September was a fun month in the Mower household. We kicked it off with a trip up to Payson to see Kett and Cam and their family. We enjoyed playing at the park, swimming in the river, and a visit to the Tonto Natural Bridge. Of course, I forgot to take pictures of anything though. Oh well. The kids sure had fun playing together!
I may have taken almost no pictures, but Marquette didn't disappoint. She took a few picture of our family, and it's really fun to have an up to date set of family pictures.
Click here for more pictures.
We returned home and, other than enjoying some yummy birthday cake in Ethan's honor, things went back to life as usual. Erik went back to school and the girls love to help me with the housework, especially jobs like laundry...
...and dishes.
They go with me to my weekly chiropractor visits and are normally pretty patient during all the sitting and waiting they end up having to do.
September brought a bit of slightly cooler weather (at that point anything less than 100 degrees was considered pleasant), so we got to spend a bit more time outside doing things like picnicking in the park.
Somewhere or other we heard about the Smithsonian's "Museum Day Live" event, which enabled a person to get two free tickets into a variety of affiliated museums. We headed out first thing in the morning to visit the Pueblo Grande Museum. They had a nice little visitor's center with some fun activities for the kids. They got to do things like build their own pueblo...
...and try their hand at making petroglyphs.
After we'd seen all the was to see inside we headed out to explore the rest of the park. Maren was excited to get out and move, although she was decidedly less excited about having to stay on the trails.
One fun thing about this museum is that it's located right by the city's major airport. This meant we got to watch planes take-off and land the whole time we were there.
We really enjoyed learning about the ancient Hohokam people and the history of the area. The kids mostly just enjoyed running around like wild hooligans.
As the temperature started rising we decided it was time to go get some lunch. We went to Portillo's for some gourmet hot dogs. The atmosphere of the place was really fun, but the hot dogs weren't anything too terribly special.
After lunch we headed over to the AZ Museum of Natural History to meet up with Aunt Kate and some cousins. The kids got to see dinosaurs, pan for gold, check out some old-timey jail cells, and just generally have a marvelous time.
We sure love finding affordable options to explore all the fun things around here!
