A Glance At Happenings With the Goulds

A few weeks ago Alyssa's friend, Sydney from Indiana, sent her Flat Stanley....he is from a story & it was our job to do a few activities with him & send him on his way to his next destination. He met the missionaries: Went for a hike & ended up in a cactus & then he was shipped to Sydney's Grandma.

Zhara & Alyssa got to join me for Wed night activities with the young women last week. The YW were doing an activity with the younger children & they made tote bags. The girls were so excited to be with mommy & the "big" girls. It made my heart happy that someday they will be the Young Women.

Thursday my friend Connie gave the girls a hair cut

Alyssa's hair just got trimmed but Zhara got almost 5 inches taken off

Friday at school the police came & gave the kids a ride in the police car. Her is Zhara & Triple with their badges

Zhara's first, hopefully her only, ride in the police car. She said the policeman turned on the sirens & they pretended to arrest someone for speeding :)

Saturday we went to the Mesa temple to look at the amazing flowers. The girls & I had just read about bee's & we had learned that the bee's we see buzzing around the flowers are girls. Every time the girls would say "that's a girl bee"

Beautiful flowers, beautiful girls

The group of people were waiting for a bride & groom to come out. Alyssa was telling the bride how beautiful her dress was & the photographer picked her up to place her in the picture...

We met our "family" Carrie & Addie & had lunch on the temple grounds. It was nice to be in grass that I could take my shoes off & not worry about stepping in dog poop.

Monday was a sick day for both girls. Alyssa had the wonderful puking flu & Zhara....well she came home from school "sick" so they basically laid on the floor all day. Alyssa has a smile on her face even though she had just thrown up 15 min before.

Zhara Looses A Tooth

Zhara had a cavity filled over a year ago & a week ago she started complaining about her mouth hurting. A trip to the dentist told us that her tooth that had been filled now was infected & had to be pulled. She took antibiotics for a week...which she thought was great because she got to go down to the office at school everyday to take her meds. She does so great while she getting her teeth worked on (we've done is MANY times) but she's a little big wiggly so we have to hold her hands to keep her from pulling her mask off that gives her the laughing gas. When it was time to pull the tooth I have to hold her legs down. She didn't cry until the very end when Dr Miner yanked it out. I couldn't watch so I just held her legs while David held her arms down.Here is the tooth

They gave her a treasure box to keep the tooth in for the tooth fairy. When we got home she put it right under her pillow. She woke up with an empty treasure box & two dollars under her pillow.

A Visit from Hillary

Our friend Hillary was out in Arizona with family & she came to spend a night with us. Hillary was the first girl I taught when I joined the LDS church almost 7 years ago...we had a bond from almost day one & have been close since. Alyssa found her new "best friend" We had dinner at Chuckie Cheese for a fund raiser for Zhara's school

The girls got their pictures drawn

Alyssa & I beat Hillary & Zhara at water racing.

We had a great time with her. She is getting ready to ship off for Basic Training this month & Zhara keeps saying "remember Hillary...she is going to fight for us"

More Hiking

March 19th David officially hit all the numbers he needed to complete his training and so we celebrated on Saturday with a hike, Princess & the Frog at the 3 dollar theater & dinner with some friends. We enjoyed our weekend with no work & we enjoyed all the flowers starting to bloom from all the rain Zhara brought her play princess camera & was taking pictures

The lizards are back out.....which means so are the snakes

Zhara took a nice fall & so as she was limping Alyssa started taking pictures for her so "she wouldn't miss any of the flowers" Super cute!

Zhara's war wound

Spring Break

Zhara had spring break the 2nd week of March (I'm behind I know). It was so great to have a week off of school. We enjoyed getting up & not HAVING to go anywhere & just enjoyed being at home together. Here are quite a few pictures of what we did for the week:
We made hand puppets drew lots of pictures & worked on our "sight" words

enjoyed movie time in the tent

Wed the girls went to Grandma & Grandpa's house for 2 days without mom & dad. I went up Friday evening & spent the weekend with them.

I thought this pictures was classic with Grandpa blow drying Alyssa's hair

Alyssa has a play blow dryer that she loves to use but this one was WAY more fun!

Even Zhara was into it

A little bit of reading

One of their favorite things about Grandma's is they get to eat doughnuts for breakfast

One of the downfalls to living in an apartment is the lack of outdoor play time. So when they are at Grandma's house they play all day. Zhara enjoyed raking the leaves

They played dolls outside

Rode the tricycle

Enjoying some banana's

On Saturday the library had a "Super Saturday". We love going to Grandma's library. Since it's a small town the library has some really cool things to do. They enjoyed playing on the computer before it startedIt was a Space theme

They had these cool little Styrofoam things that stuck together when they were wet

Zhara's alien

Alyssa later turned this into the tray that they pass the bread in at church for the Sacrament & was going around "giving bread" to everyone

They made Planet Mobiles

Using sidewalk chalk to trace planets

Snack time brought banana's made into space ships

They had a drawing & Alyssa won a poster

And then Zhara's name got called....I had a better picture but couldn't get it turned around right so she looks silly :)

I have a new appreciation for the days that we do not have school. I cherish the time that I have with Zhara when she is home. We had a great week off & enjoyed being with Grandma & Grandpa.