Little Robby's Busy Saturday

Little Robby had a very busy Saturday. He began with a karate test early in the morning. He was testing for his purple belt.

Here you can see him doing his forms during testing. I'm thinking about starting karate this next week. Over the summer the adult beginners take with the intermediate kids, so Robby and I would be in the same class. He kind of likes the idea that Mom would be a lower rank than him. We'll see...

After his test we talked for a minute with his 2nd grade teacher. Her son takes karate at the same place and he was testing at the same time as Robby. We stopped and got a picture with her and her children so that Robby would have a picture with his teacher since the school year ends on Thursday.

In the afternoon, Robby had a piano recital. He played A Child's Prayer.

Listen to him play here.

Then after the recital Dad treated Robby to a movie, and they went together to see Meet the Robinsons. They both enjoyed it, and I enjoyed my "Mama Rejuvination Time" because Jenna took a nap.

Finally we wanted to share with you Jenna's performances...

She is also a budding karate kid and pianist.

How Our Garden Grows

I figure since we showed you our garden earlier when we had just planted everything that I should follow up with some pics of us harvesting some of the "fruit" (or vegetables as is the case).

So here we have our garden. We planted a tomato plant, carrots, green beans, a bell pepper plant, cucumbers, and sugar snap peas.
Just a couple of weeks ago we were able to enjoy the first of our harvest. Here we are picking our green beans.
Robby was really excited to help me pick the beans (he wasn't so excited about eating them though.)

Some of our nice beans.
Okay, so this one is cheesy, but it's what you get. In most of the pictures Robby took, I was concentrating a little too hard on the task, and I looked mad. He told me to look happy in this one. Looks like some silly magazine picture.
And lastly, this is our first red tomato. We ate this one in a salad, and then we chopped the next several tomatoes we got and used them in a pot of chili. Delicious!

Caverns Field Trip

Back at the beginning of May, Little Robby had the joy of going on two field trips within one week of each other! The first was his Science Class Field Trip to Kartchner Caverns several hours away. Big Robby was able to plan his week so that he could stay home with Jenna that Friday and enable me to go on this all day trip with Little Robby. I'd say I had just as much fun as he did!

Here we have Robby and two of his good friends, Cole and Steven.

On the bus ride our tour guide introduced us all to a native of Arizona, the chuckwalla. We each got a photo opportunity with him if we wanted.

Smile!

In the gift store, Little Robby tried to convince me he really needed this (overly expensive) stuffed turtle. When he realized that he wasn't going to succeed, he asked for a picture with it to remember it by. With that I was willing to comply because it was a lot cheaper to have a picture then take home a stuffed animal. I even offered to take pictures of everything else he wanted to buy!
Here we have Robby taking a picture of me taking a picture. Or maybe it's the other way around. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the cave so we took a picture inside the mock up of the original cave entrance.

2nd Grade Field Trip

On the following Monday, Little Robby went on his second field trip within a week with his 2nd grade class. They went to a science museum. Since we have a membership I decided to tag along with Jenna. It was a fun outing for all of us.

Here we have Robby making faces at his friend Ben through a display that had a series of mirrored slats. (It's hard to explain.)
Here we have Jenna checking out the circulatory system! I'll have her report on what she learned in our next blog. ;)
Her hair is getting really long as you can see here.

Jenna's showing Robby's friends Spencer and Ben how it's done.
And lastly, here we are waiting for the bus.

Father/Son Campout

Welcome, this is Robby, guest blogger. Little Roo and I just returned from the annual father-and-son campout and have a few pictures to share. This year we traveled up to the Arizona "Rim", a mountainous region about an hour north of where we live.

Here we are, Friday afternoon, ready to leave on our adventure. With our early departure, we actually managed to set up our tent this year before dark!

Here we are Saturday morning, post-breakfast. Robby and friend Cole have constructed a fishing pole to use in catching crawdads. Leftover sausage from breakfast serves as bait.
Here they go, down to the favored spot on the creek.
Initial attempts are yielding many bites... ... but eventually they do spot a few and bag them, relying on plastic cups rather than the original fishing pole.
While they had at first perched on rocks...
...both end up falling into the water and decide that they might as well take advantage of the increased access to crawdads that wading through the river affords. They are eventually wet from neck to toes.
On the way home, we took a short detour and climbed to the top of Mount Ord (7128 ft) in the Mazatzal range. The view at the top was nice, although your view of us is little less so, given how scruffy we were looking at this point. Good times!

Jenna turned 2!

And here's the birthday girl!

Jenna the pretty, pretty princess. I saw the little tiara at the store, and I couldn't resist dressing my little princess up as a princess for her birthday.

We tried to do some photos in the dress and tiara outside, but the tiara kept falling out and she didn't necessarily want it on her head. This was her Easter dress also.

Here she is on the way to her birthday dinner.

My parents and Andra and the boys were there to share the festivities at the restaurant.

After dinner, we went home to have some cake and open presents. We took Jenna's clothes off so that she could more fully enjoy her cake, but in contrast to last year, she barely touched it!

Here she is enjoying her presents!

The big hit of the night was her new tricycle. She is big enough to pedal it on her own, although we are still learning about pedaling and steering at the same time. (Let me just make note that the mess in the background is because my parents were visiting and so their suitcases and bags were lining the wall.)

All in all, it was a great birthday!