(Don't worry, they're not leaning agains the door as the sign forbids. Just close)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
The Light Rail
(Don't worry, they're not leaning agains the door as the sign forbids. Just close)
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 7:15 PM 7 comments
Christmas 2008
It's about time I post about Christmas!
We had a great Christmas. Santa was good to everyone, the kids were happy, and the parents were happy.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 6:43 PM 5 comments
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Snow!
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 8:21 PM 3 comments
Thursday, December 18, 2008
"Kiddie Tag"
My friend Alayna tagged Robbie with this one... what parent can resist this?
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 12:57 PM 1 comments
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Beauty School Dropout
I am mourning the loss of my boy's hair this morning. Yesterday, I gave him the worst haircut ever and ended up having to trim it all really short.
Now it's fuzzy.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 8:39 AM 8 comments
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Tucson gives me the creeps
Here's a little something to get us in the right spirit... for the ASU vs. U of A game today!
I tried & tried to post the video, but Blogger isn't cooperating, so you'll have to use this link.
Side note: if you ever hear Robbie talking about "stepping on the naughty bus" this is why. Enjoy!
In all fairness, here's a list of things I actually like about U of A:
There you have it! Go Devils!
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 7:34 AM 1 comments
Friday, November 21, 2008
School Portraits: The Legacy Continues
So, we got Erin's school pictures back the other day.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 11:29 AM 10 comments
Monday, November 17, 2008
Running with the Devil
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 11:57 AM 4 comments
Friday, November 14, 2008
Wild Kingdom
OK, I think I'm a pretty good sport with all the creatures that live around our house - lizards, cicadas, worms...
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 12:11 PM 6 comments
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Behind the Scenes
Bear with me, because who knows how this will turn out! I think one of my favorite things about old pictures is looking at all the stuff in the background & piecing together all the memories. (i.e. "I remember that Michael Jackson poster!" "Look at our huge console TV!")
I took a picture of Robbie cleaning up after lunch today. When he eats something especially messy (mashed potatoes today) I'll take his shirt off, and I'll let him play in the leftover bubbles from doing the dishes (makes cleaning him up easier).
So when I uploaded the photo, I was looking at the details. I think I'll ramble about some of them! In no particular order...
1. Window open, partially dressed kid, November 12! Arizona is awesome.
2. I like my purple kitchen. It looks dark in this picture, but it's pretty bright. I painted it before Erin was one. Above the window, I have vinyl lettering that says "Many have eaten here, few have died".
3. By Robbie's head are some glass vegetables. The tomato's stem is the perfect home for my wedding ring when I'm washing dishes or doing messy kitchen stuff. There is a bell pepper, a carrot, and a chili in a copper bowl behind the tomato. When I was working for Phelps Dodge (now Freeport MacMoRan) in their old Tempe office, I would meet my parents for lunch pretty often at Casa Reynoso on Mill Ave & Southern. Sometimes my mom and I would look around in a dollar store that used to be in the same strip mall - that's where the glass vegetables came from. I just liked the bright colors.
Casa Reynoso! For my Arizonan friends, if you like the Mexican food in Globe-Miami, this is it. It's the same family that runs Chalo's in Globe. For anyone else heading to Tempe, you can't go wrong with the red chili or bean burros, and the gollo burro is my favorite (green chili, whole beans, pork... mmmmm) It's also a good place to run into people from home.
Back to the kitchen.
4. I see Robbie's underwear band peeking out from his shorts. Completely potty trained for a month. Yay!
5. He's standing on one of our dining room chairs. My parents bought the table and chairs for us when we got married. From Smitty's, even! Before they were all Fry's. We furnished our first apartment pretty well from family. Our living room furniture and our bed all came from members of Rob's family, and I still have the dresser I used since I was a little kid.
6. The phone (sticking up behind Robbie's head) was a wedding gift from my friend Brian. My EAC friends will remember him! Unfortunately, we've been out of touch except for occasional e-mails or running in to each other. He's the drummer for The Cremains - although I haven't seen them play for almost 10 years! Nice guy, super smart.
7. The copper bowl holding the glass vegetables... I have two of them. The other one is always full of M&M's on the counter. One year my mom and my friend Cyndi from work both got me the same exact bowl for my birthday. They both knew I love copper stuff, and I was glad to have two! It was great. I always kind of keep my eye out for stuff to add to the copper collection in my kitchen.
8. The day we moved into our house, our cat got stuck in the corner of the cabinets just behind where Robbie's standing. I opened the lower cabinets to let her check everything out (you know how weird cats are in new environments). Well, she disappeared. We thought she got outside somehow, and I felt terrible because we hadn't updated the tag on her collar with our new phone number yet. I was imagining this poor kitty wandering an unfamiliar neighborhood & being eaten by dogs or run over or just being scared. It stunk! Later that night when Rob and I came home from one of many trips to Home Depot, we finally heard her meowing & after about a half hour, Rob figured out where she was. There was a gap in the side of the cabinet's interior that led to a no-man's land between the two banks of cabinets. She's not the sharpest crayon in the box.
And now I think I've exhausted every detail I can possibly talk about in the picture. :) Maybe one of you will post a mundane picture & ramble on about what's going on behind the scenes!
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 12:03 PM 11 comments
Fourth picture in the fourth folder...
I saw this on Summer's blog & thought I'd see what I came up with. Post the fourth picture from your fourth folder!
With his car. Notice how he carefully placed it facing the camera. Good shot of the birthmark on his leg, huh? He thinks it looks like a football.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 8:44 AM 4 comments
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Happy Halloween!
We went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat last night. (I think everyone knows about these. But if not... everyone in the parking lot decorates their trunks and the kids go trick-or-treating to the cars.) It was a lot of fun, as usual! They had hot dogs, popcorn, homemade root beer & cotton candy, and of course lots of games.
Thank you to Rob for getting all the pom poms! The kids and I didn't go to the ASU/Georgia game with him a few weeks ago, but I told him to get a whole bunch of pom poms if they were giving them away. He ended up with 52 of them! We picked him up after the game, about a mile and a half from the stadium. He walked all that way with pom poms stuffed in all his pockets... people honking at him & stuff. Hard to look cool when you've turned your shorts into a hula skirt.
The kids had a great time! We had a hair-washing-and-bath marathon, and we all went to bed tired.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 10:27 AM 9 comments
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Gila Valley Temple
Thanks to Monica for this information! The Gila Valley AZ temple was announced several months ago, but I've been so curious about where exactly it will be.
Monica posted lots of details here today if you'd like to read about it!
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 10:29 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
San Diego
Rob and I spent the weekend in San Diego for our anniversary. Just the two of us - we've never left the kids, so that was kind of strange. Rob's mom took care of the kids while we were gone. They had fun playing with their cousins and Nana's dog (Robbie's favorite part)!
It was so nice! The weather was great (a little windy, but nice) and it was relaxing to just wander around and do whatever. We don't have too many pictures, because we're not huge fans of asking random strangers to take pictures of us in stiff poses. Just one - this is us on a horse-drawn carriage through the gaslamp district and Seaport Village.
A group of like 30 teenagers spotted us on the carriage ride, and while we were stuck at a red light, they all started chanting "Beso! Be-so!" (Spanish for kiss) so we had to oblige. They all cheered. Just a little embarrassing, but hey, that's not something that happens every day!
On the last day, we went golfing at Sycuan Resort in El Cajon. Rob loves golf. He's pretty good at it, too. I'm not so good at it, but I can get by & it's nice to be out on the course. It was a beautiful golf course! I hadn't golfed or even swung a club in years, so I didn't have great expectations. I did, however, get a hole in one... teed of right into a tree, and the ball dropped straight down into a squirrel hole.
We could totally see the ball down in there, but we couldn't get it out with our clubs; just pushed it further down. So I lost a ball, and probably confused the poor squirrel.
Now it's back to regular life! It was a nice little vacation, and I'm glad Rob thought it up & planned everything out. For anyone wanting out of Phoenix for a little bit, it's just a 5-hour drive - go for it!
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 12:39 PM 6 comments
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Nine Years
Tomorrow is our anniversary! Rob and I were married Friday, October 8, 1999 in the Mesa temple.
Some more relics...
Our "take a number" from the courthouse when we got our marriage license:
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 1:23 PM 13 comments
Monday, September 29, 2008
Helicopters and the Zoo
On Saturday, Rob was umpiring softball again, and the kids and I went to Bass Pro Shop and the Phoenix Zoo. We were happy that my parents came along with us!
They were doing a family preparedness day at Bass Pro Shop, so there were all kinds of fire trucks, police departments, hospitals, etc. with little tables set up. And the Chick-Fil-A cow was there, which meant coupons for free kids meals! Take a wild guess where we ate lunch.
They also had the Med Evac and Native Air helicopters in the parking lot. Robbie has been really excited about the color yellow lately, so the two yellow helicopters were pretty cool for him. The kids got to climb inside and check them out. I liked it myself! I guess I've never actually been that close to a helicopter before. Here are the kids with the helicopters - don't you love the "squinting in the sun" faces?
If you haven't been to Bass Pro Shop, it's a cool place to look around. It's a lot like Cabela's. There's a lot of stuff to look at - plenty of dead, taxidermied stuff, a big fish tank, a fish pond. On Saturdays, they let the kids feed the fish in the pond.
By lunch time, we were all sweaty, tired, and probably dehydrated! But we felt better after eating and after plenty of refills, and off we went to the zoo.
The Smithsonian was doing Free Museum Day, and the zoo was included, so that's the whole reason we went. We only had a couple of hours before the zoo closed, and none of us really felt like walking around the whole zoo. So we saw all the exciting stuff - the giraffes, tigers, monkeys, elephants. Here are the kids up close & personal with the mandrills:
(Side note: The mandrill in the back was picking through the other one's hair and eating his bugs. I alwyas get a kick out of that)
It was so HOT, though! I probably should've brought my parents back to the Med Evac helicopters afterward. We were pretty wiped out. See?Hot, sweaty, and smelling like the zoo!
It was a fun day, though.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 10:08 AM 10 comments
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
EAC, Part 2
Now that you've read about our luxurious accommodations, you may wonder why Iwould ever leave! But I did tear myself away to go to class. Some of my teachers included:
...The geology teacher who wore more clothes than anyone ever needs to. She would wear a turtleneck under a t-shirt with a button-up shirt over that. In the cold months she would add a sweater, a jacket, earmuffs, gloves, AND mittens.
...The theater teacher who seriously thought she should be on Broadway
...The psychology teacher with an awesome sense of humor, but you always felt like he could see through your soul
...The sociology teacher who was blind but would pace around the classroom without his cane as he lectured. He woud call on someone like this "Okay, the person in the third row, second seat..." and sometimes one of us would have to tell him, "Um, nobody's in that seat"
...The art history teacher who was awarded the prize for "Least Interesting Man in America". Or he should've been anyway. He would get a room full of college kids at 8 am, dim the lights, and shows slides for 90 minutes while he read the slide captions in monotone.
Aside from that last guy, I liked my teachers pretty well and my classes were interesting.
Some of the other fun stuff we did at EAC:
The Institute was a great place to hang out. The teachers were all really good, and it was just a nice place to be. I don't know if they still have it or not, but there was a bulletin board there and a stack of little paper. You'd check it a couple of times a day between classes to see if you had a note from anyone. I still have a lot of these little notes somewhere! There was always something there to make you laugh or brighten your day somehow.
Red Knolls was a cool place to hike. The heavily-clad geology teacher even took us on a field trip there once. But it's like a giant lump of solidified clay, with all kinds of weird formations, caves, and tunnels. It's a neat place to climb around. I only have one photo of it, so this will have to do. You can kind of make out one of my friends standing (in black) by the opening of the cave.
Choir! Dr. Lunt was the coolest choir director ever. Everyone went to the concerts, and they were always lots of fun. He always had barbershop and beauty shop quartets, and those four guys and four girls were like mini-celebrities. They said that if you drank the water from the choir room drinking fountain, you'd get married. Dr. Lunt even started putting little placards up around the drinking fountain to commemorate those couples who "drank the water". One winter when we were decorating the choir room, we hung a bunch of mistletoe above the drinking fountain and I remember him saying it was a dangerous machine. Here's a picture from one of the Fall Sings. These always ended with a big patriotic number, and a giant American flag would come down behind us. Always gave me goosebumps!
The hot springs. There were several places along the Gila River where you could find natural hot springs. One of them actually had a little home-made concrete hot tub that someone had crafted! The only drawback to the hot springs was that a couple of times a year, little groups of roving hippies would live there for a couple of weeks on their way through to wherever.
Mount Graham. I still like to go camping up there! It's just really pretty up in the mountains, and it's always fun to play with the squirrels & stuff. And snow in the winter!
I need to tell a few stories, too, but I'm running out of time! Maybe I can tell some random college stories in future blogs.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 10:28 AM 6 comments
EAC, Part 1
I had to copy Amy and Summer's blogs about college! Who knows how long this will be, so hang on...
EAC (Eastern Arizona College) August 1994 - May 1996
Thatcher, Arizona
Colors: Purple & gold
Mascot: Gila Monster (hey, at least it's not an artichoke)
There wasn't an abundance of "official" housing at EAC, so lots of kids rented old run-down houses or trailers around town. Howard's Trailer Park may as well have been a dorm.
We lived in a house that was past being called "run-down". It has since been demolished and I believe an A&W sits atop its grave now. Many of the college houses were named. There was Val Halla, the Peach Pit, etc. Ours was the Passion Palace! Lucky us.
My first year, I was one of ten girls living there. Roommates are great because you sort of get automatic friends. Having nine is good because you don't get tired of the same person all the time. It takes nine times as long to get tired of them.
There were certainly not nine bedrooms in the house. Five bedrooms had been created over the years, and at least three of them also served as hallways to get to other parts of the house. Mine was an add-on to the back of the house. The old "outside" of the house had never been painted or drywalled - it was weathered gray siding, and the porch light was still attached by the former back door. (The window on the back door had been painted white, and this was now a door to the next bedroom) My room had two doors to the outside, and it served as a passageway to one of the bathrooms and the laundry room. The laundry room was also an add-on, and while doing laundry, you could look through the old kitchen window at whoever was doing the dishes. From certain angles, you could even see into the bathroom from the kitchen window. Awesome!
There were two bathrooms which were almost always in use. They set the stage for the infamous "bathroom wars" my second year. Lots of pranks going back and forth. Old brownies rolled into logs and placed lovingly on the toilet seat, traffic barricades left mysteriously next to the tub... etc. Oh yes, and if someone was doing laundry when you took a shower, you had to get out before the rinse cycle or all the laundry water would come up the drain up over your ankles.
The kitchen had two fridges, and if you didn't put your name on your stuff, too bad! At one point, there were only two saucepans in the house, so we quickly adopted the rule that saucepans had to be washed as soon as you were done cooking in them. Otherwise, how could we all make our macaroni & cheese?? The dish calendar was a source of unquestioned justice. We got a calendar, wrote all the names on there in order, and you had to do all the dishes on your day. If you missed your day, the dishes were still yours until you got them done! Ten girls can generate a lot of dirty dishes by the end of the day. But the calendar reigned supreme, and it actually worked.
A working television sat atop a non-working television in the living room. The legless couches had cinder blocks under the corners to lift them off the floor. The floor which was covered in matted olive-green shag carpet. Our decor was eclectic, but I think the best description is "Early American Landfill". For some period of time, the TV only worked for movies and not TV. I watched The Fugitive about a thousand times that year.
Near the floor in my room was a light switch. Nobody knew what it was for, but we liked to turn it on and off. Later on, we learned that there was a cellar, and at the end of every school year, the roommates would go down there and sign their names. We finally knew what the light switch was for! We fully expected to find Jimmy Hoffa in there. But no, just a basement and a bunch of writing.
Other highlights of the house:
Home of the longest phone cord known to man. This cord could stretch through each of the bedrooms and then back to its home in the hallway. It was the cause of many near-death experiences.
We lived about 15 feet off the highway and directly across the street from Mark Allen Hall (dorm). The dorm residents would be locked out after midnight, so lots of times they would end up at our house. In the mornings, you could wander out and find a handful of people sleeping on the couches and the floor. Sometimes you knew them, sometimes you just figured one of the roommates knew them. No big deal.
I remember after complaining to our landlord about a wasp problem, she sent her teenage son over with a can of Raid. After an especially rainy and leaky season, we complained about the nineteen bowls we had to scatter around the house to catch the rain, so during spring break, they painted the roof. The next time it rained, we had nineteen bowls filled with milky-white water. Much better!
We taped an especially small roommate to the wall once. She was actually a couple inches off the ground. I've blacked out her eyes to protect her identity. Is that okay, Monica?
We used a lot of duct tape. One of our chairs was held together solely with duct tape. We also did a fine drywall patch with duct tape and paint after our good friend Chris fell through one of the walls.
I'm sure there's more I'm leaving out! It was a wonderful place.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 9:35 AM 12 comments
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Happy Birthday, Rob!
Rob turned 33 today! Here are a few flashbacks photos...
About 2 years old:
(Yes, he was born without Lefty)
Maybe 3 or 4:
On his mission in Ecuador - this is how they slept:
Rob was born September 17, 1975 in Aurora, Illinois. He's the middle child, right between two sisters. They moved to Mesa when he was a kid & he's been here since, except for a few summers and a school year spent in Illinois, and his mission.
He kept busy in high school. In Lena, IL, he played football, and he called the school's volleyball games over the radio for the local station. I think he played some basketball, too. In Mesa, he went to Westwood High School, and he played baseball (first base and pitcher). He was in all kinds of clubs, and played the trumpet in band.
He started college at Scottsdale Community College (the Fighting Artichokes - I am not making this up) and he tried out for their baseball team, but didn't quite make the cut. He went to Mesa Community College after his mision, and then finished up at ASU. He graduated in 2000 with his degree in Exercise Science.
He met his wonderful wife ;) in the spring of 1999. Rob is very hard-working and makes sure his family is taken care of. He umpires softball as a second job, just to make sure we have what we need! He's a busy guy. He loves sports! Mostly baseball. But name a sport, and he's probably played it & is pretty good at it. Basketball, skiing, bowling, rollerblading, ice skating, tennis... you get the idea.
He's also very active in church, and he takes his responsibilities seriously. That's something that's important to me. He is a good example, especially when it comes to pitching in to help others. We like having him around.
Happy birthday, Rob! We love you!
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 8:42 AM 7 comments
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Sadness
It's a dark day for Sun Devil fans. We lost to an unranked team - in overtime - last night. That's all I have to say about that.
For it's hail, hail, the gang's all here,
And it's onward to victory!
The people who sit in front of us are really cool. They're just the right amount of rowdy & they're fun to sit with. Here's the view from our seats - not bad! That sea of gold shirts on the end is the student section.
Finally, Robbie's latest accomplishment. He saw the U of A logo on a shirt in the store yesterday, and he promptly made a thumbs-down and blew a raspberry at it. One of my proudest moments as a parent!
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 3:56 PM 9 comments
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Go Devils!
ASU fans are happy once again this weekend - we beat Stanford 41-17 last night! Here's how we enjoyed the game:
1. Got there early & listened to the band warm up outside the stadium. Erin had her picture taken with her favorite cheerleader - she decided this girl was her favorite & didn't want her picture with any of the others. I told the cheerleader this & she got all happy! Erin was excited that she let her hold the pom poms.2. Wandered around the stadium with the kids looking for Sparky before the game. We were watching the players through the fence when Sparky came up behind us! Hi Sparky.
3. The kids learned quickly that if they want to make the entire student section scream and go "Woooo" all they have to do is hold up the pitchfork sign when we walk by. (See Sparky's hand above if you don't know what this is)
4. Sweat, cheer, sweat!
5. Took Robbie for his halftime bathroom break & ran out a little energy. One thing I love about Sun Devil Stadium is how it's built right into the mountains!
6. Sweat, cheer, sweat!
7. Leave about two minutes early to beat some of the crowd on the way out. Walk about 1/2 mile to the car, where we blast the a/c and the kids snooze on the way home.
Go Sun Devils! See you next week.
Posted by Kandice and Rob at 5:24 PM 3 comments