California Trip/Fall Update

I went to California recently and also had a bunch of misc photos on my phone and decided it was time to do an update before our NY trip and catch everyone up on what has been going on.

Like I said, I went to California to visit family and friends and even got in a trip to Disneyland!!

View of fire from Sacramento airport.  It was crazy!

Main Street Disneyland ready for Halloween!

Smiling Mickey greeted us.

My Disney buddies.

Mickey rockin' out!

Ready to dive on Splash Mountain.

A little tired but happy!

This was the trip with all the animals! 

Callie's kitty, Chloe.

Wendy's puppy, Callie......

....and Oakley!

Bob and Susan have a new kitty, Selfie.  He and Jayde love to romp!

And then there is Calcifer....such a cutie.

What about me????

The neighborhood kids continue to come over and play.  They have pretty good imaginations and always find fun things to do.

 

Riley watches from afar with a careful eye....

....however, she did let them pose with her on one occasion!

Mom and Marlowe came down for a visit a couple weeks ago and it happened to be Mom's birthday that Saturday so we were able to celebrate with her.

Dinner at Outback to celebrate.

And of course, ping pong was the entertainment of the evening.

Happy birthday Mom!

The rest of our time has been spent doing all the regular things.....

.....going to football games,

and concerts,

and other cultural performances.

Going to New York tomorrow!!

September Happenings

We've already had a busy month so I thought I would do an update now so it won't all pile up on me later!

First of all, when I transferred my photos onto my laptop, I found FIFTEEN pics of Agnes that she must have taken all by herself, I think those are called "selfies" or something like that, ha! I guess I better put a pass code on my phone!

 

Goofball!

Labor Day weekend we drove up to Prescott to celebrate Ashley's birthday with her and Jason.  On the way out of town, we dropped Riley off at Pet Smart.  She loves the car especially when she can feel the breeze!

Not sure what is happening here. 

We had a great time with Ashley and Jason.  They introduced us to a new restaurant, which was delicious, and then we walked around town looking in shops.  I found two new record albums at an antique store and yes, I also went to the candle shop.  I have had the orange cinnamon burning all week and the house smells yummy!  Then we went back to their apartment for presents and Oreo cheesecake! Thanks Ashley and Jason for a fun day.  It was great to see you! Happy 26th Ash!!

 

This week Donna and Callie came for a visit!!  We had a a great time doing all fun things, no work (even though Donna tried the whole time to do stuff around the house)! Since they had never been here before I took them to the Mesa Temple and we spent some time in the visitor's center.  They have some new things that were fun to see.  When we went through the Family Plan presentation one of the missionaries reminded me so much of Abbey.  I thought of her over in New Zealand at their visitor's center doing the same thing.  We miss you Abbey!

Donna and Callie both love to play games which is also our favorite thing to do so guess what we did.....A LOT!!

We always brought out a pile of games to choose from......

.....but the winners were always BAM and Five Crowns.

We also watched some shows.  Thanks guys for a relaxing week!

Riley warmed up to them so quickly, she loved them!

Donna? What happened to this picture???

All too soon it was time to leave......

Sniff, sniff

Thank you Donna and Callie for making the trip out here!  It was so much fun to spend so much time with you all at once!  Come back soon!!!!!

I love you guys!

BYU Graduation

Last week we went to Utah to help Jared celebrate receiving his PhD from BYU.  We had a great time and are so happy for Jared and this amazing milestone in his life!

Provo/BYU is still very green and pretty.  We had a couple of warm afternoons, nothing major, but it was mostly cool and refreshing with some rain storms to liven things up.

 

On Thursday we went to Commencement.  Elder Russell M. Nelson was the commencement speaker. We had great seats with a great view of where Jared was sitting.  Although, it may be hard to tell through all the blurriness of my photos!

The graduates are filing in!

Jared is in the front row with his head turned this way. Sorry for the blurriness.  I still haven't learned how to take good photos when I am zooming in!

Another blurry pic, but there he is on his way out with a big smile on his face!

Ah, much better photo.  Congratulations Jared!

Another awesome picture with the brilliant rays of sun shining down on our happiness! Couldn't have planned it better!

 The next morning we went to the convocation ceremony where Jared received his diploma.

 

Proud dad! We are so happy for you Jared!

Didn't graduate, but what a cute couple!

After convocation we went out to lunch at Pizzeria 712.  We had never heard of it before but are glad Jared introduced us to it.  They had delicious food!  Cate's family came up from Las Vegas for the festivities and joined us for lunch.  

Here are the two lawyers stepping outside to take work calls! I couldn't resist getting a shot of that!

As of Monday, Jared is now a full time employee of BYU.  He will be teaching classes and doing counseling. Looking forward to hearing about the great things he and Cate will experience in the future.  We love you!

Summer Fun

I've been taking lots of pictures this summer so I thought I would do an update about some of the different things we have been doing the last couple of months.  Our pool has been getting a lot of use this summer.  The kids in the neighborhood seem to congregate at our house occasionally and it's been lots of fun.

Who needs a diving board when you have rocks?

 

Just hanging out.....

Can you see me?

The Robinson's had two birthdays to celebrate in July, Oscar and Gurrie.  At Oscar's birthday party we played the candy bar game.  This was my first time playing that.  Everyone starts out with a bag of candy and then you take turns rolling a die that tells you things to do, like taking from the players next to you or having to put one in the middle pot, etc.  At the end of the game, you hope you have at least one candy bar left in your bag!  It was a lot of fun, especially the last five minutes of the game when everyone knew time was running out!

Hoping for a good roll!

Ahhh, I guess things aren't going so well?

Chocolate peanut butter cup cake....Oscar has excellent taste!

Once upon a time, Scott introduced the kids to the "burrito twirl" (for lack of a better term).  He rolls them up in a blanket and twirls them around.  Now they request it every time they see him!

Gurrie chose a berry chocolate pie for her birthday.  Another excellent choice!

She got some fun stuff including this awesome book about horses!

 She also got the game, Pit, which everyone wanted to play immediately.  Anyone who knows me, knows I do NOT like that game and usually refuse to play it.  But they talked me into it and it was fun to watch the kids battle it out.  I was not converted though. 

If you have ever been in AZ in the summer you know we have a lot of thunderstorms.  We also have a dog who is terrified of them. It's usually not a problem when they happen during the day, but when they are during the night, it's like having a crying baby that wants to walk back and forth across your head all night.  As a matter of fact, I was up all night with her last night and so I hope there are not too many mistakes in this blog entry!

Trying to hide from a storm.

Still there.  She's not going anywhere!!

The day after being up all night.  I'm glad someone gets to sleep!  There is no justice.

Other than that, we have been busy with work and callings and school.  I am taking a class right now that is really, really, really, really, really, really HARD!!!  The text books are super hard to understand and don't ask me what I am going to do with the papers I need to write.  Ugh.  I have been taking a break from that the last few days to prepare a RS lesson for this Sunday.  That's not usually my favorite thing to do, but it's given me an excuse to put off writing an essay for which I'm grateful.  But I'll be back at it next week so keep your fingers crossed for me! 

We're looking forward to being up in Utah for BYU graduation.  Yay, Jared!