A view from my front door.
So I learned how to make prickly pear juice. First, using tongs, pick the fruit off the prickly pear. The fruit also has cactus pokes, hence the tongs. Boil the fruit.
Using a kitchen towel, strain the juice. The towel will catch all the cactus pokes.
Add some sugar and some lemon to make a delicious prickly pear juice.
Sterling's birthday! The big 7!!!
Love his facial expressions
He wanted a rattlesnake cake. HA!!! Ya right. So...here's my interesting attempt. He liked it ;)
And we decided on a pinata for his birthday.
Candy!!!
For Labor day we went up to Mt. Lemmon, about an hour drive. Not a good day to go...way busy.
We did some hiking and exploring up there.
It was about 20 degrees cooler up there and a nice reprieve from the heat.
The pink Catalinas on the way to church for a pack meeting.
Garrett receiving his wolf.
My birthday!
Sterling-we assume he had hand, foot and mouth disease. Never took him in because we didn't want to pay a Dr. to tell us to just wait it out. So we quarantined him so no one else would get it for a week! Poor, bored, sick boy.
It was all over his body, including the palms of his hands, his feet and in his mouth, hence the guessed diagnosis of hand, foot, mouth disease (which I had never heard of until he got it).
For Fall break we took a 4 day weekend into Tuesday trip to the white mountains and stayed in Greer. We fished at all 3 Greer lakes, Big Lake and Crescent Lake.
At Big Lake-it was so cold and windy.
With no luck at Big Lake, we went to Crescent Lake. There, Denver caught two big ones and Maelie caught one even bigger one. We had them for dinner Sunday night :)
After church on Sunday we attempted family pictures. We set up the tripod and got cracking.
Attempt #1 FAIL
-shade covering faces and not close enough
attempt #2 FAIL
-more shade, too far away and not straight on
attempt #3 FAIL
Tripod with camera fell as soon as it started taking the 5 pictures in a row.
Attempt #4 FAIL
not centered, shaded faces
Attempt #5 FAIL
shaded faces, but great colors in the background
Individual shots were a challenge this time. Weird smiles and lighting
and again with the eye thing
attempt #6 SUCCESS!
It needs a little centering, but that's an easy fix.
Weird smile #1
Weird smile #2
Good smile!
attempt#7 FAIL
Denver didn't make it in time and then...
we had to scramble to get Deacon to come back (he started walking away) and that caused us to all start laughing. I LOVE the yellow background, though.
Attempt #8 FAIL.
I loved the background, sooooo nice, but we were a little too far away and Colson NEVER looked up. Still kind of a keeper.
Weird smile #3
weird smile #4
A look of frustration..."what more do you want from me?"
Funny face on Deacon
He was a good poser.
Couple pictures:
Headed back to the car to have some well deserved ice cream.
I couldn't get enough of the yellow aspens.
Colson's birthday at the cabin!
Colson's birthday meal choice. mac and cheese and frozen grapes. The pepperoni and pretzel rolls were just an addition.
And a spiderman cake...
The big 5 year old!!!
The kids got an early Christmas present. A puppy!
We picked her up on the way home from Fall break. She was born Aug. 18 and is now about 8 weeks old. She is a yellow labrador retriever. We named her Brobie.
The essentials: food, water and a roof over her head. She will be strictly an outdoor dog. I can't stand dog hair in the house. It makes me want to throw up.
A boy and his dog.
This is her dog house that Denver built. Pretty great! We've since had to put chicken wire around it to protect her from mountain lions, coyote and hawks until she gets a little bigger. We also had to put chicken wire around the pool fence because she could squeeze her little body through the fence.
