitting for long periods of time. My girls are much better travelers than I am and I admire them for that. I am the one that is following the map to see when our next stop is, or asking if we can stop at the next town. They would be happy to drive all 10 hours straight! (yuck)

I do want to say that the drive was beautiful once we got into Colorado. The was a whole lot of vast nothingness while driving through New Mexico. We did see a remarkable sunset against some very interestingly shaped rock formations. I could see movies being filmed there where someone was dropped off in the middle of nowhere or maybe a moon scene. Once we crossed the border into Co. trees were everywhere and beautiful mountains came into view. I have never seen so many trees all at once. My eyes could hardly take it all in. It was amazingly beautiful. They don't call it "God's Country" for nothing!

I took a lot of pictures while driving through these mountains with trees as far as the eye could see. I was trying to be creative but lets face it....after 3-4 shots everything pretty much looks the same so I hope I don't bore you with the next pictures. I was amazed at the vast amount of open land. California has open land that is ugly and can't be used because of who knows what but this was open land that is strikingly beautiful! Why are there not more people snatching it up? Tom and I wondered this. (I have thought it's because in the winter the part we were driving through is covered in mounds of snow - that might deter people)

This area took my breath away because who ever lives in the little cottage/cabin has the most remarkable view! Mountains, a lake, trees, clouds. It's perfect! What a view!!

I LOVE CLOUDS! There were some amazing clouds on our trip. They seemed so close to us. The only other time I have seen clouds closer than these was when I was in Casper Wyo. visiting my Grandmother. The clouds there where so close I felt like I could reach up and grab them. These were almost as good! Cassidy said, "Mom do you think Grampa is floating on that cloud right there? It looks comfortable!" I bet he wishes he was....I do!
Lastly I had to get a Colorado Sunset. I loved how I could see the whole sun setting without buildings or homes to get in my way!

Colorado Part 1

This is where we got to stay while we were in Co. It is The Bridges Golf Course and Club House. Our friend is a golf pro there and he let us stay in one of the suites they have for out of town guests. It was beautiful and I have never felt softer towels and sheets. I have 800 thread count sheets and they feel like sand paper after sleeping on the sheets on this bed!! I even looked for the label so I could go buy the same sheets but the words had all been washed off - darn it!

Tom walking into the Club House. The weather was perfect and such a nice change from 117f. I think it stayed in the mid 70's the whole time except on the last day when it rained.

This was the view from the patio. The one thing about staying at a gold course club house is you have the whole place to yourself when everyone goes home. There was no staff at night which was a little freaky but very quiet!!!