Easter Fun

When we woke up on Easter morning, we were surprised to see several new inches of snow on the ground. We had a little Easter egg hunt in the house, where Desert Boy hid most of the eggs and I hid his Easter bag (since we didn't have a basket, and he didn't care). Then we took turns finding things. I'm not sure who had more fun. I certainly enjoyed being a kid again and eating candy for breakfast. Desert Boy enjoyed getting a couple new books but didn't know what to think of the Playdoh.

With a little extra sugar in our systems, it was time to get all dressed up to go to church. I still remember standing in front of our house as a kid for the Easter photo. That always seemed to be one of the few times that we'd get all dressed up, and we had to take advantage of it for posterity's sake!

In the afternoon, we went over to celebrate Easter with a delicious dinner.
Aunt Tana and Desert Girl enjoyed each other's company. We are really enjoying Desert Girl's smiling stage.

Desert Boy was super excited because his cousin Clay had hid eggs for him. At first he wanted to open the eggs, because he was used to plastic eggs. We had to explain that these were hardboiled eggs. He said, "Oh," and thunked each egg into the bag. Amazingly four of the thirteen eggs didn't crack.

Desert Boy required a little help finding the eggs, but he thought it was great. And the eggs were very nicely decorated.
You can see the look of concentration on Desert Boy's face.
Inside he was happy to help peel the hardboiled eggs. Then he was ready for candy--I'm afraid he's inherited my sweet tooth.

Hope you had a super Easter! It's so nice to celebrate life and family and all the simple pleasures of being alive.

Doctor's Visit

Anyone who comes to visit us has to be prepared for a doctor's checkup. Desert Boy carries his doctor tools around in a Cars lunch box. I'm just telling you this so you can be forewarned. Most people don't expect to get a checkup when a Cars lunch box is opened.

The checkup begins with Dr. Desert Boy dumping all his supplies out of the lunch box. Then he proceeds to check your ears, tap your knees, give you medicine orally, give you an injection in some random part of your body, comb your hair, listen to your heart and say thump-thump, and blow air on you with a bulb syringe (which is better than the alternative, wouldn't you agree?). Sometimes the order is switched around a little, and if we resupply his kit with notepaper and a crayon he writes down his report. Once in awhile we even sneak a bandaid in there, and that makes for some real excitement.

Desert Boy was in a very good mood when he let his friend Elizabeth give him a checkup. He not only held the stethoscope to his chest, but also provided the thump-thump noises so she would be sure to hear his heart.

It obviously takes a lot of concentration and practice to be a doctor. And it definitely helps to have a neat Cars lunch box.

Rambo Cutie Pie

Desert Boy has to try everything that Desert Girl has, including her headbands.

And we unwittingly found out he can still fit into a pair of his old pants (size 3 months) that I've been putting on Desert Girl. My husband saw him on my son's drying rack and didn't think twice. The capri look was quite becoming, and I was amazed how stretchy the fabric was!
Oh my, he's so cute. And this may become great blackmail material in future years.

Bike Riding Adventure

This afternoon Jenny and I decided to take the kids outside for some fresh air. Our older kids are learning how to ride bikes, which lets us push the babies at a fairly decent pace. It's also a bit of an exercise in patience, as Ava and Desert Boy don't always listen to our directions.

And Ava has only been riding for about a week, so Jenny figured out a way to tether the bike and pull her along. She's pushing the stroller with one hand and pulling the bike with the other. All I can say is wow! She is truly getting a good workout!

Ava and Desert Boy seemed to enjoy most of the adventure. It won't be long until they are racing each other and we won't be able to keep up with them.

For them the best part is when it's time for snacks. It's amazing how snacks can be such a great motivator!

Desert Boy especially liked trying Ava's snacks, which are different than his! Even with snacks, it always seems like the ride home is harder. The good thing is that everyone should sleep well tonight.

Secret Desert Canyon

My parents have been here visiting the last week, and I always like to take them different places so they can get the flavor of the high desert. One of our adventures was to go to a secret desert canyon. Although it's March, it's still chilly, and we had to start off by putting on winter coats.

This is the start of the canyon. It has beautiful rocks, and if you know where to look, you can spot...
...petroglyphs! These old rock carvings are a bit worn and not the easiest to see, but still it's really neat imagining the people who made them. Did they ever come in March? And if they did, what did they wear to stay warm?

Further on, Desert Boy enjoyed scampering up the rocks. He loves to climb, so we had to rein him in a bit or he would have been to the top with us trying to catch up.

Eventually we got to the end of the canyon section. Above that is a wash that curves and bends and eventually reaches a mountain range. I went ahead and was able to get a wider view. Then Desert Boy and Grandpa decided to join me.

Most of the snow had melted at this elevation, but there were still patches on north-facing slopes.
Grandpa was most impressed with how desolate this section of desert looked. At this time of year it sure looks like desert, with so many earth tones in all the rocks and vegetation.
We sat down to get a new profile pic for my blog. My favorite ended up being the unposed one (above).
But the posed one does show off the desert scenery behind us.
On the way back down the canyon, we found a little pocket with icicles. Desert Boy was intrigued.
He touched one and found out it was cold. Then he tried licking one.

Desert Boy and Grandpa continued down the canyon, enjoying the adventure.
We even found a little tunnel for Desert Boy to climb through. He liked it so much he did it twice. We made a number of analogies to Dora the Explorer since that's one of his favorite shows. Sometimes it makes the hiking much easier!
Grandpa and Grandma near the end of the hike are all smiles. Because "we did it, we did it!"
We took advantage of the scenic location for a photo op.
And then it was time to drive back out to the paved road. Grandpa was quite curious why there was a Stop sign right next to the gate. We stopped at both. Then it was time for a rest before we began the next adventure.

Hopefully we can find more fun canyons to explore on future visits.

Fun at the Playground

We went to playgroup on Saturday, and the weather was thankfully nice enough to go outside and play. The three little munchkins had lots of fun hanging out and chasing each other while Supermom Nomi looked on.

They were testing all the different ways they could go down and up the slides. It was funny seeing how creative they could get.

Meanwhile Jenny and I had our babies out in the grass. Isaac is just two months older than Desert Girl, but he is already so much bigger! I didn't manage to capture it in these photos, but he has the biggest, most beautiful eyes.

It's hard to imagine that Desert Girl will soon be that much bigger.

Success!

We had success feeding the bummer calves. Desert Boy thought it was pretty neat to go back and visit the calves. They didn't seem to mind his company. They didn't even mind Henry, although Henry was more interested in chasing the ducks in the pond than spending time with the calves.

Nevertheless, he was on the lookout for any spilled milk.

A happy calf. Don't you love all that milk drool?

Desert Boy posing next to the calf. I'm not sure if it has a name yet--the main caretaker gets to name the calves. And often they become quite attached to whomever feeds them and will follow that person around or leave a group of cows to come say hi when they're older. Cows might not be all that intelligent, but they can be cute.

Time to Eat

I wasn't sure if I was going to post these pictures, but then I figured that this blog has lots of posts about nature and what is more natural than eating?

Desert Girl was getting hungry one day, and Desert Boy offered to feed her. I said sure, he could give it a try. Here are the results:

Needless to say, the "feeding" didn't last long!

It was very nice of Desert Boy to offer to help. But once was enough for him!

Future Olympian in Training

Watching the Olympics has our competitive juices flowing. Plus Desert Boy got a cute athletic outfit from his great-aunt and the weather has been better. Mix all that together, and we are raring to go outside! We offered Desert Boy the sled for his Olympic practice, but he declined. I guess he didn't think we had enough snow to make it work.

Or maybe he realized how Eurocentric the Olympics are. When thinking about this post, I was contemplating that we are watching the Winter Olympics, yet it is winter for only half the earth. For the other half, it's summer. Do the people in the southern hemisphere feel slighted? I think I would. What is Rio de Janeiro going to call the Summer Olympics when they hold them in winter? Hmm...deep thoughts...

I don't have too many deep thoughts on this blog, but I figured it would be totally okay if Desert Boy was practicing for the Summer Olympics in winter, because after all it is summer on half the earth right now. And the sport he's practicing for is biking. It's still not apparent what kind of biking he'll be doing, but for now he's working on being king of the training wheel bicycle competition.

On this particular day we forgot his helmet, but ever since then we've made sure he has it because he crashes so much. He's got a plethora of bumps and bruises to show off, and he proudly shares them as badges of his riding dedication. He's got strong little legs; the first day we took him out he rode nearly two miles. (He also walked a mile when he got stuck with Daddy in the South Meadow. Needless to say, he slept well that night!)

Here's a short video of Desert Boy riding on the pavement that's not too far from our house. Getting to the pavement is a little tricky, but he's getting better at it. I wonder what the kids who live in the northern part of the valley do--some of them have to go over an hour to get to pavement. Yet they still have a school with grades K-12; those kids certainly have a different story about growing up than most everyone else in the U.S.

In this second video, you can see some of the beautiful mountain scenery near us. It's always nice to see snow on the mountains--and have our roads down in the valley clear!

Happy Belated Valentine's Day

We've been continuing to have some Internet issues, so I wasn't able to post this yesterday. But better late than never--Happy Valentine's Day! I was craving some iced cookies (thanks to Faberlicious mentioning them a couple days ago!). Desert Boy loves to help in the kitchen, so I mentally prepared for a huge mess and we began. He unwrapped the butter so we could melt it (since I never get it out hours ahead of time to soften), poured in the sugar and flour, and operated the mixer. Then he took charge of the cookie cutter. After we had baked a couple batches and had little bits of dough left over, I let him give it a try by himself.

He tried rolling out the dough and doing the cookie cutter all by himself.

The mess grew, but that was okay. It always does with cutout cookies!

Here's his end result. I managed not to laugh at the interesting shapes and tried to explain that we really didn't need to dump flour on the cookie sheet.

Next came the decorating phase. Having had nieces and nephews help me in the past I knew that the most important thing about decorating is putting limits on the decorations. So I poured the different sprinkles into the lids, and told Desert Boy he had to use his fingers to do the sprinkling.

He showed great restraint--much more than I anticipated. Usually one cookie ends up drenched in sprinkles and then there's nothing left for the rest. These cookies ended up tastefully decorated.

His attention span lasted to decorate all the cookies, another surprise. Although he did start eating the cinnamon hearts part way through the second cookie sheet.

And here's our end result! Yum, they looked and tasted delicious. I'm sad to report that they're nearly gone.