Instagram Week: September 20-26

I'm trying to eat a lot more fruit.

Fruit salad is my friend.

Especially when it has plums, strawberries, bannanas and pears. Yum.

My friend, Kristine, was out of town, so I got the pleasure of

dog sitting her pooch, Marley.

Doesn't he look fun?!

We had a courtyard event at church this weekend

to celebrate the end of Bible Boot Camp.

It was army/camo themed, and one of our security guys,

who happens to work for the SWAT team,

pulled some strings and brought the SWAT team's truck!

The kids loved it!

I tried something new with my hair...

what do you think?

Lexi Lu and I went to the Children's Museum of Phoenix!

You can read more about our adventures here.

We had a blasty blast!

And finally...

When I moved into my house, I had a long list of projects to do...

I got to cross one of them of my list this week!

Re-organizing my closet. Color coded. Bam!

See you next week!

Girls Day with Lexi Lu

My friends Erin and Jon are on a missions trip to Africa!

They have been posting to Facebook about what they've been doing,

and I can't wait to hear more when they come back!

On Sunday Erin posted, "Just experienced the most amazing church service of my life.

The worship was of full surrender and love for God and the people

gave their all for Jesus. Praise God."

Erin and Jon have three of the best kids around, Jake, Madison, and Lexi.

Before they left, Erin started to get really nervous about leaving the kids.

She asked that we would check in on them every few days to make sure they were doing ok.

I offered to take Lexi for a day of fun on one of my days off.

We had a blasty blast!

First we stopped by one of my favorite pizza joints, Oregano's.

I love this place for multiple reasons, but one amazing thing is that

they give kids some pizza dough to play with while they wait for their food.

Genious!

We also enjoyed some delicious pizza cookie...

Lexi really enjoyed the ice cream!

Then we were off to the Children's Museum of Phoenix.

The CMP is one of the first places in the nation to have a play structure like this:

www.childrensmuseumofphoenix.org

It was a hit!

Lexi loved playing in it! She especially loved the flying bathtub!

After a day of fun, Lexi was super tired and fell asleep on the way home!

Love you Lexi Lu!

My first week with Instagram!

My old android phone bit the dust last week,
so I am a proud new owner of an iPhone!

Here is the first of what I hope to be a weekly post of
“My week in Instagram photos…”

The good ol’ Arizona monsoons finally hit this week…and they hit hard!

My electricity went out for a few hours.

Luckily, I had a few candles around the house and
a man who was willing to bring me dinner

and take me to his place so we could enjoy our meal

with the comfort of air conditioning.

 

I got sick… again.

This time with a sinus infection and bronchitis.

Pass the codeine please!

I had to stay home from work on Saturday and
was not able to teach the kiddos on Sunday.

Looking forward to teaching them again next week.   
 

Mr. CJ and I enjoy learning obscure facts and watching crazy documentaries.

To prove it, I took a picture of him googling the
difference between emus and ostriches.

 Self proclaimed nerds!

 

My coworkers are some of my favorite people on the planet.

After going to lunch to celebrate Erin, we stopped by Target
to try on some of the latest fall fashions.

Erin is about to go on a missions trip to Mozambique! Read about it here.             

We had a BUNCH of parties and events to attend this week.

As a result, my dining room table played host to lots of presents.

 I LOVE giving presents!

 

One of the events we got to attend was a going away party for two friends.

My friend Anthony is moving to Hollywood to work for a company

that does the editing for some really cool TV shows!

 And my friend Jessica is about to go to Spain for three months to study abroad.

 Here are Jess and Izzy.

I love watching Izzy grow! Check out how little she was! 

Jessica loves journaling, but even more so, she loves journals!

 I found a journal a few weeks ago that I knew she would love,
and I wrote in it for her.

She absolutely loved it and said it would be her Spain journal :)

I got to hang out with two of my favorite kiddos this week, Daniel and Violet.

We had dinner and this is how they preferred to sit…

one in front of the other, so they could properly watch the movie, of course. :)

LOVE these two. 

 

Another of my favorite kiddos turned 4 this week

and we got to go to his pirate themed birthday party.

 He loved opening his presents and squealed for joy
every time he opened new “pajam-jams.”

 Happy birthday, Ronin!

And lastly, we attended the baptism of little Michael 

 (his cousin Nate also got baptized on the same day).

Our friends Summer and Johnny came down from Flagstaff
for the baptisms and stayed with me.

We went for a coffee date and my day was instantly better!

See you next week!

Spelunking in Flagstaff

Holiday weekends are the best!

I get to have more than one day off in a row

and Mr. CJ gets to have time off, too.

For Labor Day, we decided to go visit friends in Flagstaff

and do some hiking.

I had hiked in the lava tubes before, but it was Mr. CJ's first time.

The lava tubes were formed 700,000 years ago by molten lava.

The cave is completely underground and is 1.4 miles to the center.

At the highest point, it is 80 feet high,

and at the lowest, it's about three and a half feet high,

causing hikers to litterally crawl through.

It's completely dark inside; absolutely no natural light shines through.

It's a challenging hike, with lots of rocks and boulders to climb over,

but so much fun!

Here are a few before, during and after shots:

Then we decided to go hike part of Humphrey's Peak.

It was such a gorgeous day!

We got to see such great scenery and had a great time together!

I can't wait for our next trip!