Best Joint in Town

You can't come to Phoenix without visiting Oregano's Pizza.  It's our favorite!  So it's no wonder we chose it to kick off our last week of summer with a visit there!  We planned out every last day so we made sure we could fit it all in!  Day one was laser tag followed by Oregano's.  We all loved the laser tag but let's just say we didn't really help our team out so much!  Lilah, Kate and Neeley tagged no one but got their fair share of getting shot.  Kayla tagged a whole 6 people and I got about 30.  Dad on the other hand did much better.  I blame my low score on the fact I had Kate with me, who let's face it, isn't the quietest or fastest one in the bunch.  None of this really seemed to stop our fun!  Then we headed over for pizza.  No menus to color here.  Instead they bring balls of dough for the girls to play with.  Sure makes for a peaceful dinner and lots of fun!

House of Cards...

Pre-season scrimmage seemed like a great day to check out our new team!  I was in awe of the Cardinals stadium and they had lots of activities for the kids.  The girls thought the stadium was cool especially since the roof retracts and thought it was especially funny there were birds in there.  Giving the girls a feeling of what practice might be like, they got to try out some drills.  The volunteers were so cute with them! We just might make game buddies for Dad after all!

Oh What do you do in the summer time when its 115 outside?

Makes Smores of course!  We couldn't resist using our new gas fireplace Jeremy got for fathers day.  Despite the heat we had fun and they're so yummy!

Don't Faint, We have a pet!!

We gave in!  Yes I know you all thought this day would never come.  A pet at the Dopp's house???  Her name is Lizzy Lizard.  She is an outdoor pet.  She loves to roam around the yard and elude the girls.  The girls have had many a stake-out like this one on the front porch in an effort to get her in her "cage" (empty ice cream pail).  They have had close calls but have yet to catch Lizzy our cute little lizard.  They leave water and food out for her just in case she needs it.  THAT is my kind of pet!  And since she is a stray, I think we get kuddos for rescuing her!

No More of Grandma's Sunday Treats. :(

Not having grandma's house to go to on Sundays has been an adjustment for us.  We decided we needed something special to look forward to.  And since grandma is known for her awesome treats we decided that would be something we could try to re-create.  So each Sunday we make an extra special treat!  It's fun planning what we will have and the girls love taking turns picking it out.  This week: fresh strawberry pie!  Yum!

Dino ville

No lack of things to do one these hot days!  Today we went to the Museum of Natural History.  Neeley thought it was going to be boring but she was the first one to stop and read all the signs.  She was begging the girls to slow down.  The first thing to catch her eye were high powered telescope pictures of "worlds without number".  When I explained to her about what we believe about there being worlds without number she really started to pay attention.  We loved seeing all the gems, huge dino and the kids room that had lots of fun activities.  Panning for gold kept their attention for a long time as well as the green screen videos.  Kayla decided she didn't want to go to jail after being in this old one and finding out they couldn't even use mattresses or blankets because they would set fire to them.  Fun day out of the sun!

Indoors

Passing the time in hot weather requires some indoor activities!  So we have discovered the library!  They had a summer reading program where the kids earned lots of prizes each week for reading.  The library system here is more high tech than we are used to with the ability to get free music downloads, books & magazines on kindle to check out, not to mention a really cool family bathroom that Kate thinks is AWESOME!!