Here’s the next room in the house “tour”.  I’m a bit late getting this up.  I’ve learned with the flu & the scorpion sting that when a mom is down & out for a day it takes 3-4 days to get the house back in order! :)

This is our room.  Sits at the back of the house.  The stairs come up the middle of the house.  Our room & zebra room are toward the back.  Boys room & guest room toward the front. Sorry in advance for the too dark or over bright photos.

From the door: our massive bed and curtains from KS house fit perfectly!

View from our bedroom windows. I frequently see this view about 5:45 AM when Aidan is pulling me out of bed, to show me it is a “sunny day” thus time to get up. Lovely.

       

From my side of the bed looking back toward the door & the bathroom entry.

   

Bathroom w/dbl vanity to left, tub & shower straight ahead, potty room & closet to the right (see pics below).

      

From the tub the other direction looking back toward the bedroom.  Matt’s throne room & the walk in closet scene of scorpion attack.

    

Shelving behind the closet door that my FIL built on his first visit here.  Still needs a bit of painting attention from me!  Hard to tell in these pics, but Matt takes most of the closet space!!!

View from shower.  Aidan loves to climb up on the edge of the tub and spot the cacti. His favorite one is the quite tall one pictured on the right. Kinda looks like a pitchfork.

His other favorite view.  Aidan has a never ending love of the scenery here.  Every time we “go to town” (oh my…did I just say that?) he gets so excited, points and screams repeats himself until I look.

This what really gets the kids going.  If you stick your head/neck in just the right way you can see the neighbors pool w/ rock waterfall/diving “cliff” and in pool table.  See our poor children only have a pool w/neglected landscaping.  Sad huh? Pretty sure Matt is has a mission to do something similar in some way once we get the drip system figured out & purchase some new plants/trees.  This should soothe his need to manicure a lawn. :)

    

So that’s it.  Our Master “retreat”. that gets infiltrated nightly or in the wee hours of the AM by 3 different munchkins.

Hmm…up next…well - we’ll see what rooms I get ready. :) Still got some unfinished projects going on in some other rooms!

when you are scared to do laundry.  Like really scared to touch it.
The time it takes to do laundry has just multiplied greatly.  Shaking out each item before touching it is a compulsive and time consuming job.
**I do want to give a disclaimer.  In Sunflower State laundry frequently looked this way all over the sectional in the basement.  Back then I deserved to be stung, bit or attacked by any varmint living in the heap of clothing. HOWEVER, since moving to Scorpion Cactus Country, with assistance from my new front loaders, I have diligently kept my laundry up…until the events of last Wednesday that is.
I’m feeling better after Wednesday’s run in with a scorpion that called my laundry basket home.  My joints still hurt a bit.  He got me on my arm about 3-4 in. above my wrist and a 2nd time right above my knee.  With each passing day the pain radiated further away from the site of the sting into my hand, ankle & foot.  Then Saturday the spots where he got me swelled and itched. Weird.
Mr. Bug Guy, my new best friend, came Saturday and doused the house with insane amounts of chemicals in an attempt to kill the laundry lurking demons and their food source.  Mr. Bug Guy will be returning monthly!! And the best news…found this…
DEAD Monday AM before I could even get this posted!! YIPPIE!!!!
He was found in front of the pantry.  That’s the 2nd one found near pantry.  So, if you’re keeping track…snake gets me outta doing trash duty, one scorpion keeps me from laundry, and with 2 found in the kitchen I best stop cooking.  What will I do with all my free time!?!?!? :)
Everyone at work tells Matt they’ve lived here for years and never witnessed all of these creatures.  They said all we had left to experience was a camel spider.   “What’s that?”he asks.  They start to describe it and tell the nasty things it does to animals.  Matt comes home and informs me by their description he thinks it is what we killed Monday, in the dining room, a couple hours after killing the snake!!!  It took me several days to get the nerve to search for a picture on the internet.   Grrrrrrrrrrrreat.  We’re so lucky. 
You can read about it here if you wish.  He looked like the top 2 pics. He was not as big as these pictures show!!  He was the size of a normal…fatter spider…yet they are odd looking and don’t look like your typical long legged spider.  If you do some nosing around on the site you can see a camel spider eating a scorpion.  I like that, yet don’t want the darn spider in my house either!! 
Killer bees, snakes, scorpions & spiders OH MY!
Have I mentioned- I.love.me.some.Arizona.varmints. Ha!
Perhaps this mountain view, reserve lot, outside of town was NOT a good idea!!

We last minute canceled our last minute trip to CA for the long weekend and opted to venture out closer to home.

After a nice bfast at Cracker Barrel we went to the Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium in Litchfield.  

A short 25 minute drive and we were there.  The kids had a great time and complained very little considering the weather.  I’ll admit there were several times I daydreamed of the 70 degrees going on in CA!!

Aidan was so excited about the curvy palm trees out front of the zoo.

The Baby Animal Nursery was probably Emma’s favorite attraction. The nursery houses the newest babies at the zoo.  Saturday there were 3 different animals.

Baby Tortoise.  He was the size of a piece of broccoli yet his mother is one of the largest breeds of tortoise there is!!

Sweet cuddly baby porcupines.

Baby Tigers that are 3 months old.

Hands down the favorite for Aidan was the stingray exhibit where you are able to pet stingrays.

  

After a bit Aidan gave it a try and loved it.  If you ask him he’ll tell you ALL about it.  Do not touch their eyes or tummy.  Two fingers down the head and back.  Their stingers have been cut off.  We were there long enough he could repeat  everything the worker was announcing to all the visitors :)

Here’s video of Aidan…

I even gave it a try.  Ewe.

Isaac was very interested too!

Lunch was pretty cool.  There was an on site restaurant where you could eat next to the shark tank!  It was a neat environment, and well…the food…um….was… kid friendly.

 

We fed giraffes.

Emma & I rode the SkyLine ride to get a aerial view of some animals.

From above we could see the train we later rode.

            

These birds were funny.  They followed along the train as it took us through the Africa exhibit.

Caught two deer type animals fighting as the train went by.

My sweet baby!  He’s such a trooper on our all day adventures where he sees very little.

He did LOVE the penguins!!

Some unique animals to this zoo:

White Tiger

Albino Alligator

Emma petting a Star Fish

Could get very close to these very large porcupines

Feeding the ducks by one monkey exhibit.

Aidan hiding behind daddy in the aviary.  He wasn’t sure about all those birds!

Ride home…sooo tired!

Home to enjoy the best way to cool off after a hot, dusty, ruining my pretty feet kind of day! :)

            

Overall the zoo was ok.  Kinda pricy in our opinion.  They “brag” about their variety of animals…which they do have a gazillion kinds of deer & birds.  Their tigers & lion had very overgrown exhibits making it hard to see.  In the small mammal building they had some of the same monkeys on display outdoors as well as hamsters, genuine pigs, mice and other basic animals.

Sunday we took it easy.  Attended CCV church north of Phoenix.  Great church, but quite a drive for us to do weekly!  The minister did a great message on Moses…something about how he listened to God’s calling and moved to the desert for 40 years.  Blah.  Blah. Well…I listened to the call, I am here, but certainly hoping I’m called back “home” before 40 yrs!! :)  

Monday Matt started the finishing of our dining room table.  It had seen 9 years of use and was needing refinished.  While preparing to sand in the side yard he found this:

It was in one piece before Matt introduced his shovel to the snake. :)  Any good snake is in two pieces in my opinion. :)

I took advantage of some down moments while Matt & Aidan were sanding & staining to do some scrapping :)  I must admit I’m lovin’ the house layout in regards to my scrap/sewing room!!

Hope you had a great vacation weekend!  We certainly missed our traditional Atlanta Labor Day celebration, but the kids were very pleasantly surprised today when they received a bag of goodies from Gma fulllll of parade candy!!