End of February

Enjoy these random photos to end off the month of February. And please notice that we've been able to maintain our goal of keeping the family blog updated this year for our 5 remaining readers (at least for 2 months!).

Our attempt to copy Panda Express' food: 

homemade chow mein, orange chicken, and fried rice for Sunday dinner

Did we ever announce that the new cat finally got a name?

It's Kiki, and she is still very cute and very playful. 

 

Sadly, orange season is coming to an end. We've been drinking freshly-squeezed orange juice daily for the past month. The trees are starting to flower already, so we've got to get the few remaining oranges picked soon.

Megan is entering the Junior Duck Stamp Contest again this year. She chose to paint Cinnamon Teal and took her own reference photos this time. This is her work in progress.

Another Fishing Trip

Our family went on another outing Friday afternoon. This time Kevin wanted to fish at Mittry Lake. He, Megan, Erin, and Dallin got set up on this man-made jetty. It still seems odd for us to be fishing next to palm trees.

Meanwhile, April and Ian went for a hike in the nearby hills. Rumor has it that they are planning on visiting some black bear dens in a couple of weeks and therefore need to get in shape--difficult due to living at 0 ft. elevation and lacking topography.

 

When the hikers returned, they found a discouraged fishing party who had not had one single bite.

So, we relocated to Redondo Pond, where we fished last year.

Ian caught a fish right away!
 

Then Erin caught one!

And Ian caught another!

Dallin and Erin couldn't resist wading and splashing a bit.

The sunset was pretty.

 

 In the end, we had enough fish for a yummy dinner!

 

Ian's Ordination

Today at our church, Ian was ordained as a Deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood and moved from the Primary into the Young Men's Organization. This event was the main reason for Grandpa's visit, as he assisted in the special ordination. Ian looked so grown-up and handsome in his new suit. As his parents, we are very grateful to have such a good, honest, self-motivated, talented, and hard-working individual as our son. We are indeed honored to be his parents.

Saturday in Different Cities

Since Grandpa was in town and could supervise grandchildren, Kevin took April with him on an overnight trip. Last November, Kevin had been asked to speak about FTHLs in Las Vegas, Nevada, at some meetings. Lest any readers think it was a nice romantic get-away, think otherwise. The reservation Kevin was certain he had made last November was not on the hotel's records, so we ended up at a Super 8 Motel down the street from the event site. Kevin was up until 2:00 a.m. preparing his talk while April read her Book Club book and fell asleep long before 2:00 a.m. But we did get a chance to have uninterrupted talks on the long drive, and the meetings were informative.

Anyway, Kevin was part of a group of invited speakers who presented research at a special Horned Lizard Session of the 2012 Desert Tortoise Symposium. The tortoise folks like to have diversity and apparently devote one session to a different reptilian species. 

Here are the Horned Lizard Honchos (l-r): Dr. Kevin V. Young, Dr. Wade C. Sherbrooke, Dr. Phil C. Rosen, Dr. Cameron W. Barrows, Dr. Andy Suarez, and Dr. Adam D. Leache. We knew Wade, Phil, and Cam from prior projects, but it was fun to meet Andy and Adam, whom Kevin only knew from publications. Abstracts from their various presentations can be viewed here if anyone is interested.

Las Vegas, 12:02 p.m.

While we were engaged with hearing all about different horned lizard studies, back on the home front in Yuma, Megan and Ian assisted a friend with his Eagle Scout project. They helped pick citrus from an orchard to donate to the food bank. Luckily Grandpa snapped a photo of them as he dropped them off.

Yuma, 8:51 a.m.

Post fruit picking, the children accompanied Grandpa to the hardware store (again!) for more parts for fixing the electrical curiosities in our house. This is the "Popcorn Store" according to Dallin because they have a popcorn machine--and naturally the best part about going to the store is to get a bag of free popcorn.

Yuma, 4:05 p.m.

Kevin and April arrived back home around 8:30 p.m. to find that everyone had had a grand time with Grandpa.

Grandpa's Projects

Grandpa kept himself busy during his week here working on electrical projects around our quirkily wired home. We offered to take him to Legoland, but he said he'd rather hang out in Yuma and "putter around the house." These are just a few of the things he fixed:

He wired the switch in our laundry hallway so that it actually turns on the lights now!

Nothing used to happen when we flipped that switch (and yes, we had tried changing the lightbulbs).

He changed the cord on the dryer so that it could be plugged into the existing outlet, which had a different prong configuration than the cord. We've been hanging our laundry to dry outside for the past year, since we can do that here, but it will be VERY nice to have fluffy towels again.

He removed switches that even he couldn't figure out the purpose of and covered the holes with plastic plates. (Our living room had 3 switches on 3 different walls. Only 1 switch turned on lights.)

He didn't like our existing kitchen fixtures and decided to replace them.

These are the old ones which were not installed properly.

And his favorite project was ripping out the overhead counter light that didn't work very well and installing new lights. Of course, that meant doing light carpentry work to fill in the hole caused by removing the original light fixture. Grandpa and Ian kept busy with this endeavor over several days.

Ta da: New light fixtures to lighten our countertop space! 

Note also the new fluorescent fixtures on the kitchen ceiling.

THANKS A BUNCH, GRANDPA!!!

(We hope you had fun doing it too.)

Random Photo for Your Personal Gee Whiz File:

It rained half the day Thursday and this is what a radio-tagged horned lizard 

covered with wet sand looks like.

Random Cute Kitty Photo:

Miss Still-unnamed Feline has quite the personality 

and keeps everyone entertained with her antics.

IAN IS 12 YEARS OLD!!!

Ian started off his special day opening presents before Dad left for work

so that he could "play" with them during the day.

Dallin was a good helper.

Modeling part of his new suit--Ian will be ordained
to the Aaronic Priesthood in our Church on Sunday.

 Each year Ian has a new hobby interest--this year's is wood carving.

Thus, he received woodworking gifts.

Megan generously gave him a Kindle!

This is the one she won from the Yuma Library drawing 

as part of NaNoWrMo last November.

Grandpa treated Ian to Roundtable Pizza for lunch!

It's the best pizza in Yuma (in our limited experience here).

  Then we went to AWC for a piano studio class.

We showed Grandpa the Science Building where Dad works.

And we picked up a new pet on the way home!

Megan found this cutie on Craig's list.

Her name is still under debate.

Mom made Ian his favorite deluxe chocolaty chocolate cake.

We were still full from our pizza lunch, so we just ate cake and ice cream for dinner.
Aunt Janell would approve of that kind of logic, and she's a lawyer.

Then Ian headed off to scouts, Megan and her parents went to New Beginnings,

and Grandpa spent quality time with Erin, Dallin, and the new kitty.

All in all, it was a great day for everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

In spite of all the sightseeing adventures we had with Grandpa today, we still took time to celebrate Valentine's Day with some homemade chocolate cupcakes and treats from grandparents! (The sugar cookies we made yesterday to share with friends and neighbors were already consumed by the time we took this photo.)

Dallin was just as happy chowing down on peanuts from the Peanut Patch as eating treats.

This is a very clever Valentine that Megan received from her awesome seminary teacher.

It had chocolate kisses inside.

Ocean to Ocean Bridge

As a final touristy activity for Grandpa, we took him to the Ocean to Ocean Bridge.

Usually we walk underneath it and along the river trail.

Today, however, and due to the fact that he was tired out and ready for a nap, Dallin stated that we needed to "walk across the bridge!" He was very insistent. So insistent that in order to avoid a tantrum, we took Grandpa for a walk across the bridge.

That's California on the other side.

We can now say we walked all the way to California with Grandpa!

View looking UP

 

View looking DOWN

It actually was much further to the ground than it looks.

View looking across the road

The other bridge is for the trains.

Dallin mesmerized by the flowing Colorado River

Historic sign on the end of the bridge

After the bridge walking event, we were all tired out and returned home to eat Valentine's treats.