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.

Brilliant Bread

Kitchen Aid fun:

thanks to mom and dad for the Kitchen aid!!!!! and to mikes parents for the attachments! And me for the cookbook! We have been having fun making stuff with it. I think its been used every day since Christmas! I still haven't seen Mike's baguettes everyday, he says we don't have the right flour. So as soon as we get the right flour and some semolina it will be great fun making our own pasta fresh. I hear there is nothing like it, I think I had some once when I was on the census training at this little italian restaurant I found....they had the best ravioli I had ever tasted stuffed with fresh spinach and fresh cheese. Anyway, I digress, I made the yummiest cinnamon swirl bread...it didnt even last a day! I made some sandwich style bread last night too...perfect recipe! just like this little sandwich shop we used to go to in utah because they had some great bread...not sure if you guys got to visit it it was called Great Harvest...well I know their secret now...soon I will try their flavor combo's like spinach bread with tomato soup. Here's some pics of the cinnamon swirl...

So finally we have completed Jadas playhouse. We found this last March in Sams club, a cypress wood and cedar mix for only 200 dollars. The plastic ones cost just as much but the harsh sun out here rots anything plastic within months...even jadas sand shovels dont last but a month or two, so needless to say i was super excited to find this wooden playhouse so cheap! We had it from March until her birthday in August and she was super excited. I put it together but we had to wait till we had the money to finish the vision. So we used the rest of the christmas money we had to finally finish. I had decided to put it in the highest corner of our yard so the floor would drain, i had to dig up the entire back corner and build a drainage river in the back and on the side of the playhouse and we are gonna line it with river rocks. Then i had to move the house and level and dig a trench for the frame to bury in, and finally we got like 8 bags of shredded tires ( rubber mulch) and pured in a "yard" around it and put up a tiny white picket fence. jada has big plans for the springtime and planting a flower garden and flowers in pots all around her house. Here's the pics: