Essay Contest

The County Supervisor and I concocted an essay contest for the 5th and 6th graders in our area. The title: "What a President from Arizona Means to Me."
I was glad to see my son's school took the project very seriously and they wrote some awesome essays.
The winning entry was from a 6th grader named Nixon who wrote how he'd be excited, proud, and grateful that the whole world would get to see what kind of politician comes from our home state. Pretty cool.
Here is our essay writer:

The reward was a pizza lunch, paid for by Buster Johnson, the County Supervisor.

Once I put those pizzas down, it was as if sharks had infested the picnic tables. They ate everything within 5 minutes!!!


Great lunch though. I had fun, and so did the kids.

Stumpin

Shay and I went stumping on Halloween night. If you aren't familiar with the term, it was originated when politicians would get up on a tree stump so they could address a crowd of people.
I gave out McCain stickers, Shay walked with friends to get candy.
Don't we make a lovely family?

Best Laid Plans

For the American Cancer Society, we entered ourselves in the annual London Bridge Days Parade. Our city is celebrating the 30th year of incorporation, so this parade was expected to be extra-big.
We had the best plans. Since our theme for the fundraiser this year is a military theme (Battling Cancer) we ordered camouflage shirts so we'd all match. Then we arranged for a military truck (a HUGE one) to accompany us down the parade route. We wrangled about 25 walkers, had banners ready to go, had signs.
Then on the morning of the parade we realized that the t shirts still hadn't arrived. And the owner of the military truck called and said the brakes went out and he almost got in an accident.
NO shirts. NO truck. Just us, with our mis-matched outfits and a lot of disappointment. So we pulled it together and marched in the parade. I was handed a plastic megaphone (which only made me wish for the REAL megaphone I had at home) and I was asked to be a cheerleader. So I did. For a mile I screamed into this plastic cone, getting both our walkers to chant and the people on the curbs who watched us walk by. A friend snapped a photo of me:

Utah aaaahhhhh

I went to Utah for some training last week, and stood amazed at how beautiful it was. I'd never been there, so it was a real treat to see the red rocks for the first time. My camera is on its way to the Kodak people. Something has been wrong with it for a couple of weeks and finally I realized that smacking it on the table wasn't the right way to deal with it.
So here are a few of the pictures that did turn out of fabulous St. George Utah.




This is me on top of a mesa, where the old airport is. It's called the old airport because they just broke ground on a new airport nearby. Anyway, it is situated on top of a flat-topped mountain, and the view of the city down below is awesome.


On the way home, I drove on the highway through the "Virgin River Gorge" which is much more breathtaking in person than it is on a little camera. It's like driving thru a mountain.


What a wonderful place to visit. Very clean town, with seemingly low crime. (the headline after I arrived in town was; Obama Signs Vandalized" That's not a crime...)

I didn't see graffiti once. The population is somewhere around 75,000. That's about 25,000 more than what we have here in Havasu. They have Mormon churches in every neighborhood, which I assume accounts for how nicely the town is kept up. Strict parenting probably doesn't yield a whole lot of hooligans....

A Dream Come True

Steve's been trying to accomplish the time and coordination for the past several years to get us all down to a haunted house in Phoenix, and his dream finally was realized. We drove down (three hour drive) and went to Alice Cooper's Haunted House which was also known as the Psycho Circus or something like that. It was themed with psychotic clowns and had some pretty good effects. I'm not so easy to scare, and I've worked many haunted houses, so I was impressed that I had such a good time. Shay was scared into a state of shock--he was speechless. Steve's daughters screamed the whole time, which made the crazy ass clowns try a lot harder to make them scream even more.
After that, we were in no shape to sleep so we went to an indoor go-kart track. I kicked ass. I also cut my neck with the stupid seat belt. Kicking ass sometimes has side effects.

This week I'm in St. George Utah for some training, and it's my first trip to Utah. That's kinda weird considering it's only 4 hours from home. Beautiful state, from what I've seen. Hopefully I'll spare some time to get out and get some photos.

Einstein

The lenses fell out of my sunglasses and Shay found a use for them.

Caleeeforneeeaa

Didn't make it to Winslow for the car show, because it was too windy to fly. So we stayed home and enjoyed the milder weather.
It's been getting nicer and nicer, with the high on Friday being no more than 99 degrees. I know that doesn't sound that great but it's a treat compared to 175 degrees.
Then yesterday, Saturday, the high was somewhere around 70 degrees. Woohoo!
We traveled to California to pick up a little airplane (called a Smith Mini) and a big old huge bar that Steve's boss will be using in the restaurant he's building here in Havasu.
The plane will be hung from the ceiling, like this one that's over in Mike's hangar in Long Beach:


On the way home, we took the route through Palm Springs, where there's a large wind farm.

Each of the blades on those windmills is longer than a semi truck and trailer, and the motor housing, where the blades are attached takes up an entire semi trailer. We've seen them going down the interstate, presumably from the manufacturer to the wind farm for installation. What a monster.