Staying Cool at the Museum

With the incredible summer heat that comes in our part of Arizona, we like to find fun places to stay cool. That is why we have a membership to the nearby science museum. It's fun, and it's air conditioned! This past week we enjoyed taking the wife and children of one of the new Ph.D. students that Robby is going to school with to the museum. They just moved in and we had a great time introducing them to the museum.

Here Jenna is practicing her balancing skills. This walkway has a bunch of rubber things sticking up, and when you walk on it you have to concentrate harder on your balance.

Okay, Jenna has reached the cheezy grin stage. If you say, smile for the camera this is quite often what you get!
Jenna made friends with this beach ball. She did not want to part with it when it was time to go. In fact she tried to throw a nice tantrum, but it didn't work since I just simply picked her up and went on my way. Once she found something just as cool in the next room, the ball was long forgotten.
Well, I only have one picture of Little Robby because after this he tried to play "keep away from the camera." Here he is trying to get me with the blowing hose.
Pull hard Jenna! This is one of those chairs that you can lift by pulling on the rope and pulley system. Jenna has a few years before she will be able to make it budge. Once more, cheezy grin that says, "I had fun at the museum, Mom!"

A Canning Adventure

Yesterday Little Robby and I embarked upon an adventure together. We had gotten to the point that we had more tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden than we could eat before they spoiled. As a family we decided that it would be good to make something that we could use for a long time, so we decided to make salsa and pickles. I bought a variety of peppers and an onion, and Little Robby and I learned all about canning.

When we got started, I read the recipes and thought that I would be able to make and jar the salsa and pickles in about 3 hours. 7 hours and three trips to Walmart later, I was the proud creator of 7 pints of salsa, 10 pints of refrigerator pickle, and one nightmare of a kitchen mess. The stuff I made turned out pretty good (although I don't expect any blue ribbons for my efforts).

Here is my diligent chopper boy. We were really glad to use our electric chopper (that collects dust most days in my cabinent). Robby did a great job preparing most of the veggies for the salsa.
Here is our simmering pot of salsa. I used a hot water bath canner to seal the jars of salsa. I had never done that before and I have to say I was grateful that I was able to chit chat with one sweet grandma while shopping on the canning isle at Wal-mart who gave me a couple tips that came in very handy. (One was not to use iodized salt because it will cause the pickles to change color - I was thankful she said that because we probably would have thought I had ruined them. Instead I went and bought a new container of non-iodized salt.) I was also equally grateful that I was able to get a hold of an experienced food storage person in our ward. She saved me from putting my jars directly in the boiling water (they might have busted.) I guess I never picked up on the fact that the jars go in the water first and then you set the pot to boil in the 3 the canning classes I have attended. Luckily for her advice I didn't loose all my hard work!

And here you see some of the results of our efforts.

An evening hike

Robby has been working hard on getting ready for his dissertation proposal, and he decided he needed a little break with the family. He thought it would be fun for us to go and hike a local mountain. He looked the area up online, and there were a few hikes to choose from. He liked the sound of the Summit Trail Hike. It was about 1.2 miles long which didn't sound to bad to him.

So all four of us set off at about 6:15p to hike half way on one of the trails and return by sundown 7:34p.

Jenna thought the first part of the hike was great, and wanted to "do-it herself."
Little Robby wanted to set a faster pace which left me in the middle.
Here we are stopping for a breather.

Here we all are together at the top of our hike. The trail ascended another 3/4 mile, but we decided that Dad and Little Robby could come back another time to hike to the summit. The rest of the trail was definitely not for a two year-old. Jenna will have to wait till she's a lot older!

Here's Jenna going back down the mountain with Mom. She would have climbed to the top of the mountain by herself if we had let her!

Karate Mama!

For the past year, I have been observering Little Robby's karate classes from time to time, and as I sat there I thought, "You know, I should do this too!" And so I did, I started karate. Little Robby loves the fact that I am in his class, and he is a higher belt than me, which means I have to show respect to him.

So now I have to share some pics and a video with you...

Here we have Little Robby showing us how to break the board with your foot.
Next, I try... You'll have to watch the video below to find out if I succeeded in breaking the board, too.
Here we are after my first class. Little Robby got his new purple belt, and Mom started as a white belt. I got my uniform at the next class.

Here I am White Belt Mama!
Now you can see how I did my first day!

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!