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!

Easter Fun!

Well Easter at our house brings some very silly things. You can look at the following images, but for some you will just have to watch our Easter String Surprise video (linked below) to find out more...

Click here to see the video.

Here are some more of Robby and Jenna's Easter surprises.

Jenna really got into the Easter Egg hunt portion of the surprise.

She especially liked to find out what was in each egg and wanted to sample every eggs' contents! We also had a hard time getting her to part with the eggs long enough to collect the candy. Oh, and while emptying the eggs we found one other Easter visitor, ants. They decided to share some of our jelly beans. Luckily, they only found one of the eggs!

Good Morning with Robby and Jenna!

I got up one Saturday morning to see this in the living room...

Aren't they cute snuggled together?!

Pinewood Derby 2007

Little Robby had his first Pinewood Derby last night! It was great fun! When we started helping Robby build his pinewood derby car we did the best we could with the hand tools we had around the house. We didn't have a power saw or anything of the sort, so we tried to cut it by hand. Very quickly we realized that it wasn't going to be a very easy task, and two days before we had to check the car in I called one of the brothers in our ward for help out of desparation. He told me that his brother-in-law (also in the ward) had the right tools. He offered to call him for us, and a few minutes later we got a call from Kip (the brother with the tools). Kip offered to let Robby and Chap come over to use his tools late that night after he got home. In short, Kip saved us! He helped cut the car, drill holes for the axles, and even drill holes and pour melted lead in the back of the car (for weight).

The next day we painted and decorated the car. The day after the car was due for check-in, so Little Robby and I took the car over to have it weighed. It turned out to be .09 oz. to heavy! That may not seem like a lot, but if you saw how much Robby and Little Robby had to hack out of the bottom of the car with a chisel to get it under the approved weight, you would realize that .09 oz is a lot for a pinewood derby car. Robby and Little Robby managed to get the car fixed in just enough time to have it entered that night.

Here are the pics:

Here is the parking lot.

Here is Little Robby and his racer.

And here it is finishing one of the races. They got to race 17 times, and then the results were averaged to determine the winner.

Now to get the scoop on how he did you have to watch the video clip here...

Pinewood Derby 2007

A Visit to the Zoo

We were once again lucky enough to recieve some free tickets to go to the zoo from one of the professors at the University. She was so kind as to remember that we had been interested in her offer of free tickets last year, that she gave us her free tickets this year. The only down side to the day we chose to go was that we were having record heat for the month of March. It got up to 99 that day. Fortunately we made special effort to go to the zoo early in the morning to avoid the heat.

Here we are at the giraffe enclosure. When I first wheeled Jenna up to the fence I tried to point out the giraffes in the distance, but she didn't see what I was pointing at. Then a few minutes later the giraffes started walking towards us. You should have heard her squeal, "Oooooo!" Then she excitedly began to tell me all about what she saw.

Since we had more tickets then we needed for the three of us we decided to bring along Robby's friend, his sister, and his Mom.

Fortunately, the zoo in Arizona has a splash pad to keep the kids cool when the day gets really hot! Jenna wasn't so sure she wanted to push through the crowd of kids to stand in the water sprays.

We were surprised that the kids lost interest in the splash pad so fast until we saw what they were up to...

Building a sand castle!

All in all, it was a fun spring break day!

Crazy Jenna!

Once again Jenna is setting style trends... Here we have shorts on the head. "Hat!" she says.

I have also seen her pull open the drawer next to her crib and put bloomers on her head! Very cute, don't you think?!

Springtime Fun!

The weather has been wonderful lately, and we finally decided to go and get some sand for our sand box! We haven't used it since we moved here, so Robby and Jenna were really excited to try it out. When I bought the sand I over estimated how much it would take, so I ended up with one extra bag. I am not too worried about that though because after one day of playing in the sand, I realized that it won't be long till Jenna removes at least one bag worth of sand from the box since she was more facinated with throwing it out than keeping it in! Now I just have a back up bag to replenish the box when necessary.

Robby really enjoyed showing Jenna how it's done!

A day in the sand box wouldn't be complete without a little taste testing. ("Yuck!" said Jenna.)

To complete our springtime fun we planted vegetables in our garden bed! I'm not sure how well they will grow since I am pretty sure we were late planting (our part of Arizona gets pretty hot, pretty fast), but we're going to try at least!

Little Robby advances in karate!

Right at the end of February, Chap (our nickname for Little Robby) had his 4th belt test and he passed! Now he is an orange belt black stripe. He's looking really sharp. The most exciting thing about this advancement is that he got to move up a class to the intermediate level and in that class they spar (i.e. fight)! They don't hit or kick hard when they spar in class, it's mostly for developing agility and a quickness of mind. We are about to order his sparring gear which consists of head gear, hand and foot pads, and a mouth guard. I'll post a picture with him all decked out when the gear comes in.

Here he is looking sharp during the test.

With the height difference it seems like an unfair match! Fortunately Dallas (yes, that's the boy's name) isn't really trying to hit him.

Here Robby is at the top of the beginning class.

Later that week they had the belt ceremony during class. Here Robby is shaking hands in a karate handshake with his teacher.

Now you can see Robby and his new black stripe!