Family Skating

We spent the morning ice skating as a family. I don't think that's ever happened before. Sara hasn't ice skated since our honeymoon, and Micah has never ice skated before today. We all had fun! We'll have to do that more often. I'm pretty sure the rink is open all year long.

It's been lovely weather in Flagstaff lately. It's been sunny in the mid to upper 50's every day. I love sunshine in the winter. I don't remember seeing much of it back in Minnesota. It's amazing how the sun, or lack of sun, effects my family's mental health. We had a good mentally healthy day.

Christmas

We had a good Christmas in Flagstaff. I had to lead two Christmas Eve services and one Christmas Day service. All were we'll attended. Of course the kids were up late on the Eve and up early Christmas Day, so all three of them fell asleep with Sara during the Christmas Day service. Here is a picture with them after the service.

We spent the rest of the day with the Meldrum family (Senior Pastor). We took yesterday off and I'm back to work today.

I'm always excited for the new year and the mysteries that it holds. Bring it on!

Elf Yourself

Click here to see a funny family video!

Click here to see another funny family video!

998 Pieces

It took all month to finish this 1000 piece puzzle. The satisfaction of completion was taken away when we discovered that we're missing two pieces. I can only assume Ike has consumed them by now.

Christmas and Snow Fun

Quick Recap of Recent Activities:

Kids playing in snow, sledding, building a snowman with neighbor kids

(Micah crying in photo below because he had to pee a few minutes

after arriving at the sledding hill, walked him into the forest and took care of business)

Making Christmas ornaments for grandparents

Putting together a snowy scene puzzle 

Christmas programs at church and the preschool

Our new puppy, Ike, enjoying running and biting at the kids :)

Kid Crate

Finally getting our kids under control.

Peter Piper Pizza

Sara's hosting a Christmas party at our house tonight for the ladies from her work so I'm at Peter Piper Pizza with the kids. It's sort of like Chuck E Cheeses, but not quite as obnoxious. Still have a couple more hours to kill. Maybe we'll go to the library.

Yes, this is sort of a meaningless post. Just taking advantage of the blogger app for my iphone. Didn't know it existed til a couple weeks ago. That means I'll probably post more, but they may be a bit more random subject-wise like this one;-)

Merry Christmas to us from Grandma Dee Dee

His name is Ike

Winter Bugs

Sara's mom Dee Dee and Aunt Shelly came for a visit starting yesterday. The unfortunate part is that half of us are not feeling well. I've had a bad cold since last weekend that's progressively getting worse, Aubri was throwing up this morning, and Shelly has a headache and stomach issues too. Not exactly the ideal situation when you have guests over. Hopefully we'll all wake up tomorrow feeling great so we can enjoy our time together a bit more.

Dog Drama

Here's a poem Gavin wrote about Lizzy a couple weeks ago. He typed it up and stuck it to our bedroom wall.

Sara's been online looking for dogs lately. Personally, I wouldn't mind taking a break from dogs. Especially thinking of what it takes to train and raise a puppy, but I may have to give in to the desires of the rest of my family. We'll see...

Camo Cowboy

This is what happens when I tell Micah to pick his own outfit. ;-)

Aubri's Christmas List

Translation: I would like a dog for us, and may I have a baby doll and a baby sister; (sorry I did a space) and at Target I really wanted a skirt and a pack of candy please. Bye, bye! Love, Aubriella Fitzsimmons. P.S. Just to let you know, I wrote it myself.

Phoenix with Grandma Dorothy

Last Friday, we drove to Phoenix to visit Grandma Dorothy. She was visiting some friends in Mesa for a few days, so we decided to go down and spend the day with her. We picked her up and then drove to a Train Park/Museum.

Riding the train

Crazy sculpture at the train park. There were some huge
miniature train sets set up in this building too.

Tour of an old Presidential train

Gavin taking advantage of the IKEA fun!

After the train park we headed to IKEA. Sara's been missing IKEA since we left Minnesota, so we went and looked around there for a couple hours and had supper there. Micah slept in the shopping cart most of that time.

Goodbye Lizzy

 Tonight we said goodbye to our beloved dog, Lizzy. It all started with that weekend of multiply seizures and ups and downs ever since. We paid for blood-work to be done, but the results returned as normal. We could have done more extensive testing, but it costs more and we more than likely would not be willing to pay for the treatment once we found out exactly what's wrong with her. The vet said there's a high probability of cancer as well. The last few days, it's been obvious that she wasn't herself anymore. She would pace and whine constantly. Sara and I got very little sleep last night as she was pestering both of us all night long. I got up with her a couple times, but there didn't seem to be anything to help her calm down. She had a seizure early in the morning and a couple more this afternoon. She would sometimes bark at us as if she didn't recognize us, and would smell us and the surroundings as if it were a first experience in that environment. It was sad to let her go, but Sara and I decided it would be best to put her down.

Here's the family taking Lizzy for a final walk around the neighborhood before saying goodbye.

I took this picture a couple minutes before she was put to sleep. She still seemed like there was a lot of life in her,  but she was suffering greatly as her mind and body were failing.

It was an emotional night in our house tonight. Poor Micah cried himself to sleep tonight trying to wrap his little mind around the concept of death. The other kids had a hard time too, especially Aubri. It's amazing to me how our dogs become a huge part of our families. Lizzy was our first baby. She was there the day we brought a newborn Gavin home from the hospital. She took all the abuse from the kids as they were growing up and she never fought back. Sara remembers how many friendships were made in Minneapolis because of Lizzy walks and meeting up with other "dog-walkers". What an amazing family dog! She will certainly be missed.

Fall Party and Trick or Treating

 This year, we decided to throw a fall party for families we know with kids. We basically just carved mass amounts of pumpkins, ate food, and let the kids run wild for a few hours. We had several of our neighbors over, and quite a few families from our church as well. I didn't count, but I suppose there were about 40-50 people at our place. Thankfully the weather was nice so we were able to be outside most of the time. That was Sunday night.

For Halloween, we let the kids hit a few houses in our neighborhood to do the trick or treat thing. As usual, they each got more candy than any kid should be allowed to consume. It was funny spraying Micah's hair black for his Superman costume because his little blonde hair coming through made it look like gray hair. He kinda had that "Richard Gere" look going on :-)

Here are the kids right before heading out to get some candy

Here is Sara right before the preschool Halloween Party. Apparently, many of the preschoolers didn't recognize her at first and were a little frightened. 

This is a shot of about half of the carved pumpkins at our fall party

Gavin Doing Flips

Gavin Doing Flips from Zac Fitzsimmons on Vimeo.

Lizzy

Our family dog, Lizzy, has been with us for over ten years now. We've had some scares lately as she has been having multiple seizures throughout the day. I brought her in to the vet to get some blood work done, but we are still waiting for results. We can't get anti-seizure medicine until we know what's wrong with her. Hopefully nothing serious happens to her while we're waiting.

Hiking in Flagstaff

We finally found a few more family-friendly hiking trails. They're all over the place here, but we just didn't know where to to look for some of them until recently. We drove up by Snow Bowl (local skiing resort) this morning to see some aspens beginning to change color. It was pretty. It's nice to see something other than pine trees for a change.

This picture is from a hiking trip a couple weeks ago. There's also a bunch more new pictures of scenery and kids in the Flagstaff folder in the Photo Album.

Recording the Kids' Class

Tonight the kids and I were listening to the recordings I made with Gavin's class last school year. They're kind of fun to listen to so I thought I might as well share it with all you fine folks reading this :-) It was kind of funny because only about half of the class could sing in tune, but almost all of them enjoyed participating. Here's the link you can download them and give them a listen: CLICK HERE

New House Pics

Here's a few pics of our new place. It was almost clean this morning, so I decided to take a few pictures. We're loving the neighborhood. Neighbor kids are over all the time, which is great for our kids. Both Aubri and Gavin are being home schooled now. The public school they started at ended up not being a very good fit. We thought homeschooling would be a bit busy and overwhelming, but it's actually been quite nice so far. It just feels like the right fit for our kids and our family.

Our new home. Finally, a garage again! Two bedrooms upstairs, master bed on the main level.  Two and a  half baths.  Not huge, but comfortable. Still deciding if we should turn our rental agreement into a lease/purchase agreement.

This is what you see when you enter the front door. It has vaulted ceilings and skylights. Sorta feels bigger than it is.

Panning to the right from the last picture. You can see the dining area and the breakfast bar attached to the kitchen on the right. Farther to the right of this picture are the steps heading up to the second level. 

Kitchen. 

BIG backyard. You can't really see it from the picture, but Gavin has a bike track going through the yard with a couple jumps built up. On the left, you can see the shooting range for BB gun and archery. Our trampoline is to the right of the picture. I-40 is right on the other side of the back fence, which is not ideal, but we don't really notice the sound of traffic most of the time.