Jaden in Cub Scouts

Well, the dust has finally settled from the holidays and it's a good chance for me to post some pictures from the last month. Here's the first installment.

Lucas sure loves to help cooking! If only he wanted to eat too.

Over the Christmas break, we visited Linda and Don in Arizona. This is our trip to Rooster Cogburn's Ostrich farm. The deer were nice to feed. The ostrich? Not so much.

I have lots of pictures with the boys and the lorikeets. I will get more up because they are hilarious. This was the only one on my phone.

Jaden joined cub scouts, and of course loves it. He is very proud his uniform (and didn't complain about having to have his hair combed)

Val Vista Community Park

Lucas and I checked out a new park today..with an awesome playground. It was surprisingly empty given the morning was sunny and warmish! Here's a few pics of Luke.

We are home

Well, all of the McCanns are in Pleasanton!

I know we still need pictures of the house for you...here's J in the new place.

Friday Fun

Well, this will be the first official post from my computer (and not iPhone) since my move. I just got back from my...fourth trip....to Trader Joe's since we got here. Maybe 5th. For as much as you can love a grocery store, I love this place. I bought 4 pounds of tangerines for $2.69. I nearly danced in the store when I saw that price. But of course, there were a lot of people and I didn't want to cause any injuries.

It's raining right now, and very dark for 5p.m. I still have to get some pictures of the neighborhood, I'll call it my weekend project.

Our moving fiasco is nearly at an end...our stuff is somewhere near Chicago. I actually used LinkedIn and Google to find the name and contact information for the Director of Corporate Client Relations. And called her. Very nice lady. I calmly suggested her company may wish to review its affiliation with American Household in Buffalo.

Hope all is well in your necks of the wood. More soon!

Jetlagged

The cats seem to be a big jet lagged today after flying cross country...

Our First House Guest

Meet Paula the Praying Mantis...our first house guest who dropped by our front step this afternoon. If you enlarge the second shot, she's smiling at the camera.

Our New Home

Well we made it into our house....although our stuff is Still in Buffalo and will be until Wednesday. At least. Here's some pics of the new place.

I'll take more of the outside tomorrow.

Almost in LA.

We won't go into LA proper, but we're close to San Bernadino. We saw a cool "forest" of windmills. And of course the camera won't ever do justice to the mountain views. But we try.

Chocolate Mountains

My kind of place. We are in sunny CA.

The View from the Road

We are passing through the Sonoran Desert National Monument. Here's the view from my window...

On the Road Again

After a relaxing day off in Casa Grande visiting with Linda and Don, we are off to sunny CA. The boys should have an awesome week of vacation!

This was supposed to have been a week for unpacking our stuff while nana and papa watched the boys....but as I write our stuff STILL hasn't left East Aurora... So instead it'll be a week without anything as I register J in school and receive our cats and car. For now, we'll just have to roll with it I guess.

More from the road today.

Snow!!

Look, snow in Arizona!! I feel right at home.

Petrified Forest National Park

We are spending a wonderful morning in a petrified forest that is 255M years old.

We stopped at the painted desert inn, built in 1937. I had read it was haunted, so I asked Jaden to ask the ranger of he knew the story. He did. And then some. When it got too intense, Jaden said "ok, I'm outta here."

The National Parks have an awesome junior ranger program. Jaden worked through the activities and earned his badge and patch. He is very proud and was "on patrol" for rule breakers, including dad...And Ty was only sitting on a tree!!

It was an amazing morning in a beautiful park.

My passenger door no longer opens,so I'm the newest Duke of Hazzard. Other than that 5 hours to Phoenix!!

Gallup , NM

We spent the night in Gallup...a small town near the border of Arizona. The McCanns are technology savvy and taking advantage of some useful travel apps. Our favourite yesterday was Yelp because it helped us find a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant named Salsa that had the best tacos and corn chips we've had in a long time.

As you can see, we don't look too much worse for wear on Day 4.
We took the boys for a swim to burn off the full moon crazies that seemed to invade the car. I've included a somewhat blurry pic of the moon over the NM hills.

New Mexico is Beautiful

Here's the view from the road....
What a difference a day can make in landscape!! And how impressive this drive has been.

The boys are restless again, but we are making do. I'm glad we are almost to Phoenix!! Tonight we'll stop early at a hotel with a pool so the boys can burn off their energy. 75 miles to go till then.

Petroglyph National Monument

We're just passed Albequerque and in time to make a pit stop. It was a refreshing walk in a small canyon area where there are over 24,000 petroglyphs. We saw a handful on our small stroll.

Lunch at Sonic

We stopped for lunch at Sonic Burger in Tucumcari, NM.

It's getting warmer but still surprisingly cool outside. I wore Capri pants today in hopes of hitting the heat today.

New Mexico is beautiful...rugged and red-hilled. It's a full moon tonight too...And last night we saw What wevt thought was a coyote.

By the way I'm loving the real time blog on the iPhone. If the pics are huge, well I'm still learning and I think I fixed it. Hope it reduces the load to for my posts. More from Albuquerque!

The view from the road

We are making great progress today, driving through the northern part of Texas and now into New Mexico. The colours here are best described as subdued...lots of plains and dry land. Here are some pics...