Sleepy reader

Addie fell asleep tonight with a flashlight and The Cat in the Hat. A girl after my own heart. :)

O Most Holy One

Before bed the other night (I'm paraphrasing Cam a bit here)-

Addie: What does "amen" mean, Daddy?
Cam: It means I believe.
Addie: What's the Holy Spirit?
Cam: It's the part of God that lives in us and that's always with us.
Addie: Can you see it?
Cam: No.
Addie: So it's pretend?
Cam: No, it's not pretend.
Addie: What's it do?
Cam: God's spirit stays with us to help us do good things.
Addie: What do you mean?
Cam: To help us be nice, to tell the difference between right and wrong...
Addie: What do you mean?
Cam: You know, being nice to others, manners, sharing-
Addie: (interrupts) -oh, the Holy Spirit helps me a lot then, because I am really good at sharing.

Bleh

I wish I had a cleaning service. I mean, I love our big house. But it's next to impossible for it all to be clean at once. Maybe when I win the lottery. If I played the lottery... Well, that's all.

4th of July

We had a nice relaxing 4th, well, 3rd of July. It was a great way to end our "staycation" week, and we are all sad for Cam to go back to work and start reality again. :) We went to my parent's to hang out and swim before we hit the fireworks in the evening. AZ City always does their fireworks on the 3rd, which is nice because everyone is usually off the next day for the holiday anyway. (I did have to work the night of the 4th, but no big deal since we had already celebrated, plus hooray for holiday pay!) Unfortunately due to AZ monsoons and dust, we didn't get to swim, but we did hang around the house and eat lots of cheese dip. MMM cheese dip. The kids loved the fireworks of course. Actually, Addie loved them and watched with wonder, pointing out her interpretation of the bursts. Red and green ones were "Christmas ones", etc. She was also excited to get another "glower" (all that glow stuff  is such a ripoff!), the one she got looks like a double lightsaber "just like Darth Maul".  Gage was so very exhausted by the time they started that he just watched in a sleepy daze. I thought he might get scared by the noise, but it didn't seem to bother him. It's becoming a fun tradition to do every year, and this year Addie was old enough to understand that we're celebrating America's birthday and not just watching fireworks for no apparent reason. I sincerely hope that our children will know and appreciate what a great country in which we live, and not take for granted the freedoms that so many of us do. Happy 235th America!

Children's Museum of Phoenix

Since we had to cancel our camping trip because of wildfires we are having a fun staycation week! Today we went to the Children's Museum of Phoenix with my sis, bro-in-law and niece. It was so awesome! Addie was the perfect age for it and there was just enough stuff to fill up the day and get your money's worth from the ticket ($11 for one day).

 She honestly loved every bit of the museum but some of her favorite-favorites:

• the "Climber" - a giant treehouse type structure that spanned all 3 stories
• "Pit Stop" - race car tracks and cars you can climb in
• the "Market" - you can unload the delivery truck, shop, and check out! (I would have LOVED this as a child)

There was a "3 & under" room so the babies could crawl around. Gage had fun playing with the mirror and toy filled cubby holes that ran along the floor.

Cooking pizza in the wood stove!





Pulling cousin Emily around in the "Pedal Power" exhbit

I highly recommend, especially for preschool age!

Make Believe and Combat Crawling

I would love to see into the mind of a 4 year old. We have some seriously fun make-believe play going on in our house these days. Addie's favorite game (this week) is "Superhero" which basically means I tell her when I hear a princess that needs rescuing and where they are and she races off to the rescue. Mario and Luigi help sometimes too (because fabulous parent that I am, she gets to play Nintendo sometimes... and she's pretty good, but that is another post entirely). The other day she told Cam that one of the princesses she rescued didn't have a home and could we please let her live here? Since then I think we have adopted about 8 princesses. I can't keep them all straight, but they have names like Britcon, Billcon, Willcon, Zogettyl, and Rudy (who is sometimes rude to the other princesses and has to be sent to Addie's room until she can be nice again). I try really hard to just play along, but sometimes I can't help but laugh at the imagination.

In the pic below she is dressed as a knight and fell asleep like this during her quiet time. Those are necklaces on her face which she fashioned into a knight's helmet. When she needs to flip the visor up, she just moves the bottom necklace in line with the top. :)

As for Gage, he is army crawling around the house these days. In the video (sorry for the quality, it's from my phone) he had just gotten the hang of it, he's a lot faster now and moving some around the house. I'm not sure if he will ever crawl the traditional way.

And yes, Addie is wearing her Superhero cape. :)

My 1st Ever Blog Post

Hello blogging world! I have been debating starting a family blog for a long time. I'm not going to lie - I feel a bit overwhelmed and a little out of my element, but hopefully blogging will feel less foreign as time goes on... Mainly, I wanted to have a place to keep memories of all things Sanders. :) The kids are growing up super fast (Addie is 4 and Gage is 8 months today!) and I wanted to have a place where I could look back and see what cute things they were up to, or how we celebrated certain events. So thank you to my blogging friends out there for your inspiration. It seems I have a hard time remembering things from when Addie was a baby and I just can't bear to part with memories so easily. So, while I am sad that I did not start this when she was born, I will just have to settle for better late than never.

So, if you're reading, please enjoy! And if you're not, oh well. :)