Fall Fun

Fall in Arizona is a funny thing. It can be scorching hot one day and freezing cold the next. Sometimes it is a gradual change, down one week, back up the next. Here are some various shots throughout the month; our small-town parade, a water fight on the trampoline, Dallas keeping our puppy-friend Cooper in line (at 13+ she's really doing well!), playing in the pecan leaves, my beautiful girls in the bright afternoon sun.

Exploring our Backyard

When Phoebe's in school, Tessa and I have long days to fill and sometimes we go exploring. We have often been to Madera Canyon, just minutes away, and so beautiful. This time we went slightly north to see if we could find the ghost town Papa Jim and Daddy had found once and told us about. We took the wrong road, I guess, and never found that, but we did find an interesting trailhead through the Santa Rita mountains. If we stayed on long enough we would get to the same peak above Madera Canyon. We went less than a mile before turning to head back in time to meet Phoebe's bus. It was a very narrow, rocky trail for the most part and I was impressed that Tessa was not only able but disappointed that we couldn't keep going.

Feels like Fall

Now that it's beginning to "cool off" (meaning highs are "only" in the 80s) it's time to start enjoying fall. We made the annual trip to Willcox and spent the day at Apple Annie's orchards and Pumpkin patch. First stop apples, at Tessa's request. She really likes to pick the fruit and insists on carrying the bucket herself.

We invited Tim's friend Wayne and his girlfriend Odette to join us. It looked like everyone was having fun. The hay ride was pulled by a tractor and didn't actually have any hay though.

We weighed the apples to pay for them. Tessa was investigating the scale. We had homemade pumpkin and apple pie ice cream. Then we headed over to the produce fields a few miles down the road.

Tessa loved running, walking or riding (she did a little of each) through the sunflower patch and checking out the extra tall corn fields.
She wanted to wander in the fields, which we knew would result in her permanent disappearance, so we had to create a race back to Phoebe.

Wandering through pumpkin patch, looking for the right one to cut and take home.

Found it!
Daddy chose Phoebe's because it was perfect, he said. That soft dirt was pretty tough to wheel through.
Probably the last year she'll be able to hitch a ride.
Yummmm, kettle corn!
Wayne and Odette looking picture perfect. They obviously don't have kids! (Although they were both so patient and helpful with ours - even during Tessa's carsick incident)
Looking windblown and disheveled but happy.

They had a trough filled with corn kernels that the kids could play in. It was disgusting to watch one kid using his shoe as a shovel to pour it over everyone's heads and Tessa putting her face in the kernels and swimming through it. When she came up for air some of the kernels stuck to her runny nose. But hey, you're only a kid once, right?

We took home some pumpkin bread and exactly one bell pepper to put on a pizza. We'll see if she'll actually eat it. We had dinner in Tucson and got home late. The kids were zonked out in the car and after being stripped down and put in bed (we only found two corn kernels in Tessa's clothes) it was a quiet night.

The "After Party"

My parents were able to sneak away at the last minute and showed up for Phoebe's birthday party. The next few days were fun for the girls to have some grandparents, auntie, and cousins to play with.

Phoebe's expressions are so telling they make us laugh. Who needs words to communicate when you have looks like these?

Papa and Tessa levitating.

Tessa loves cousin "Wibiff". Tim loves saying Wibiff in his deepest bass and sound like a frog. Tessa doesn't even say Wibiff anymore, she says Lizabeff but we still enjoy calling her Wibiff.

Didn't mind the lighting on this one because their smiles were so real.

Day trip to Patagonia Lake, 10 or 15 miles north of the Mexican border. It was surprisingly warm considering the elevation (4000 ft). Tessa got right in and even went under a few times. I tried to explain to her that we don't open our eyes under water in a lake.

The peak to the right, directly above the little white buoy is Mt. Hopkins, which is north, near us, and has an observatory on the peak at 8585ft. It was a weird perspective.

Mexican buffet brunch, a typical Ziegler outing.

Reid Park Zoo, playing in the splash area.

At dinner the balloon man made her a chihuahua, which she named Copper in honor of our neighbor's chihuahua.

She asked me to feed him a Scooby snack.

Eight is Great!

Phoebe's eighth birthday portraits - She's always had a baby face, and I love that she still has dimples on her knuckles, but this crazy phase of grown up teeth mixed in with empty spaces and baby teeth is a telling sign that she is growing up. Eight years ago we were spending as many hours a day in the hospital as we could arrange with her birthmom, the hospital and the adoption agency. We were worried about all the rules, her birthmom's emotions and Phoebe's baffling health concerns. The fact that 9/11 had just happened was too much to process in the NICU. We just wanted to bring her home and sort it all out later. We wanted to take her to doctors of our own choosing, not the ones the hospital assigned. We wanted to show her off to our family in person, not with stacks of photos that all looked the same (because how many different angles can you take of a sleeping baby?). Maybe our paparazzi style introduction to photography is what caused her to hate the camera for years. Thankfully she seems to be somewhat more tolerant of it in recent years and we are able to record the smiles, the looks, the moments that make her who she is. I never knew such love until the day she was born and it grows year after year, if that's even possible.