Snow!

Guess what we woke up to on Sunday morning:
Snow! And plenty of it. At least in Tucson terms, it was plenty of snow. If we're lucky we might get one snow fall each year. And this year we were lucky. Jake went down the street to the desert and took some pictures of the desert covered in white:

Very pretty. Of course, by 10:30 when I left to go to church it was all melted already. But that's just the kind of snow we like--sticks around long enough to play in, and by later that afternoon a light sweater keeps you comfortable.
We got our fun in that morning. Rachel wanted to rush right out into the snow, but we prevailed upon her to put on shoes at least, and a little extra layers than just her pjs.Her first experience making a snow angel:
Here's the little snowwoman we built.

Jake helped build another one, too, and by the time we got home from church they were melted. Rachel was a little disappointed, but then we reminded her of the snowman song that she had never really seen in practice before: "in the sun he melted, melted, melted...small, small, small."
Rachel also got a chance to have a (kind of) real snowball fight. Notice the action shot (you can see the snowball in flight, just about hitting Jake):
When our home teachers came over that night they asked Rachel if she played in the snow. Her reply: "I hit Dad with a snowball in the BUM!" followed by giggles. It was a nice surprise to wake up to. And it was nice to be back in short sleeves today.

Last week

Last week when we were at Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house we pulled out the double jogging stroller they scored from a yard sale and went down to the park. It was a kind of windy day, but still pretty nice (probably around 70 degrees). And here's the cutest picture ever of our two little cuties:
Annie loves standing up as much as she can. And she also loves her grandpa--he can get her talking and squealing like no one else can.
Friday Rachel had a dentist appointment, and despite talking about how quick and easy and nice the dentist was all week, Rachel was not all that happy to be going to the dentist. Though when we got there the fun animals distracted her for a little while.
She rode this elephant for quite a while and had a monkey strapped around her waist. The fun of the waiting room did not outweigh the fears of the dentist chair, however. She actually did really great getting x-rays done (they had a really cool frog chair for her to sit in and she got to pretend to bite the cookie when she bit the film). She was not, however, happy with the dentist, or her assistant trying to get her to lay down to clean her teeth or check them out with the "teeth counter." Maybe next time she'll be more cooperative. At least her teeth are healthy and cavity-free. :)

Saturday we headed up to Mesa to the temple. While Jake and I took turns at the temple, Rachel had a ball at the playground at Pioneer Park across the street.
While Jake was in, we went and picked up a gluten-free pizza for our first take out pizza in ages. It was tasty. And here's Annie wishing she could join in:
The temple was a lovely way to end our week. And the girls were exceptionally good and happy for our 8 hour excursion.

Camera dump

We finally got around to unloading our camera, so here's what we've been doing the last few weeks, according to my camera's memory (which is better than my own memory these days).

At the beginning of the month we had the coldest weather in at least 60 years here in Tucson. It was down to 17 degrees for two days straight. Our pipes froze the first night, but luckily didn't break, and the second night we left a faucet running and had no problems with that (not something I've ever had to deal with here in Tucson before, living here since I was 5, minus college and mission) And because of abnormally cold weather all over the place there was extra high demand for natural gas, and I guess they couldn't keep the pressure in the gas lines up to what they should be, so they had to shut off gas to some of Tucson. We live in one of those parts. All of Rita Ranch was out of gas, which includes our entire ward. That means no heat and NO HOT WATER. I had flashbacks to Uruguay where I spent one entire transfer without a hot water heater, waiting for it to get fixed. We "showered" by warming water on our burner, then pouring it over our heads with a pitcher, soaping up, then pouring more water over our heads to rinse off. It was winter and the heating in that house consisted of a tiny little space heater. It was not a warm way to shower. Luckily our Uruguay-like experience lasted less than 2 days before heat was restored. And since I have my parents in town, we just went to their house to shower. Though I did microwave water to wash my face at night.
Anyway, so that extreme cold was not kind to many of our desert plants. Our poor orange tree was less than a year old and did not have time to toughen up, so it looks good and dead. They say to wait another month and dead-looking plants might revive, but I hold out very little hope for the orange tree. Other native plants have lost all their leaves (I know that's common in cold places, but most of the desert trees keep their leaves year-round). Even our Palo Verde tree has had a major shedding problem. So I raked up all the...hmmm, I don't know what they're called--not leaves, not sticks or branches, but something in between. This is Tucson's version of jumping in the fall leaves:
It looks like Rachel built her own little nest.

Rachel got a special surprise in the mail from Jake's cousin Janey--she made Rachel another poncho. Rachel walks around with it saying she's Little Green Riding Hood.
Then she found a ruler to use as a cane and decided she was a grandma.
(Since my mom is now allowed to put weight on her leg again, since the beginning of the month, she uses a cane to walk, so Rachel likes to pretend she's Grandma sometimes.)
Rachel also likes to pretend she's a baby:
Our real baby is trying to learn how to roll over, but can't quite get it on her own yet. But she does spend a long time hanging out on her right side:
She also spends great amounts of time trying to fit both hands into her mouth at the same time.

Rachel the fashionista:
And in other exciting news we finished our taxes! Woohoo!
Thanks to our newest tax deduction we're thinking of new ways to spend our money. But we'll probably just stick to the tried and true paying-down-the-mortgage.

Valentine's Day

My Valentine's Day began a bit early. The Wednesday before Valentine's Day I opened my front door to this quartet singing "You are my Sunshine" along with a rose and a Symphony Bar for me.

They were doing a fundraiser and had arranged with Jake to come by and sing for me. I've never had a singing telegram before, but I think it's something everyone would love to get. It sure made my day. And what a great fundraiser idea!
To make the day a special day for Rachel we cut out a bunch of hearts and taped them all around her bed and on her door, as well as scattered randomly around the house. When Rachel woke up she LOVED it. We were still asleep, but could hear when she woke up, "Huh?! ... Valentines! There's valentines in my room! ... There's valentines on my door! ... Mom! Dad! Somebody put Valentines all over!" It was really fun. She as just about as excited waking up to the hearts as she was opening presents at Christmas (not just because she was sick as a dog at Christmas, either).

Jacob also lovingly packed us full of chocolate. He got 3 different packages of M&Ms hidden in various places for me to find throughout the day, as well as a valentine package of M&Ms for Rachel. He also got us these lovely flowers.

I was kind of lame and all he got from me was an email of love and some beef jerky that Rachel helped me make for him. Rachel calls the beef jerky "beef turkey" so I made him a little drawing of a turkey cow from which comes the beef turkey.
Anyway, I love my family, and especially my hubby. He's the best and always keeps me well stocked with sweets. And he's a great husband and daddy, besides. :) (Oh-he also got me Swedish fish, kind of reminiscent of the first official date he asked me on when I responded with fish in his toilet. But that's another story. He put them in my car and I didn't find them until Wednesday since apparently I was a home-body and didn't leave the house for more than 2 days straight.) Hope everyone else had a good Valentine's Day, too. And happy President's Day, I guess. Maybe we'll tape profiles of Lincoln and Washington up around the house on Monday to celebrate. Or maybe we'll just buy a new mattress or something.

Goof ball

As a true 3-year-old, Rachel is starting to get quite a sense of humor. She thinks she is the funniest person around. It's fun to have such a happy girl around. (Especially the last couple of days--we've had weeks of horrible tantrums over every little thing, and for 3 days now, those have been cut WAY back, and we have our happy little Rachel back.)
Today Rachel decided that pretending to be laundry was the funniest thing ever.

She kept telling me that the laundry needed to be thrown away. And laughed so hard when I would try to throw her away. Or fold her up like laundry and stick her in the closet.

Up until about 3 weeks ago you couldn't get Rachel to color a picture or paint for more than 5 minutes at a time. And 5 minutes was on a good day. Then something all of a sudden clicked and she now LOVES to color and paint. It's fun to see her actually coloring (scribbling) her entire pictures from primary with all sorts of colors (before it would be just one color in one tiny part of the page). Here she's painting a hippo that we cut out and made into a paper bag puppet:

Rachel's other favorite thing this week has been doing treasure hunts. I draw pictures on post-it notes of where the next clue is and she goes in search of her special prize at the end (usually one of her toys). When she's done with the one I put together she makes up her own, and takes me on it.

Big sis, little sis

Rachel loves her little sister. Most of the time. And Annie loves watching Rachel, and doesn't really mind much when Rachel gets a bit too close to her face, or tries to push her off my lap, or yells a bit too loud and close to her. They're such loving sisters. :)

Annie's getting to like sitting and standing. She's quite a fan of her Bumbo seat. For about 10 minutes.

And of course, anything that Annie can do, Rachel also must do.

Rachel LOVES to act like a baby. I don't love her acting like a baby quite so much. :)

Laughing

There's nothing like a baby's laugh to make you smile. Annie has started laughing, though not all that often. I did manage to capture this on video last night.
She's a cutie. It's fun to see her hitting more and more milestones... grabbing things, pulling out her binky (though I wish the mastering of putting the binky back would come sooner rather than later), smiling and cooing, and now laughing. She now gets this look of concentration with her tongue sticking out when she's playing with her toys, trying to grab or bat at them.
She's a happy girl.

The Children's Museum

The Children's Museum here in Tucson is celebrating it's 25th year in operation, so for this whole year admission is just $2 on the 25th of the month. So, on January 25th we headed down for a fun morning. They had a little storytime/playtime thing for little kids involving a story or two, bubbles, some songs, and making their own bracelets. Rachel was abnormally clingy (though lately that seems to be the new normal), and Jared was happy to say hi to everyone. They both loved the bubbles.

Rachel's favorite spot this time was the submarine control deck. She spent quite a while in there and went back in about 3 times.

Jared liked climbing under the controls. And the phone.

Rachel asked for help putting on the firefighter suit, which weighs almost as much her, then had a hard time driving the truck. Her hands surprisingly didn't quite reach to the end of the sleeves. :)

We had a fun time and we were glad we could squeeze that in while Savannah and Jared were still in town. And knowing that there's cheap admission every month on the 25th, I'm sure we'll be back several times this year.