Some dad's answer the door with a shotgun....

Megan and her friend Kristy like to go to the mall and try on clothes and perfumes. It takes them about 2 hours to get ready just to spend an hour at the mall. A few weekends ago I dropped them off and as I was driving away I had what I thought was a random thought about the girls talking to strangers.

As soon as I got home I texted Megan and reminded her not to talk to any strangers - and by strangers i meant anyone I hadn't met.

About two mintues later my phone rang. I guess the teenagers call this "butt dialing". I could hear them ordering food at dairy queen and then......I heard a male voice talking to them.

Good thing I live 3.7 minutes from the mall. I didn't hang up as I drove over to the mall and headed for dairy queen. (Your heart is no doubt racing about now and you are thinking that they were in danger). Turns out it was a 15 year old boy that was friends with Kristy and he is the number one chess player in the state. He shook my hand and offered to leave after I explained that Megan was too young to be hanging out with boys. I told him he didn't have to leave, I would just hang out with them as their chaperone. I texted Jason to let him know what was going on and he wanted to come chaperone too.



What you can't see is that he is wearing his FULL scout uniform. That includes the scout shorts and the scout socks (pulled up to his knees). He even brought a patch for this young man.

Well that's just LOUSY

So we've had a lice scare. I wasn't too worried about the boys (We can just shave their heads after all). However, Megan and I aren't quite ready to go that far. So after reading about the pesticides used to kill lice we went for the natural method. (Keep in mind I didn't see any in any of the heads I looked through - but better safe than sorry).

We doused our hair with olive oil (slept on it for eight hours) and then washed it out with Tee Tree Oil shampoo. It was fun the first time. We are supposed to do it every three to four days for two weeks though. Something tells me it won't be quite as fun by the third time we do it.

The trees don't change in Arizona

We went up to Utah this weekend and took the kids on a drive in the Canyon. They had no idea the trees change color. This picture just doesn't do justice to the Gold of these trees.

Overheard....

Andrew: What did you do with my human book?
Zac: What's a human book?
Andrew: That! (pointing to the green book I'm holding)
Zac: That's a Hymn Book.

Pure Imagination

It's fall break and the kids are trying to stay entertained with all this extra time on their hands. So they decided to make a Tent! What you can't see is the TV/VCR combo in the bookshelves there. A couple of snacks and they were set for the night. Of course their movie selections consist of "Blues Clues" and a recorded from TV edition of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"





Once of these days maybe their Uncle Ben can give them some ideas about what they can do with a spool of thread.

Extreme Makeover....Scott Home Edition

Megan went to a motivational conference just for teenagers that was supposed to help them realize that they can do hard things and that the time to do it is actually when you are a teenager.

This weekend she came into where I was hiding in my room and said: "you just don't want to go downstairs and face the mess". Truer words had never been spoken. So she offered to clean up downstairs in exchange for a cheeseburger happy meal from McDonalds. I took her up on it but in my mind didn't believe she'd last very long and told her it would probably be "too hard".

The boys wanted in on the deal and headed down to help Megan. They were excited to show me the finished product.



Andrew mopped the kitchen floor and vacuumed the family room. NOTICE the beautiful flowers in the vases. I've been putting flowers from my back yard in the vases lately and Megan took the initiative to change out the flowers. She also put out the latest Ensign, Friend and New Era. She re-arranged the furniture slightly for a more "pleasing effect". It's all about the details!



Anthony was in charge of organizing the hall closet. Very Nice!



I wish I had before pictures so you could see how TRULY amazing this was. (Oh and I ended up getting Megan a pair of jeans she's had her eyes on. I didn't think a cheeseburger was quite sufficient.)

Megan truly can do hard things (including keeping two young boys motivated to clean).

Constitution Week

Gilbert has the biggest Constitution celebration in the country! They always have fireworks and games and booths and a concert. This year the boys and I went and they had a blast playing on the jumpers, writing letters to the troops, fishing for a prize, gettting their picture taken in a race car, and meeting all four branches of the military. They even got to play with guns! SCORE!




They were of course a little confused when the country artist who was performing sang a song about "taking back our country". They wanted to know who had it.

Andrew brought a paper home from school with fill in the blanks. Here is what he put: "I live in: Gilbert. I like it because: We're Free."