SOOOO close to fall

Ahh, September!  Still hot as all get out here.  Although, I will admit there are some days where it is almost pleasant in the morning.  If we can just hang on until end of October we will have made it through our last Yuma summer!  

School is in full swing and so far so good.  Don't get me wrong, I am sure there is room for improvement but for the most part everyone has settled into a routine.  Big news this month - Lucy has decided to run for Student Council!  Originally she was considering running for President, but ultimately decided on the role of Public Relations.  Here are the posters we came up with to help her get the word out!  She was pretty happy with the way they turned out!  It is tough being the relatively new kid.  The vast majority of her classmates have been together since the school began in 2013 and Lucy just got on the scene last year.  We are just excited she is willing to step up and be a part of her school win or lose.  Another thing she is spearheading is a school newsletter.  She approached her principal without even telling us about it with the idea and was given the go-ahead!  How exciting!!

I have seen some pretty strange things in my time in Yuma, but this is by far one of the strangest.  I was at a stop light on a very busy road and the black bike in this picture blew past me on the side walk, dropped down to the street and continued to speed down the road.  He turned into the Walmart parking lot without even slowing down.  His Jerry-rigged cart was swerving side to side so badly I was convinced it was going to turn over! Jim and Ben have seen a similar getup cruising down a different road but there was a grown woman sitting in the cart! Apparently it is a Yuma Thing! 

It has taken us quite while to figure out the sports scene here in Yuma and with less then a year to go we finally got Ben involved in a sport he is truly interested in.  Yes, I know you are going to say - what about all the sports things he has already done.  Well apparently those were all torture.  Ha Ha, just kidding.  He has enjoyed (for the most part) everything he has done here but apparently baseball is his passion.  The girls feel pretty much the same way about soccer - especially Lilly.  I personally still like swimming, but I will admit I am biased because swimming was the one sport where everyone practiced at the same time and the same place on the same days.  With baseball and soccer I don't have that.  Thank goodness one of our neighbors has two boys on the same team as Ben and we have been able to coordinate some car pooling.  The girls are on the same team at the moment and so that helps, but there are rumors that Lilly will be moved up and fingers crossed that won't change the practice/game schedule too much.  Back to Ben.  He is doing well on his team and is playing catcher.  He needs to work on his hitting but considering he hasn't played in over 3 years we are pretty happy.  It isn't just the kids who are being active.  The base has a spouse kickball league going and I joined our squadron's team.  I will admit, I was not prepared for all the rules of kickball!  We have a great group of ladies out there and I enjoy it.  

The third weekend of the month finds us without any sports commitments so we decided at the last minute to drive to Phoenix and hang out with some friends.  The kids had a great time hanging out and the moms also had quite a fun time not hanging out with the kids!!  The one bad thing that happened is my 15 year-old crown broke and so I was especially attractive looking with my missing tooth.  No, there are no pictures.  I will spare you that.  I ended up having to get another root canal upon my return to Yuma a few days later and currently waiting for the new crown to arrive.  Thankfully, my dentist here outfitted me with a temporary crown so as to not scare people.  Ha Ha.

It has taken over twenty years, but it has finally happened!!  I have converted Jim into taking things off the curb!!  He always makes fun of me.  While we were in Phoenix, he texted me a picture of some cat play structures one of our neighbors had hauled out to the curb.  The kids and I had been eyeing them all week but KNEW Jim would have a fit if we brought them home.  I told him we had a plan for those things and would love it if he grabbed them and he did!!!  I had to promise not to keep them though.  Our plan is for the girl scout troop to refurbish them and give them to our local Humane Society.  Lilly went to a camp there this summer and the kitten room is in dire need of play things so we thought this might be a great solution and it gets the children in the habit of volunteering.  Win-win!  Here is what they look like in the before shot.  Our vision is to remove the torn jute roping and frayed carpet and replace with more jute roping.  The bottom one has fleece on it so we would recover it with more of the same.  We also need to power wash and vacuum the whole thing.  The girls are pretty excited about it.

Following in the theme of volunteering, Lucy's sixth grade class had a field trip to the Yuma Food Bank to assemble food bags that are sent home with students who may need food over the weekend.  They had a great time and I hope learned a little something about helping others and how kids can also do great things to help those in need in their community.

A friend and I decided to head over the border recently in search of the giant metal eagle I saw last year.  We had intended it to be strictly a fact finding mission but $1,000 ended up $300. Well we had no choice but to buy it.  Jim was not exactly thrilled that we showed up with this late in the day.  I had hoped they could install it outside but he is doubtful.  Hopefully once WTI ends, he will be a bit more excited about.  

Another thing we picked up was an Ostrich egg.  Not sure exactly how that happened, but the kids have enjoyed playing with it and posting strange things about it on Instagram.

We will end this month with Lucy getting awarded the Student of the Month for September for PE.  Out of the whole school she got picked.  She is pretty excited!!  We are especially happy for her since we got the results back from the election and she didn't win.  She said, "Oh well.  At least I tried! Besides, I have a bunch of other stuff going on this year."