cincinnati to tucson

happy valentine's day from my two fave love bugs!!  we celebrated valentine's day/love of reading week with the annual book character parade (incidentally, ella's last...tear!).  ella dressed as hermione granger from the harry potter series and max was a dragon from "dragons love tacos."  thanks for max's costume, mom!!

with jack and hailey

jack had the SWEETEST valentines for ella

a quick date with my other man

oh george, found your comfy spot.  

hectic, hectic rest of our valentine's day with religious ed, a showing, and ash wednesday mass.  

on thursday, we welcomed jonathan and tatiana to sunny and warm rainy, dreary, grey and cold arizona!

aunt tatiana is from brazil and brought these cool jerseys for the kids!

on saturday, roger, jonathan and tatiana headed out to the desert museum (ella wasn't feeling that great, so we rested at home, then went to poppie and gigi's for a sleepover).

on sunday, we drove down to sonoita for some fabulous wine tasting and a delicious lunch!

on monday, we hiked up to bridal wreath falls (part of saguaro national park).  it was a gorgeous hike and we enjoyed a picnic up at the top.

roger found this picture at his mom's house last weekend so of course we had the boys recreate it:

almost exactly 40 years later!!  (the original was dated march 1978)

we had a great visit - thanks for coming to tucson!!!

on tuesday, max earned his second stripe on his yellow belt - keep it up buddy!

and now we celebrate our fave tucson holiday: rodeo break!

ella had her hoedown performance - super cute square dancing

with her partner, michael

meanwhile, max panned for "gold" and had a few other fun activities with his kindergarten class.

giddyup, no time to stop...this horse keeps going.  yeehaw!

tucson to cincinnati

man.  february is almost over and i have some major catching up to do!  back to the week of the 5th and we are in full swing of our routines - art classes, karate, religious ed, musical theater, parkour and speech. plus a house on the market and showings and meetings with contractors on the new (or, technically-speaking, older) house.

on friday, we left for cincinnati to see family and attend mimi's memorial service.

thanks to roger's almost-every-other-week travel schedule, he has executive platinum status and was gracious enough to upgrade max and me on our dallas-to-cinci leg of the trip.

welcome to first class, max!

the look on ella's face when she realized how cold it was outside

so excited to see some snow!!

we had a relaxing night friday reunited with family and enjoying montgomery inn ribs.  on saturday morning, we gathered at jill's for a quick family photo shoot before the memorial service for mimi.

 the kids LOVED their time with cousins.

 on sunday, we hung out then went to mariemont inn for dinner - the place that mimi and papa used to frequent.  followed by graeter's ice cream!

monday morning, we were headed back to tucson.  we've created a monster - max asked roger before going to the airport if his upgrade came through...  oy.

but seriously, thanks for the upgrade, rog.  best.  valentine's.  day.  gift.  ever.

the plan was to have ella join me on the way back, but she wanted extra time with just daddy since she missed the father-daughter dance at school.

also worth mentioning, max turns to me and says "if i can't be a dinosaur digger, then i would like to be an airport worker.  like the security guards who check people's bags for bad tools before they get on the plane so everyone is safe."  um.  so apparently he wants to be a TSA agent when he grows up...

my thoughts exactly, buddy...

so good to be with family and celebrate mimi's amazing life.  

80's rock

fun last week - even though we missed roger during his first trip of the year to DC.  

tuesday was school spirit day - back to the 80's.  els channeled madonna (thanks to my leftovers from jenny's 80's party a few months ago) and max was super-bowl ready a 'la jim mcmahon and his '85 super bowl shuffle-era bears. 

the kids wanted to get up early enough on wednesday to witness the super blue blood moon.  pretty cool!

i rotated this, but it reverted - ella drew our new house in her wednesday after-school art class.

we kept busy the rest of the week and on saturday afternoon, we ventured out for our first tucson gem and mineral show experience - at the co-op.  they had a ton of rocks and fossils for the kiddos to explore.

a 93% complete t-rex skull!

it was awesome and sunday we went to a fun super bowl party at sensei's house.  our house is on the market so moving forward.  a pretty great week all in all!