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.