Desert Rat Detour

Yup that desert rat is me alright! I went up to Park City Utah earlier this week to work on a pilot with special guest Zac Amidan, Freestyle Arielist on the U.S. Ski Team and Olympic hopeful. He was nice enough to give the crew posters signed by the entire team. My Zach dug the gesture, he put it in his room next to his Agassi tennis ball.We were lucky enough to be escorted around the 2002 Olympic Park's restricted areas. What these monkeys do is quite impressive! There is no way you could get me to slide down one of these ramps on my bum, much less on a pair of skis..

Of course, being the desert rat that I am I have no idea how to ski, or make a decent snow ball, heck I had to borrow a coat from someone else to survive the snow. Really, the weather and scenery was quite beautiful.

Through the river and over the woods..

...to grandpa Doyle's house we go! Well we had a great Easter time. This will be the 5th year in a row we have spent at Mike's Dad's place in Tonto Basin Arizona. This year the clan consisted of our family, the Ward's, Uncle Justin and Mary's parents joined us on Saturday. The there are the usual country folk in the area who drop by, hang out and have some great food. The weather was great and the hills were in bloom. To get there you have to drive through a river, literally!

It's kinda like camping, except there is a house, plumbing and a kitchen. Yeah baby, my kinda "camping".

As usual the kids have a grand old time getting dirty, chasing cows, peacocks, chickens and dogs, feeding the fish, flying kites, cruisin in the ranger, hanging by the campfire, coloring and hunting for easter eggs. Oh! they even saw a rattlesnake! The adults enjoy eating lots of bbq and other good foods, catching up and relaxing in the beautiful weather. Here are some pictures of the weekend.Seth sharing his cute little smile and Joel showing how dirty he managed to get!

David by the coi pond and one of the calves the kids chased around.

Easter baskets galore!

The kids colored eggs and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.

Raegan and her Papa flying a kite and Zachary enduring bear hugs from his Nana.Auntie Lori and Rae, Mary's Mom and Mary chillin in the great weather.Relaxing by the pond with Uncle J and Indian girl Rae of Sunshine.

Bubble Gum Bubble Gum in a dish...

...how many wishes can you wish? Zach wanted me to post his impressive bubble.

Front Page News!!

It can be exciting to make the news, as long as it's not your arrest report or news of your wrong doings or tragedies. Thursday the Boulder City View is published and delivered to our door. Raegan's sweet face was on the cover. Here she is... uh.. listening? ignoring? spacing out? as the mayor reads to the kids as school.

(EDITED TO ADD) I just have to say, how fun a ward family can be. Upon arrival at church yesterday Raegan the local celebrity was greeted with numerous hugs and smiles (in regards to her being in the paper) from many grandmas and grandpas in our ward. They were so excited for her. A few even brought her their own copies so we can send them to grandparents. Of course she paraded the papers around through all the meetings to inform those who weren't aware of her debut.

Renaissance Ditch Day

Today Zach's class went to a Renaissance Faire ALL DAY LONG! Mary was a parent chaperone to a group of 5 boys in his class. Luckily Christian was in our group. There was a plethora of medieval games, food and shopping. The boys had a great time playing "Fight a Knight". They had all these foam tipped weapons to choose from. If you were touched on the arm or leg in battle you had to stop using it by holding your arm behind your back or going down on your knees. If you were touched on your chest or back, you're dead. The line for this game was LONG, the kids loved it. Zachary managed to win a game, which was rare being the family that ran it battled all day long and almost always won. Congrats Sir Zach!

She works hard for the money!

Had a great day at work yesterday. One of my best friends Miss Amy Tobler was on set with me. Its always a good gig with Amy on board. We worked on a commercial for CiCi's Pizza. Normally I do not take pictures with the celebs I work with, I find it a bit cheezy, desperate and all too civilian. But I couldnt help myself this time, I think I have a new celebrity favorite, this is Pat Crawford Brown, she has been on so many television shows I cannot even start to list them, you may recognize her. She was also a nun in the sister act movies. She was so sweet and was breaking into song all day long, telling me about her family and making me miss my grandmothers. And so funny delivering her lines. We laughed and laughed. Which was a relief from director "Grumpy Pants" (as Josalene the stylist called him). Can't wait to see the results.

Ace America Crabtree turns 4

It is Ace's (the 5 th Crabtree) birthday month. Happy Birthday Ace-a-nator, Acey, Acey-boo-boo! Ace came into our family four years ago. We adopted him as therapy for Zachary who was severly afraid of dogs, cats, birds, etc. His fear began when he was quite little with a couple of traumatizing experiences with mean dogs. At 7 years old it was escalating and we knew we had to do something, so we decided we needed a family pet. We searched and searched for a dog, we visited many shelters and considered a few dogs, it was really hard for Zach to visit each place, he just couldn't look at all those dogs. Finally on a Saturday at Pets Mart, the Nye County Shelter had rescue dogs in the store. Ace was just as timid as Zachary. Ace buried his nose in my arm, he just couldn't look at all those people. We took him to a quiet corner of the store to see how they would react, Zach was peeking out from behind Mike and Ace was peeking out from behind me. He was 4 months old and a perfect match. So we took him home. You can see Zachary's aprehension, we had to coax him next to Ace in this picture, this is the day we brought him home.And as you can see, it worked... We love our dandelion, doggie!!

He has been a good puppy, aside from being way too furry, he has never bitten anyone, had and accident in the house or torn anything up in the house. Ace is also a celebrity, click on this link and you will see his modeling debut as an Inspirada ad family dog, in the green section bottom right. http://www.inspirada.com/hb.home.html He's been in the paper a few times too.