It's The Broncs And The Blood. It's The Steers And The Mud....

Fiesta de los Vaqueros!! Otherwise known as the Tucson Rodeo. I love rodeos, I always have. While the Tucson Rodeo lacks some of the hooplah of say Houston or San Antonio, there was plenty of action. The girls and I went on Saturday afternoon with several other ladies from the squadron. We had a great time. I can't believe we didn't get a group picture, but I did get a lot of great rodeo action pics. have I mentioned how much I love my camera?

 It was decidedly not this cowboy's day. That bull just kept coming back for more.

The bull fighters had to be one of my favorites. These guys have to be just a little bit crazy.

I Like To Smile. Smiling's My Favorite

Today the girlies and I joined the Hearts Apart group for their monthly outing along with some other gals from the squadron. This month they went to the Reid Park Zoo. Any of you who know us know that we love the zoo. We are annual pass holders and we go every chance we get. The animals must sense that spring is in the air or something, because today they were a smiley bunch.

 The young elephants were wrestling around and having a big ole time. Look at all those smiling faces!

How cute is this? 

CHEESE!

While some animals were all smiles, others were all show-offs. 

The girls even got in some interaction with the local wildlife followed by a liberal dollop of Purell. Thanks Laura! Den was super excited about this one.

My favorite part of the day, however, came when we got to see the jaguar enrichment program. The zoo's jaguars, Nikita and Simone are 17 year old sisters and they are pretty much always asleep. It was so cool to be able to see them up and active in their enclosure.

 

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Couponing Beyond the 49

One of our church's community outreach programs is called Beyond the 49. It's pretty self-explanatory. Our zip code is 85749. Each month our church partners with a local community program, thus reaching beyond the 49. Get it?

This month, we have partnered with Pio Decimo, an outreach of Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona. "Pio Decimo Center is a community center located in one of Tucson's oldest neighborhoods in the central part of the city. Pio Decimo has been a place of safety, nuturing and learning since 1946. Services include: Childcare and early child education, transitional housing for homeless families, low-cost senior housing, financial education, free tax preparation, and housing couseling and youth programs."

Our church is collecting toiletries, health and personal care, and baby items for the month of February, which will be then donated to Pio Decimo. Let me tell you, this program is a match made in Heaven (pardon the pun) for a coupon junkie like me. By using coupons, I am able to contribute more to Beyond the 49 without compromising our budget. Anyone who is willing to take the time can do it. I thought I would use Bluebonnets and Haggis to let people know the kind of difference we are able to make as a result.

This week's couponing added the following to our donation.

Tresemme Split Remedy Conditioner
Original Price - $5.29
After Coupons - a $0.26 Moneymaker!

Colgate 360 Toothbrush
Original Price - $2.99
After Coupons - $0.39

3 Colgate Total Advanced Toothpaste
Original Price - $2.00 each
After Coupons - $0.10 each

3 Bottles of Clean and Clear Foaming Face Wash
Original Price - $4.79 & $5.79
After Coupons - $0.70 Moneymaker!

2 Bottles of Nature Made Vitamin D
Original Price - $4.69 each
After Coupons - $0.24 Moneymaker!

2 Jars of Carmex Healing Lip Balm
Original Price - $0.99 each
After Coupons - $0.49 each

4 Gillette Custom Plus 3 Disposable Razor 4 pks.
Original Price - $7.99 each
After Coupons - $0.42 Moneymaker!

Poise Cooling Wipes
Original Price - $4.99
After Coupons - $0.01 Moneymaker!

Always 60 ct. Pads
Original Price - $3.00
After Coupons - $0.40

Tampax 20 ct. Tampons
Original Price - $3.00
After Coupons - $0.60 Moneymaker!

SO, for a grand total of FREE (in fact I made $0.16) I was able to contribute to Pio Decimo's need and make myself pretty darn happy too!

We Got Spirit, Yes We Do

This week was a short week at school thanks to Rodeo Break, so Summer's school decided to make it a Spirit Week in conjunction with both Rodeo and the Science Fair. You know our Lulu, any chance to dress up with a theme and she is all over it.

Sports Day - Rocking her Cowboys gear

 Mad Scientist / Crazy Hair Day - Summer wanted to cover all her bases so she went with crazy hair AND a lab coat and nerd glasses. (Thank you Daddy for letting her raid your closet to find a "lab coat") The other 2 kiddos are our carpool buddies, Hayden and Raegan

Not one to miss out on a chance for pink highlights, Paige made sure she got dressed in plenty of time for me to give her some too.

What Rodeo week would be complete without a Western Day? 

Guess Who Inherited Some Of My Nerdy Awesomeness?

This kid, that's who!

 BTW, this is NOT her normal attire. She was dressed for Mad Scientist Day at school.

Summer and her friend Cami decided to work together to submit a project to the school Science Fair. They each watered four leek plants with four different beverages - water, apple juice, Diet Coke, and beer, and watched to see which plant grew the best. After a few weeks, those plants REEKED and a couple of them hatched some fruit flies. Seriously, they smelled like a Mexican bar at 9:00 in the morning. It was disgusting. However, the girls came up with some pretty interesting results. The plants watered with the Diet Coke grew significantly better than the others. Come to find out, the sodiums and phosphoric acid in diet soda are actually vital nutrients to a growing plant. I wouldn't recommend water solely with Diet Coke, but hey, if your plants are looking a little sad, it may be worth a shot.

Once all the data was gathered and the conclusions drawn, the girls got together to put together their display board. And wow, you would not believe the bickering when you put two very Type A 9 year old girls together and expect them to get something done. What impressed me the most, though, is that these two did the entire project, from concept to data entry, to artwork, by themselves, with only minimal help from us moms. 

But at the end of the day, they put together a pretty darn solid project

So solid in fact, that when we got to the Science Fair on Tuesday night we found this!

These two ladies were selected as one of only 20 projects from Grades K-6 that will be advancing to the Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair next month at the Convention Center. Keep your fingers crossed!

SNOW!!!!

Today something very rare indeed happened at Casa de Haggis.... Snow! In fact, it's still snowing right now. It's been snowing pretty much non-stop for about 10 hours. I love love love it! The kids were SO excited. They couldn't wait to get home from school to play outside. 

Around lunch time, a snow/rain mix started to fall. It was definitely one of those days you just want to curl up on the couch with a blanket and a book. In between picking up Summer from school and picking up Paige from school, it changed over to just snow. Summer decided to make a video.

Enjoy the rest of the pictures in this slide show. It's dark now, but I can't wait to wake up in the morning and see how much of it actually stuck!

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Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day here at Casa de Haggis was, I'm ashamed to admit, kind of a lackluster affair. My heart just wasn't in it this year (no pun intended). Nonetheless, we Bluebonnets had a great day. It was beautiful and sunny spring weather. The girls and I took on an ambitious valentines-making project that Summer found on Pinterest. I love that they take a more active interest in these little "projects" now that they are older. It makes is so much more fun. That's a whole separate blog post, though. P has kind of outgrown the whole cutesy holiday outfits phase of her life (sniff, sniff), but thankfully, Summer's still fit from last year, so we were good to go. We celebrated that night with a heart themed breakfast for dinner and ice cream cake for dessert and had a nice visit from our next-door-neighbor, Julie, who's hubby was also working that night. And, of course, we got in some Face Time love with Den, which is always the best part of the day.

Happy Valentine's Day from Bluebonnets and Haggis!

 Will you be my Valentine?

 The Valentines that we made together are in the basket on the left. In the basket on the right are these crazy light-up roses that Paige bought for her friends

I broke out the silicone heart shaped muffin pans that I bought 3 or 4 years ago and we made these cute heart shaped crayons.

And, of course, I can't take any pics of Summer without at least one duck face!

Top Gun in 3D IMAX

***For some reason, my slideshow is not showing up! If you click on the Click here to view these pictures larger link, the you can see all the pics of the fun***

Last night a huge group of people from all the Bulldogs, Dragons, and Lobos trekked over to the IMAX to see Top Gun on the big screen. It was SO much fun. We all dressed in our Top Gun finest and had a blast. Parts of that movie were so much better on the big screen and parts of it were definitely not. It was really interesting seeing it now as opposed to the first time I saw it. For instance, I always thought Iceman, albeit totally hot, was a bit of a jerk. Now when I see it I think, "Wow, Iceman was a pretty good dude. He's an awesome pilot, gave great advice, and was concerned about the safety of the mission." It's amazing the kind of perspective being married to a pilot for 12 years can give you.

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On a side note, Oh Iceman, what has happened to you? 

Back in Action

Well, it seems that the issues with Bluebonnets and Haggis have been fixed, so I will be posting again!