Fun in Arizona

This is the view as we drive from my parents' home in Sonoita, AZ into town (Tucson).

A month ago we visited my parents in Arizona (and I'm just now blogging about it :-0) We had a great time despite the storm early on in the trip. Here are a few highlights....

There is a theater in Tucson called the Gaslight Theater. They perform original comedies and the night we went we saw "Space Wars" which was a spoof of Star Wars. This was a lot of fun and we still quote lines from the play. Here is a picture of the kids w/ some of the actors dressed up as characters from Beauty and the Beast since they had a third act of the show that included different scenes from different children's stories.

Another fun thing we did was take a tour of an underground copper mine. The Queen Mine is located in Bisbee, AZ. Once you're dressed the part, there is a mine train that takes you into the middle of the mountain where there underground tunnels dug out to mine for copper. There are over 200 miles of tunnels in Bisbee.

This is a picture of the mountain in which the Queen Mine is inside.

This is our tour guide who used to work in this mine. He had a lot of interesting stories. Here he is showing how they would put sticks of dynamite into the rock to dig further on. If you're ever in Bisbee, I would highly recommend this tour. It doesn't hurt that its also 47 degrees in the mine year-round. I think that's a big selling point during the summer months.

This is a picture of an open-pit copper mine in Bisbee. When I was a kid, my dad worked in a mine like this before he entered college/seminary in good ol' Dallas.


We were blessed to visit with Grandpa and Grandma Larkin, my mom's parents, while we were in town. Grandpa looked really good and we thought it was funny that he was convinced that he knew Ozzie from some sports team they were on together. He told Ozzie "you had a lot of potential!" Grandma is still amazing and we enjoyed visiting with her. How many people can see they are Facebook Friends with their grandma - she's the greatest!

The kids had turns driving the riding mower. Kailee especially enjoyed her turn behind the wheel and found it more special when it dark enough to need the headlight.
Below are pictures of each of the kids driving the boat we rented at the lake. Let's just say this was definitely not a speed boat and rumor has it that it ate the dust of the paddle boat we also rented.

Ozzie and the kids had a blast in the water. They invented new ways of splashing each other such as the Texas Tornado and Hawaii Hurricane.

If you've already read my previous post, then you know that there was a huge hail storm on the second night we were there. Ozzie got a great shot of the lightning once the 45 minute barrage of hail was over.

The following are some pictures showing the effects of the storm. The one below is a before picture of my parents' garden. You can see it blooming in the background behind Benjamin.

Here is the garden after the storm. The other day when Benjamin was reading about the plague of hailstones, I had a new respect for the damage that hail can do especially to vegetation. There was really nothing left of their garden.

We're not sure why, but after the storm most of the fish/frogs/tadpoles in the pond died. We know that the pond became more of a rushing river the night of the storm, so we're not sure if something from upstream came in and killed everything or if it was just the power of the water upsetting the little ecosystem of the pond. Whatever the cause, we found this huge dead frog the first morning after the storm.

Below is what was left of the frog the next day after the vultures had their little snack. I think its neat that God thought of everything when He created animals and how these ugly birds are really a vital help to man since they dispose of carrion that would otherwise be a breeding ground for disease.

Below is a picture of "Turtle Mountain" (the little peak shaped like a turtle on the left side of the picture). Whenever the kids see Turtle Mountain, they know we are getting close to Nana's and Tata's house.

I guess there is treasure at the end of the rainbow: wonderful time with our family. Even our dog had fun!

Blessings in Disguise

"See I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God." Deuteronomy 11:26-27



A 45 minute hail storm is more likely to make you think of a Biblical plague rather than a blessing from God, but God works for His good purpose for those who love Him in ALL things (Romans 8:28) even damaging hail storms.
We traveled to Arizona to visit my parents last month, August (boy am I far behind on blog updates). We had a great vacation which I will share in the next post, but this post is about the hail storm we experienced on Sunday evening, August 15th.
We could see the clouds coming in, but in a matter of moments the quiet skies were emptying themselves of hail in various sizes from dimes to golfballs. The size may not have been that remarkable, but the fact that the hail did not let up for at least 40 minutes is what was astonishing to us. It was so loud as it bounced off the metal roof on my parents' home. They have big windows which let you take in the beautiful surroundings of Sonoita, AZ, but these windows became targets for the hail stones.
As the storm moved in from the east, we stood at the west facing window to see the hail bounce off all 4 vehicles parked in front of the house, our minivan among them. As I stood staring at our van being pelted by chunks of ice, I wasn't worried about the van, but I did think that surely we would lose a window or two on it. Once the storm passed, I was surprised to find all windows on the vehicles were intact. The darkness, however, concealed the rest of the damage.
The next morning we were able to more closely inspect the dents on the vehicles. Our hood looked like it was covered with dimples along with the passenger side of the van, but overall we didn't think it was really that bad.
My brother works for an insurance company, so we gave him a call to get his advice on what to do next. He said it would be best if our van was paid off. Paying it off has been a goal we have been diligently working towards for months and we were so close to our goal and were going to meet it in two months.
Let me back track a moment to my last blog post in which I stated our goal was to be out of debt before we started fostering or the process of adopting. However, we felt God wanted us to go ahead and start on this journey as we continued to meet the debt-free goal. So when my brother mentioned having it paid off, Ozzie started doing the math with our pay-off amount and the money we had saved up in various emergency/Christmas accounts. Wouldn't you know that these amounts matched up almost exactly, so my wonderful, financially and technologically gifted husband transferred over all our funds to pay off the van, not knowing what to expect next.
Fast forward a couple weeks to when we have the lien released on the van, we called out the adjuster from our insurance company. Upon his arrival, he said it would just take about 10 minutes to inspect the van and give us the damage estimate. About 40 minutes later, he said that was one of the worst hail cases he had seen. He told me that in all likelihood our van was "totaled." I really was surprised to hear that, but had peace knowing we were prepared. Here is the good news part - after negotiating with the insurance company, we were blessed to receive a payout from them that is more than 3 times what we took out from all of our accounts. So we will now have a bigger emergency fund, we are out of debt, and we have some extra money for wiggle room to buy those things we'll need for having another little one in the house.
This long detailed story is really meant to share what an amazing thing that God has done. My life-verse is 2 Corinthians 2:9 which states that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. My eyes and ears have never witnessed a storm like that night and mind never conceived that God could use that storm to bring such an unexpected blessing to us. I am excited to see what else He has prepared for us!