Waterfall Hiking, Garden, and more

Here's a couple funny pictures of Jada. the first is her patiently waiting for the paper maiche mask to dry....she waited almost 2 hours then I had to blow dry it. She wanted to be a musketeer for Halloween but has changed her mind and wants to be a cat again. The second photo, Jada found a long piece of white fabric and got some wild idea to take permanent marker and draw a face on it. She sat in the hallway meowing at me. She was being Mario...she sure fooled me, I had to go throw "Mario" back in the bedroom before the dog got him...after getting his picture of course.

These are some pictures of how crazy the tomato plants have gone...they are so huge they killed off my strawberry plants and bell peppers. Next time we decided only 6...not 18 problem is they come in those 6 packs and we got quite a few varieties. We couldn't even find our onions! In the bucket is the harvest every 2 to 3 days! I'm ready to plant for fall but i still have so many green tomatoes out there.

So fishing turned out to be too expensive so we decided to explore one of the mountains waterfalls. It was a long hike jumping over many logs rocks and strange bugs. I almost went face first into a spider the size of a half dollar and bright orange...whew I would have frieked out! But I saw him right before my nose was going to hit the web. Jada was a trooper, I think it really tired her out she begged to go back just before we got to the end. We also found a huge sheer cliff where people apparently go rock climbing, as there were hooks drilled in the rock. Might be worth a try someday. We made our way back to camp but then got swarmed by about 5 big families trying to fit on the spots 3 picnic tables. We decided to leave, too many people to enjoy ourselves.

Sunday Adventures...

So again we went to the mountains for a little Sunday family time (no hiking this time).

We found some strange things along the way...right by our campsite hidden in the brush Jada thought she saw a turtle shell looking rock and when she touched it she immediately jumped away....it was just a very large strange looking mushroom.

Then as she was playing on a nearby hill she discovered a "lucky" horseshoe. so we nailed it to the tree but later had to hide it away, Jada didn't want anyone taking it...
Jada and I decided to try and make up some games to play. She came up with pinecone golf...


And i built a ski ball sort of rock tossing game out of a pile of rocks we found...

Then we climbed trees and walked around all the campgrounds exploring...

When we came upon the Mt Graham red squirrel. These are ONLY found on this mountain range and they are on the endangered list. Arizona was even going to install covered squirrel bridges over all the roads to protect the species, but ran out of funding. These little guys were not afraid of people one came in arms reach of Jada and I as we walked and rubbed his face in a leaf.

And finally on the way home a tiny tiny little glimpse of a rainbow appeared. It was a bit bigger than this but by the time I climbed to the back of the truck and got my camera it grew smaller. After I snapped this it disappeared altogether...what i thought was odd are the beams of light coming down because the sun was actually setting behind us, unless it reflected up and then down off a white cloud...it just didn't make sense to see beams over here.

Next week we decided to go fishing for the first time, depending on how much a fishing license will be. Till then...

How did she fit in this box?

A few Random pictures

Cant believe the carrots got so big last fall! I need to figure out when things are done growing.

Just one of a few pictures we took when we went camping right before school started. Every picture i took Jada has a fudge brownie in her hand...I think she ate almost a whole pack that day unbeknown to me!

Jada's school offers after school clubs, I asked Jada if she wanted to join the "Cultural Dance Club" and ever that conversation she has been inventing her own "cultural dances." It took some convincing but she finally did it in front of the camera.

Jada's Big Birthday Bash and her new pink bike ....

Jada's Big Birthday Bash and her new pink bike ....

Of course Jada was embarrassed when we sang happy birthday...

The games were great! Jada's Nana is a great game planner and had: suck the skittles out of a bowl using a straw (Jada was not great at it but had fun playing...she acted sad for the picture), Pick a cotton ball up using your nose (and a dab of Vaseline), Treasure hunt where we hid dollar store treasures inside the playland, and Fill the bucket by passing a wet dripping sponge over your head in a line from one bucket to the other. Great fun lasted for hours!

The presents from Jadas birthday...

Hiking Adventure Day

Jada at the picnic sight...

Jada and Mike having a Juniper Berry fight ...

On our way down the mountain Sunday we spied a tarantula crossing the road. Not uncommon around here, this is the third I have seen in the past 2 years. He started chasing me after I took his picture, so I ran...I had enough of being chased this day!

So for three years Mike and I have hear of wild raspberries growing on the mountain but no one could tell us exactly where. We found an obscure website that suggested the burned parts of the mountain and a certain trail so we found the trail and went raspberry hunting. Mike happened to notice a stack of rocks on the trail, which is used to mark something and went hiking up the hillside off the trail and behold there they were. Unfortunately, many had gone before us and there was only 2 berries a piece left.

As we hiked further, Jada and I stopped to admire a patch of clover which had leaves like hearts. Jada picked out her lucky clover, oddly it never left our possession until we got back to the picnic area....perhaps it was the luckiest of the bunch.

The trail ahead...

And this is the picture I took of the trail behind us. If I had waited about three more minutes, it would've had the mamma bear in the picture coming around the corner...

In retrospect I wish I wasn't so scared and could've shot a better picture but when your in danger you prioritize and Jada was the priority. So here are some pics of the "adventure" part of our hike.

The ol' black bear before we had any problems...seems like everytime I found the bear in my viewfinder she hid behind a tree.

End of School Year

Jada by her playhouse showing off her ballet costume, they did a country dance.

Jada backstage before final bows...

Graduation from Kindergarten: Jada and her classmates made their own paper hats. We didnt have shoes to fit and had to run to a shoe store right before graduation, unfortunately all they had was heels so this is also Jada's first pair of heels. She loved them. May 2010

We grew butterflies from caterpillars, this one of them

the day we released them. We had to convince them to leave the yard but Jada got lots of play time and up close observations of the butterflies.

apricot tree loaded with this years bounty:

Catching up

I still have pictures from New Orleans to go through...so far this update took me about 2 hours so I am gonna leave the rest until tomorrow or later to go through and update. I have pictures dating all the way back to Christmas to be added really. My good camera is broken now, so all I have is my little pocket camera that Jada plays with and the pictures arent as good therefore, I have been taking much less photographs until I get the other one repaired. Anyway...without further adeiu...

Jada showing off her first toothless smile. The middle one next to it is already loosening up too. She was the last in her class to get a loose tooth, I think she was afraid it would never happen to her, but I remind her she is the youngest in her class and eventually she will get there too.
So they started doing show and tell in Jadas class and she decided to show her beloved rock collection. She picks up a rock anytime we go to the desert and insists on taking it home so she has quite a few unusual rocks around her playhouse. We decided to go rockhunting for gemstones at this local "rock-hounding" site where geodes are supposed to be aplenty and the poppies were out in full bloom. All the mountains were yellow, orange and purple with wildflowers. Very pretty, its the first time I have seen the desert in bloom and it's so colorful. We even had some wildflowers blow into Jadas sandbox and grow with no water.


Jada had to make a poster of "100 items" so naturally she wanted to do a cat! We decided we had a ton of mardi gras beads and cut up 100 strands to make the cat, I drew the picture and she filled it in and later painted the background blue and added construction paper grass. All the kids at her school were whispering how cool it was during morning assembly. Jada was very proud of her work.

We, er I painted Jada's bathroom purple the camera actually makes it look a little more purple than it really is...just a real pale shade with flower rub ons "blowing around". All went well until Jada accidentally poured the whole paint tray out into the tub just after i told her not to touch anything but at least it all came up off the tub.

Jada on one of her "you can stay up as late as you want" nights. She usually cant last past 9:30, crashed out on the dog.

Jada and mike playing with the science experiment kit Jen got us for christmas. The color changing liquid.