Spring Break Part 2: Yuma County Fair

Due to the warm climate, the Yuma County Fair is held in the springtime rather than the fall.

~The Animals~

This display is one that the Cache County Fair doesn't have.

Sheep being groomed

Our neighbor, Jessica, with her pig Peanut

(side note: Peanut escaped one afternoon and Jessica came knocking on our door in a panic asking for help getting him back to her yard. We grabbed some sticks and ran out to help, not knowing exactly what to do, but managed to corner him so that they could get a belt around his neck and drag him back home. It made for some fun excitement!)

Our neighbor, Zach, with his pig Goober

Dallin petting a calf

The bulls

Hannah's rabbit (another friend)

 ~The Quilts~

Here are two of April's favorites:

A funky koi quilt that makes you dizzy

 

 Southwestern-themed quilt

 ~Agriculture Display and Activity Area for Children~

Dallin got to "milk" a cow.

An alternate use for all those beans that you have in your food storage 

just in case your family doesn't want to eat them...

Yup, they're fun to play in!

 ~Art Displays~

It was a last-minute decision to enter some artwork this year. 

It turned out to be a good last-minute decision.

Megan won purple sweepstakes ribbons for both her jaguar eye 

colored pencil drawing and her charcoal portrait of a woman!

She was also awarded the "Davies Memorial Award" for the portrait

(a $25.00 cash prize).

She won a blue ribbon for her acrylic tree frog painting,

which you may recognize from our Christmas card.

 Miss Erin also scored a blue ribbon for her pastel drawing of a cat!

Congratulations, kiddos!

Spring Break Part 1: Sonoran Desert Sojourn

We kicked off Kevin's Spring Break this year by going out to our old surveying grounds south of town.

Within SECONDS of leaving the Suburban,

Erin found her very first Flat-tailed Horned Lizard

ALL BY HERSELF!!!

Way to go, Erin!

Erin quote: "I was just walking and I looked and saw a horned lizard. And Megan walked right by it."

Definitely a proud parent moment for us.

The lizard was an adult male with a nice set of horns.

The children were mainly hoping to catch desert iguanas, their favorite.

And they had success!

 

 

April found the second horned lizard of the morning, another adult male, trying to camouflage.

The year is a dry one (there was not a good winter rainfall) and most of the lizards we saw were pretty skinny.

Megan finally caught a prize, a good-looking adult desert iguana.

Beginning of March

Yard Clean-Up

Spring clean-up on our street was the first week of March (when you can line the curb with your trimmings and the city will pick it up). We have this vine-type of plant with non-edible berries that we tried to clean out since it was threatening to take over a large portion of our yard. Ian and April worked on it for 3 days and only made this little bit of progress. Oh well...we'll add it to our list of ongoing projects and hack away a bit at a time.

Megan's 14th Birthday

Our teenager is growing older, and we celebrated her birthday on 6 March. She received a requested art book, DVD, and clothes from grandparents.

She also requested the same chocolate cake that Ian had for his b-day. The main difficulty was that her birthday fell on a Fast Sunday, so it was a challenge for Mom and Dad to make a cake without being able to lick out the bowls afterwards. (Next time this happens we'll have to make it the night before!) After frosting it, we realized that we lacked 14 cake candles, so we got creative with leftover tea candles.

Mud Pie Fun

Erin and Dallin have enjoyed making mud pies on a daily basis. This involves dumping dirt into Yuki's water bowl and stirring.

It also means that Dallin gets a daily bath and Mom has lots of laundry to do.

Gecko Mania

We have these cute visitors on our porch areas, who emerge after dark to catch insects. It has become a nightly ritual for the children to go outside and count how many geckos they can find. So far the record number has been 14!

Food Storage in Yuma, Part 2

We can only fit so much lemon juice and orange juice concentrate in our freezer, so we decided to try out bottling some excess citrus. Since we lack a gas stove and have one of those nasty ceramic-topped type of electric stoves, we had to make a few changes in how we bottle juice. We now have to use our Cache Cooker outside for canning projects, but it worked great. We bottled lemon juice and grapefruit juice (separately). As expected, the flavor did change somewhat during the heating process, so it didn't taste as good as the fresh juice (just as our apple juice doesn't taste the same as the freshly-squeezed cider). But it is still good.

And it looks pretty!