A few pictures

Annie is clamoring for another camping trip. On the beach. But she'd be satisfied with going camping anywhere. So we whipped out the tent and camped in the living room. Here the kids are watching a movie before bedtime.

 Surprisingly (or not) the fake camping didn't satisfy Annie's desire for camping. One of these days...

Annie and Ryan were quietly and happily working together for half an hour or more. Though I noticed what they were doing, the happiness and quiet while they were within 10 feet of each other was so abnormal I let them keep at it.

 They were pretty proud of cleaning out the bottom two shelves of the pantry. And they helped put everything back in the end.

 Ryan, king of reorganization/sorting.

He didn't know what to do when there were more apples than mini pie plates left.

Gilbert Temple open house

Last Monday we got to go up to the Gilbert Temple open house.

Jake took the afternoon off and my parents and Marie and her girls went, too. After losing Marie for a while and walking around the temple several times trying to find her, we finally decided to just go through the tour and hopefully we'd find her on the other end. We watched the video in the stake center explaining a bit about the temple, then headed over to the temple. While we were waiting in line to get the booties on over our shoes my mom saw Marie and ran to get her, so she got to go through the temple with us.

The kids really liked the stairs and the baptismal font. Ryan's favorite was definitely the HUGE chandelier in the Celestial Room. Where we should have been the most quiet, Ryan was saying as loud as he could "BIG! Christmas lights ON! Big Christmas lights! Christmas lights ON!" It was a beautiful chandelier.

After we got out we went to take some pictures outside of the temple. We should have moved the family a little closer to the camera so we could see everyone, but at least we got Moroni in the shot. :)

We love to see the temple! We're really looking forward to whenever the Tucson temple gets going. Right now plans have been submitted to the county, and I guess they're waiting on approval before they can go forward with anything. Rachel reminds us when we talk about temples that she's going to get married in the Tucson temple.

January summary

As January began we got to change from 8am church to going at noon. I think I may prefer the 8am, but it is nice to get to sleep in a little. 10am would be perfect. Anyway, as it was a new year Rachel became a CTR 6 and Annie graduated from nursery and is now a Sunbeam! She was a little clingier than I thought she would be, but I'm sure if I hadn't been in Primary at all she wouldn't have given it a second thought. It was just seeing me there that made her want me to go with her to class.

They made I am a Child of God crowns, which she loved.

She found it every time she dressed up during the week and wore it as her princess crown. When I asked her after church what she did in Sunbeams she said, "Oh, me and Blyce (Bryce) just got married," very non-nonchalantly. Annie LOVES Bryce. She's had a little crush on him for months. Even the nursery leaders mentioned it to me. I told Bryce's mom what Annie said and she asked Bryce if he and Annie got married and he shrugged and said, "yeah." Like it's no big deal. Maybe they were actually listening during sharing time when we were introducing the theme for the year of Families can be together forever and decided to do something about it. :)

Ryan saw me take Annie's picture, and demanded one of his own:

At Christmas Jacob got a pretty fun helicopter, and Andrew brought his down, too, then left it here when they left to go back to Utah. So all we heard all day every day was "Chopper. Nap. All done." The choppers could fly for 5-10 minutes before they needed to be recharged for an hour or so. When they were recharging we told Ryan they were taking a nap. He LOVED flying the choppers, or watching them fly as someone else controlled them.

We got a bit tired of dealing with his incessant requests to fly the choppers, and finally mailed Andrew's back to him. Out of sight, out of mind. Jacob's recently took one too many beatings/crashes and wouldn't fly straight and you couldn't control it any more with the remote control, so we retired it. Now he only asks about the chopper 2 or 3 times a day. When I tell him it's broken he says, "Daddy. Fix it." Poor kid. We'll get him another chopper one day.

Last Sunday Ryan was coughing a bit, and feeling a little warm, but no official fever so we all went to church anyway, and just kept him out of nursery just in case. An hour after church he was running around like a mad man at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and 20 minutes after that he was dead on his feet and burning up with a fever. Thankfully it was just a fever and the cough for 3 days. He was a little spoiled and was allowed to have his blankey and binky even when it wasn't sleeping time since he was feeling so crappy.

Here he's got the remote control for the RC car he likes to play with (not all his RC toys are dead and gone). I love how he just walks around with his blanket completely covering his head sometimes. It's definitely his comfort blanket. When he's out of control or throwing a fit, often all I have to do is throw the blanket over his head and he'll stop kicking and let me hold him. But now that he is recovered he's having a hard time parting with his favorite things some days. The only way to get him to give them up is to offer him food or to say that his stuffed puppy needs to take a nap (and then we have to get out of his room immediately because if he looks back at the puppy after he's given him the blankey and binky he wants them back).
So Tuesday night around midnight Ryan woke up and still felt warm, but went back to sleep easily so he didn't get any fever reducer. An hour later he was up again and felt cool. After I got him back to sleep I thought "Yahoo! His fever finally broke!" Two hours later Rachel was up with a fever. And so went the rest of the week. Rachel stayed home from school Wed., Thurs., and Fri. and still had the fever Saturday. Today it seems like her fever is finally gone, so hopefully we're over that illness for now. At least there was no puking involved. :)

The Desert Museum

I started writing this post weeks ago. And finally got around to finishing it today...

We went to the Desert Museum Friday with Cari and Grandma Knight while Jacob was at work.

 

The Desert Museum is less of a museum and more of a zoo. But it’s better than our local zoo, in my opinion. It has animals that are native to the desert around here. One of the first stops is the cave. It has a little shortcut that is fun for the kids and you have to climb up and around and down, so it's like you're really spelunking for a whole minute or two. It kind of freaked Annie out because it was pretty dark. 

At the other end there was a display about bats. They had these bat ears that are attached to headphones to show how the bat ears amplify the sound. Pretty cool. And they make for a funny photo.

 

We saw several animals while we were there. One of the first was the mountain lion. 

A pretty view from a bridge that crosses over to the coyote/javelina area.

Ahhh! Rachel's getting eaten by a coyote! Luckily she survived the metal coyote attack.

Then we saw some real coyotes. In the prickly pears on the left one is hiding in a ditch he dug out to keep cool.

 

The javelina were pretty easy to find this time, unlike most times before when I've been.

We saw a fox,

a bobcat,

and some bighorn sheep.

Rachel was dying because she had long sleeves and pants on and it was in the mid 70s that day, and felt even warmer in the sun. After a little talk she decided to have a good attitude and let us all enjoy our day there. We had some lunch at the restaurant there, went to the reptile house, then headed home. Here's the only photographic evidence that I was there, too:

The kids were climbing on a statue of a bunch of dolphins, which you can't really see. I never did figure out why they'd have a statue of dolphins at the Desert Museum. Doesn't seem very desert-y to me. But it was a fun day, topped off with some Eegees on the way home. 

The next day Cari was flying back to the cold, white North (Rexburg). But everything combined against her. My guess is that Rachel prayed that Cari wouldn't have to go home yet with a little too much faith.

Jacob and Cari woke up early to drive up to the Mesa Airport. Near Casa Grande Jacob said, "I think we better check the tires," started slowing down and pulling off to the shoulder when POP! The front tire blew. Naturally the spare was flat, but thankfully we both carry these tire inflaters in our cars that run off the car's power to blow up the tires.

After blowing the spare up to the right psi they were off again, still with enough time to make Cari's flight. But at the next exit Jacob pulled off to check the spare and sure enough it was already getting flat. They made their way to a Walmart in Casa Grande to get new tires, while I arranged a new flight for Cari for the next day. Shortly after I received the confirmation on her new flight, Cari got a text saying that her flight that day (Saturday) was cancelled due to mechanical problems and was rescheduled for the next day at 10am. Jacob got a whole new set of tires since they were all nearing the end of their lives, and they headed back to Tucson where Rachel and Annie were very happy to get to have Cari around one more day. 

But the adventure wasn't over. Before they got into Tucson another tire went flat. One of the brand new ones. They put the spare on and made it back home without any more tire problems, but were pretty tired of dealing with tires. I took the car to get the tire fixed while Jake and Cari took care of cancelling the flight I had booked that Cari didn't end up needing anyway with the other flight being rescheduled. The Walmart here told me the guys at the other Walmart must have been lazy or incompetent because they replaced the tires, but not the valve stems and did not balance them correctly, though they charged for both. They took care of everything free of charge and the next day Cari made it to her flight without any problems and Jake made it back without any tire problems. And thus ended our fun vacation with our fun visitors. It sure was a good Christmas break.

Annie’s Haircut

I’ve been trying to convince Annie to get a haircut for a while now because she hates me to comb her hair and her hair is so fine that it gets totally tangled every day, no matter how I do it. And it comes out of whatever hairdo I try. Even tight braids come out within a couple of hours. Annie’s cousins, Peyton and McKenzie got their haircut just before New Year’s, so I kept telling Annie how cute they looked with their new haircuts, and didn’t she want to be like them? She finally agreed to get her hair cut.

Before:

 

After:

 

As I was cutting her hair she watched in the mirror and after I snipped a chunk of hair she said, surprised, “That didn’t hurt at all!” Apparently the reason she’d been so reluctant was that she thought hair would hurt to get cut. I seem to remember Rachel thinking the same thing at one point. I should have thought of it and we could have taken care of it a lot sooner. As it is, doing hair is a lot easier most days. She still hates to get her hair done, but it only takes 20 seconds now, and there’s hardly ever any tangles. Woohoo! Rachel is considering following suit...

New Year's Day

 Jacob got some exercise taking the kids on a ride:

While Mark and Ashley were packing up to head out New Year's morning, we took one last walk with the kids to the mailbox at the end of the street and back.

 And when we got back we headed outside to run around while they still could. Sophie was happy to accommodate Ryan who loves to be pushed in this doll stroller.

 After they headed out on their way back to Texas we had a bit of rest time, then after Ryan woke up from his nap we headed in to my parents' house for a BBQ and one last hurrah with Todd and Savannah before they left to go back to Washington the next day.

 The hammock was a popular place to sit with Uncle Todd...

 Until it got a little too overloaded and broke.

 Some of the kids were a little traumatized by the violent end to their fun.

 After we were all done someone mentioned maybe going down to the park. Annie and McKenzie were all over that. They jumped in the stroller right away and had to wait a while while everyone else got ready.

 While the bigger kids were down at the park, Ryan and Benjamin stayed behind and had some boy bonding time. Ryan liked the New Year's hats, and Ben didn't mind Ryan putting them on him. For a few seconds at a time.

It was a day of goodbyes, saying bye to the Campbell Clan in the morning, then the Washington Knights that evening. It was a lot of fun having everyone visit for Christmas. And we ordered the perfect weather. Highs were in the high 60s or even low 70s pretty much the whole time we had visitors. A perfect Christmas/post-Christmas all around. :)