New Dos

Last Wednesday was haircut day at our house. All of us except for Sarah Claire got cuts. You don't get to see pics of the boys, since their changes weren't quite as drastic as ours. But you can take my word for it, they're both looking sharp.

Lee Anna has been asking for several weeks (or maybe months) now to get her hair cut. She wanted to grow it out long for Aunt Claire's wedding, but now that it's warming up again, she was ready to chop it off . I decided I was ready for a change, too, so we had a little girls' outing to the salon. Sarah Claire wanted to come, too, but I'm not ready to cut off these pig tails yet. Maybe in a few years...

Here's the last-minute "before" shot I took of Lee Anna as we were getting in the car...

 and here's the one she took of me.

And here we are back at home! (Sorry, the photo's kind of dark and blurry, 

but you get the general idea!)

 We left lots of hair all over the floor of that little salon,
and we're both very happy with our short(er) dos!

First Time for Everything

We've been living here for a long time. When we got here, Lee Anna was a year younger than Sarah Claire is now! And we've been riding sailboats on the river since the first week we were here. Not every week, but we've got to be in the 20s by now. Sometimes it's really windy and we worry that the boat might be blown over. Other times there's no wind at all, and they push us out a little ways with a pole, and we get to sit still and watch the sunset. Once, the wind wasn't blowing and they used a motor to push us around the river. Until the motor ran out of fuel, anyway, then they used another motor boat to pull us back to the dock in the dark. That was fun.

But this weekend we took some visiting friends on a sailboat cruise and had a new experience. When we first shoved off, we noticed that we seemed to be drifting more than sailing. Our sail wasn't catching much wind at all. The captain was a little younger, and perhaps a little less experienced, than many of the sailboat captains. When I asked him why we were drifting, he pointed up and noted that the sail was short. Well, okay, Cap'n, but it looks to me like it's just stuck and bunched up instead of being spread out. About that time we started to bump into another boat docked on the side of the river, so our guy had to push us off again.

Then he started calling out to all passers-by, asking them to pull us. A smaller motorboat came along after a few more minutes, and a second sailor-man got on with us. Before long, we noticed that our captain was cruising away on the little motor boat. The new captain then did what we hadn't seen before: He climbed up the mast to loosen the stuck sail! Our guest in town was 20 years younger than the sailor (and the current blogger) and also several kilos lighter than both of us. So I suggested that he climb up instead. He politely declined.

But after just a few minutes, and two trips up the mast, our guy had the sail unfurled and catching lots of wind.

And a good time was had by all. 

Beach Vacation

This week we took a little break from city life and headed to the beach. It was a beautiful week and we had a wonderful, restful time. We've been going to the same resort for five years now, since Sawyer looked like this... 

instead of all grown up like this...

 and Lee Anna looked like this...

instead of this beautiful almost-8-year-old!

 And when we first started going, this little princess wasn't even around yet!

 It's been fun to make so many special memories at the same spot. We always enjoy reminiscing about funny things that happened on previous trips, and remembering friends and family that have been out there with us.

Here are some of my favorite pics from this trip.

Sweet sisters

Daddy held down the beach chairs and tried hard to stay out of the chilly water.
Aren't those mountains amazing?

Lee Anna and Sawyer stayed busy one afternoon building a rock dam. 

If only they were always so loving toward each other...

And you have to see Sawyer's new trick!

When Jason told him to do a back flip off the side of the pool, I just laughed, thinking he'd never try it. But the next thing I knew, he was back-diving repeatedly into the water! He never quite made it 360 degrees, but he did some nice back dives!

Happy Easter!

Widespread Dust

When you live in the desert, there's gonna be a lot of dust in your life. When you consider how much sand is out there in the desert to be blown our way, it's really not surprising. So we deal with it by having our car washed daily and our floors cleaned several times a week, and by keeping things sealed and covered. And it's just common knowledge that anything left out in the open is going to get very, very dusty if you don't clean it regularly.

Sometimes we have real live dust storms, where the dust is so thick it stings your eyes and makes your teeth feel gritty. On days like that, it's painfully obvious how very dusty our city can be. But the fact is that even on clear days, there's still a tremendous amount of sandy junk in our air.

That's what we got a reminder of this week.

The weather has been really nice and springy lately, so last Thursday I decided to leave our windows open. We have two large windows directly opposite each other in our living and dining areas, so it creates a nice cross breeze to have them both open. Here's one of the open windows:

Now Thursday is one of our much-anticipated "housekeeper days," so she showed up around 10 a.m. After cleaning the kitchen, she moved to the dining area and thoroughly wiped down the table. It was still sparkling clean when we sat down for lunch at 1:00 p.m., which is why I was so incredibly shocked to find this... 

just four hours later! Around 5:00, I was standing in the kitchen looking into the dining room when I noticed that the setting sun shining through the window was illuminating every single speck of dust on the table...and there were LOTS of specks to illuminate! I was seriously floored to see how much dust had accumulated on my table in one afternoon. And here's the kicker--it wasn't a dusty day! If it were, I never would have dreamed of leaving the windows open. But since it was a nice, normal day outside, I thought it might be ok. The kids graciously agreed to draw some pictures in the dust, just so that you could see how bad it was.

Like I said, that wasn't a terribly dusty day. However, today we had one of those days, so I kept our windows shut tight. I also took a picture, so you can see the difference. The first photo is from March 15, a cloudy but clear day.

This second photo is from today, April 1. It's like putting on a pair of beige-tinted glasses. This is one of those days when you might get on weather.com and find that the forecast for our city is "widespread dust."

Thankfully, we have many more clear days than dusty days, and you can be sure that when the breezes are blowing and the temps are agreeable, I'm going to keep opening our windows, even if it means we have to wipe the table down before dinner!