And the winning dance

This is my favorite photo from our photo shoot...

bubble dance

This was a fun part of the photo shoot....definitely one I'll remember to use again.





Isaiah didn't get too many bubbles because he was putting the bubble wand right on his mouth.




Ari would blow her bubbles and then chase and capture them.

dancing to the shofar

Christine brought props to act out a sabbath meal with the kids....then we had them blow one of Jay's shofars.

baby dance

My friend Christine came to our house today with her three young children. For some time we have been planning to do a photo shoot together. I tried to think of everything I could do ahead of time to make the session go smoothly. I had fun props pick out, a variety of backdrops and stools, and even snack food prepared.

I knew getting three kids in one nice shot was going to be a challenge. When the two older children went off to explore I was able to get some very nice shots of the interaction between Christine and her baby.






more from the photo shoot tomorrow...

dinner dance

Two times in the past month we have visited a small local church in Apache Junction on Sunday morning. We wanted to get to know the pastor better so invited him to bring his family to dinner on Friday night. When pastor Mike and his teenage daughter, Mikella, arrived they bought a beautiful bouquet of pink carnations and tiny tulips. His wife, Micky, was not able to come as a result of a headache. We had dinner of baked potato bar, two types of cucumber salad (the results a recent purchase of a big box of cucumbers for three dollars), homemade bread, and watermelon. After dinner we took them upstairs to the worship room and spent some time worshiping with music video that Jay had downloaded on his laptop. By the time they left pastor Mike was saying....wow, I really needed this. It was decided that the next time we'll invite the whole church and have a worship time together.

freindship dance

Yet more proof that almost everything, including bird watching, is more fun when done with a friend.



(This photo was not set up. We found Lily and her current favorite toy, the cat, in this position at the front door)

date dance

We had a wonderful weekend visiting our friends who own a date farm. The dates are ripe and we wanted to be able to help with the harvest.


While our friends who came with us worked in the honey house warming and straining the honey comb we brought.....



Jay went up in the scissor lift and picked dates out of the trees....

and I learned the rules of date sorting...


After gathering a group of dates that were similar in their ripeness I put them in a wet towel, folded the towel into a long tube, and held up one end of the towel at a time allowing the dates to roll back and forth inside the towel to remove anything that might be stuck to them.


Dianne taught me everything I know about sorting and cleaning dates. We enjoyed getting to know one another as we worked.

The trays of sorted fruit were placed in the screened in porch to dry...


before being sealed in glass jars.


After a long hot morning of sorting dates I enjoyed cooling off in pool.