Jumping Cholla

We live off of Jumping Cholla, but we have found it is also a plant. A jumping cactus, that when you touch it in the slightest, has a big ball that pops off and implants into your skin, despite clothing. Then it has tons of spines all over it that close in on your skin, and then there are microscopic burs on the spines that stick themselves into your skin so that when you try and pull out the spines, the burs stick the opposite way causing removal to be very painful.

Michelle ran into one of these while running and it got her a little bit, and then she fell into one while mountain biking with Mike, and they had to extricate about 100 spines. Her whole arm was destroyed. Too bad we never got a picture.

But then on Sunday we wanted to take a family picture, and there aren't tons of choices for backgrounds, so we decided to be by a jumping cholla with the mountains in the background. We warned the boys, don't get too close and tried to be careful. We got a few good shots (thanks Brian) before Brayden was attacked. Poor kid, it bit his leg and then he tried to pull it out and killed his hand. We basically had to hold him down and rip the spines out as fast as we could and Brian pulled the big ball out of his leg (somehow without hurting himself, I don't know how he did it). I think next year we'll look for some architectural backgrounds rather than desert landscape. :)

Cowboy Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving I planned on having a quiet, low-key dinner after moving and trying to set up our new house, but when Mike found out everyone he worked with would be gone all week, we decided to take a trip. My grandma had invited us for Thanksgiving, so we checked last minute to make sure it was okay that we came and we packed up and took off. My cousin was super nice and let us stay overnight with her to break up the trip, which is a good thing, because the 13 hour drive turned into a 18 1/2 hour drive thanks to two car accidents and traffic. We got to see a couple of my brothers, a sister-in-law, and my mom and a fair bit of extended family, which was nice. My grandma even made twice-baked potatoes, a little tradition I have with her--she made them for me every Thanksgiving while I was in college.

The boys were in heaven--their dad took almost an entire week off, they had attention galore from multiple uncles, and they found out my grandpa was a cowboy. (They are obsessed with cowboys right now. Michelle and Brayden sing "Cowboy take me away" together.) Grandpa even let them use one of his cowboy hats to play with. An uncle of mine took them all shooting. I watched from the car. And they got to go fourwheeling. Brayden is old enough to be cautious, but Caleb isn't and he kept egging my brother on, trying to get him to go up steeper and steeper mountains and to go faster and faster.

Then even more spur of the moment, my sister-in-law gave Mike her ticket to the U of U vs BYU game and so we extended our driving time and hit up Provo. The boys and Michelle went to the game and the other Michelle and I took the little boys shopping, to see Santa, and to Red Robin. And apparently I totally bummed out my sister-in-law by the size of clothes I had to buy to finish out this pregnancy. Well, what can I say, I always get really big when I'm pregnant. I don't think she'll have my problem since she's 15 weeks and you can't even tell she's pregnant, where as I'm wearing maternity clothes by 15 weeks. So all in all, not a quiet Thanksgiving, but a good one. And I expect Christmas will be the same.

A Little update in pictures

Michelle and I made a pumpkin cake for Halloween. It looked really cute in the little Halloween cookbook I have, but by the time we took a picture, ours was melting, so here it is in all it's glory.



A fairy, a pirate and a crocodile. I tried to be a black widow, but I wore my knee high boots with the outfit and got some really funny looks, so there are no pictures of that get up.





We made eyeball cookies from the aforementioned book and they turned out really cute, but as you can see our teeth are blue. The "frosting" that I thought I was using was actually food dye. Oops! They still tasted good!



Happy birthday Michelle, she's 19!



You really can have fun in a backyard without grass.



"Monkeying around" at the zoo. We went with the "other Cherrys." We love them! We didn't get a picture with them though. Another time. It was a free day to go and the zoo did a little train ride around a lake and had food vendors and all sorts of different things. It's a bummer we couldn't stay longer, but I was hungry!! Double cheeseburger at Burger King for 99 cents. I've wanted one ever since I went to the zoo a few years ago and my friend Michelle got one and I watched all jealous while I ate my yogurt and stuff. :)

Tucson: We've arrived

We got here Saturday evening to a blazing 97 degrees, just a tad warmer than our beautiful (okay, cold) 44 degree weather in Michigan. It was a bit of a shock. Michelle (my sister who will be staying with us for six months) told the boys the heat we were feeling was dragon breath because dragons live under the ground here. I think it really did feel like dragon breath. Yesterday cooled down into the 80s and had wind, so it was much more bearable. All of our stuff should arrive this weekend and until then we're staying in a nice hotel with a kitchen so that we don't have to eat out every night, because that may sound fun, but really, not so much. That's a lot of grease and whatever else, no matter how good of choices you make at the restaurant. The hotel also has a pool with a couple waterfalls and a hot tub, so we've been going at least once a day, and even though I sunscreen the boys like crazy, they are turning super brown. Mike hasn't had any real work to do yet because he doesn't have his work laptop yet so he is educating himself on missiles at work. Little different from exoskeleton research for school. I'm resting after all our work last week and basically letting Michelle do everything. She does it without any complaint! She even offers to do things for me. It is soooooo nice!!!

Happy Birthday Caleb!

Caleb is three years old today. All he wants to do to celebrate is be with "Daddy and Brayden, nobody else." So tonight they are going to Max & Erma's for their $2.99 all you can eat ice cream. They keep refilling your bowl and you keep adding whatever toppings you want. Pretty fun for kids.

Fun facts about Caleb:
*loves eggs--would eat them for breakfast every day
*can't wait until he's four when he won't have to take naps
*if you ask him his name, he'll tell you he's two years old
*he's scrappy, you don't want to get in a fight with this kid, he's vicious
*he's a little engineer--always pulling things apart, like the front wheel on our jogging stroller, it's a good thing we haven't lost the any of the parts
*wants a Lightning McQueen story every night before bed
*if he sees a baby carseat he will buckle all the straps for you as soon as you're not looking
*is pretty shy--if he gets embarrassed or tired and someone he doesn't know that well tries to talk to him, he'll just grunt
*really likes micromachines (Mike has saved them from his childhood)
*hates it when his pants fall off--he really wants a belt

Cap City!!

I would vote this the best restaurant in Ohio and I WISH it was in Michigan, or better yet, Arizona where we will soon be residents. So their best dish, sounds disgusting, but is awesome--the meatloaf. Phil and Noelle have told us about it before, and I didn't believe them, but seeing is believing, or eating is believing. They start with texas toast, pile on the meatloaf (comprised of beef, pork, and veal), add mashed potatoes and chives, spicy fried onion strips, and a really tasty bbq sauce. Yum! And the portions are huge. This was one of the highlights of going to Ohio this last trip. Other highlights were, of course, seeing Phil and Noelle, going swimming in their pool (highlight mainly for the boys), the Columbus Zoo, seeing the Whiteheads, and going to the bunny fountains. Here's a picture of us at Cap City, and now all ya'll can see my plunge into the realm of short hair. I'm officially a mom--mom hair cut and all. But hey, it takes half the time to take care of. Yeah!!

Slumber party in the car

So I don't have a picture (Mike has the camera at school), but we had a slumber party in the car. We needed to go to JoAnne's and By the Pound and a neighbor wanted to get out, so we packed them in our van and got ready to go. Brayden reminded me on the way out that I had promised him he could take a blanket and a stuffed animal in the car, so we stopped back home and I ran up to grab them. I'm glad I was smart enough to realize everyone would want one, so I grabbed four blankets and stuffed animals and brought them to the car, and I was right, everyone wanted one. So we had a fun little "slumber party." It was even complete with hot chocolate (well, just for me, my neighbor had coffee and kids had water) as my neighbor wanted to stop by Starbucks. Fun to get out on a rainy day.