Tiny Toes.

I know I have posted lots of pictures this month but I just had to include these last few for the month of August. I took a picture of Sophie's little feet and then I was playing around with the Microsoft Paint program. I know it's pretty basic but it still allows you to overlay text with pictures and play around with the background, etc.

Sophie is almost supporting her own head now, so we put the swing up another notch from the reclining position. She loves to look around and watch what everyone is doing.
I was trying so hard to get her to smile but she was just fascinated by all the funny sounds Sydney and I were making instead (to get her to smile). She just kept staring at both of us (like we were kind of weird!). Oh well...she has cute cheeks.

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Crayons.

I don't even have to explain what is in this picture because she drew everything so well! Sydney LOVES to color. It would be a state of emergency around here to run out of coloring books, paper and crayons!
I looked at what she was doing and she said "Mom, I drew a tree!" Yes that is definitely a tree. It doesn't look very much like the trees I drew as a kid...but it looks like the trees Sydney sees all over the place here! I just had to laugh at her concept of a tree.

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More Swimming.

Last Saturday we decided to take Sydney swimming at a pool close by. There was a whole lot more than just a pool there! Sydney loved this place and it was only a few dollars to get in. She probably went down the blue slide in the picture about 50 times. This part of the pool area featured a zero depth entry pool with a playground structure and lots of water cannons and spraying fountains of water. Then there was a regular lap pool with a diving area behind this pool. And then just to the left of this pool was some big waterslides and a lazy river.

This is more of the pool area. There were two bigger slides for older kids and a lazy river that went around this part.
Here's Mark and Sydney on their tube on the lazy river. For some reason Sydney wanted to go with Mark on his tube instead of the littler white tubes they had for kids.

Just in case you were wondering what Sophie and I did...we just sat in the shade and melted. I sprayed her with my mister every few seconds and she didn't really seem to mind just being out in the heat. She loved watching all the kids playing. Next year it will be so much fun to all go swimming (hopefully I'll be able to find a swimsuit by then)!

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Cotton and turtle gates...

When we were in St. George, we went to see the St. George temple. While we were walking around the grounds, someone pointed out these huge planters filled with cotton plants. There are a few fields of cotton in Tolleson...but of course I have never really paid too much attention to them. I thought these plants were kind of cool though. You could practically pick a cotton ball out of each one of the "flowers" once they open up.Here is a close up of the cotton "flower" which is basically a good sized cotton ball sticking out. Maybe I should plant one of these in my backyard so that I can remove nail polish outside without having to go hunt down cotton balls!
Another funny thing we saw while driving around St. George were these short fences (only about 1 1/2 feet high) that bordered many of the roads. They are called turtle fences and they keep the turtles or tortoises off the road. There must be a lot of turtles residing in the area to warrant building these fences everywhere.
I just found this picture online of a desert turtle...when I got out to take a picture of the turtle fences I certainly looked around to see if I could find one...but they must have all been hiding from the hot sun. Oh well, I'm sure most desert turtles look pretty much the same.

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