Arizona

On Easter, we left for our week-long vacation to Arizona!  We stayed the night in Las Vegas, then got to Flagstaff Monday evening.  We spent two days in Northern Arizona, one day travelling south, then two days in Southern Arizona.
  
On the way to Flagstaff, we stopped to walk over Hoover Dam.  It was blazing hot, which the kids mentioned quite a few times.
  

We stayed in a beautiful vacation rental in Flagstaff (it was actually just a house in a suburb, but since it was Flagstaff, even the suburb was gorgeous.)  Tuesday was Grand Canyon Day.  Neither Ryan nor I had ever been, so we were all pretty amazed.  It's like a huge canyon . . .with a really big canyon at the bottom of it.  Yeah.  The kids did Junior Ranger badges, and we walked the trail around the rim all afternoon.
   

Dad and Kids climbed down from the recommended walking area.  I was not pleased.

After about 100 shots, I'm trying to tell Ryan how not to look goofy in this sunset picture.

He really tried, but we finally gave up :-)

Wednesday, we drove to Wupatki National Monument to look at ancient ruins.  You can actually walk through these thousand-year-old dwellings, imagining the people who lived there.
   

"Cave"

Corinne was most impressed with the sand.

  
On the way back from Wupatki is Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.  There are a bunch of huge lava fields there, with volcanic rocks and twisted formations.
    

At the end of the day, we stopped at Meteor Crater, where a large meteor left . . . . well, a crater.  It was actually amazing, and had a great museum at the rim.  Apparently there are craters like this all over the world, but over time they erode or are covered with vegetation or water.  This one is relatively young (50,000 years.)

 
Thursday was a travel day.  We went down through Sedona, saw Montezuma Castle (a ruin,) and hung out at the Mesa Temple.  We also visited with my old mission companion, Adrienne, and her family.  (I forgot to take pictures.)
   

 

  

We stayed in Tucson in a little golf/vacation community.  It wasn't as fancy as the place in Flagstaff, but it had a herd of Javelinas, which totally made up for its grossness.  It was surrounded by Sonoran desert, complete with ocotillo plants, which are pretty much the weirdest and coolest plants I've ever seen.
   

Ocotillo (online picture)

           

Friday was the main event of the trip for Ryan.  We visited the Titan Missile Museum, the last remaining Titan II missile silo from the cold war.  It's now a museum, and the tour takes you down into the bunker.  The tour guide explained what the job was like (he used to work there,) including showing us the keys they would have turned to start World War 3.  Corinne was really noisy, so I only heard about half of the tour (I kept leaving so as not to bother everyone else.)

    

Blast Door

  

Missile Window

  

Connor worked hard to earn a Junior Missileer Badge

  

While Connor was working, the other kids played in the education room.

     
On Saturday, we did a tour of Kartchner Caverns.  This was ranked as almost everybody's favorite activity of the trip.  The caverns were kept a secret until they opened as a State Park, so they are almost perfectly preserved.  No pictures were allowed in the cave, but we got a shot by this display.
     

  

We did a driving tour through Saguaro National Park.  Definitely an iconic-looking desert.  You'd almost think somebody landscaped it.  On the way out, we saw a Gila monster crossing the road!  Everybody jumped out to look, but we didn't get too close.

      

  

  

Gila Monster

Our last Arizona stop was at the Pima Air and Space Museum.  Ryan has a thing for airplanes, especially old ones.  He and Connor did the outdoor guided tour while I hung out inside with the little ones.  The World War 2 exhibits were especially awesome.  No P-47 Thunderbolts, but they did have Flying Fortresses, and a P-51 Mustang, among lots of other things.

    

Flying Fortress

  

 

Ryan loves chatting with docents.

We drove back Sunday.  I had no idea Arizona had so much cool stuff!

Easter

First, a story about Evan.  In between sessions of Saturday General Conference, we decided to take a trip down to Echo Park to do the paddleboats.  Ryan took the kids out on the lake, while I walked around it with Wiley, pushing Corinne in her new stroller.  When Ryan and the kids had finished, we all started walking back in the direction of where we had parked.  Ryan, me, the stroller, Wiley, Connor and Elise, all made it to the boathouse where we were to cross the street and leave the park.  It was then that I realized I couldn't find Evan.  We started looking around, somewhat casually at first, then more frantically.  I started running back along the shoreline trail asking random hipsters and sunbathers if they'd seen a little boy, while Ryan went off in the opposite direction (we left the other kids and dog alone in our haste, but I figured they had safety in numbers.)  One man I mentioned Evan to was a guy who I'd seen rescuing a baby duck a few minutes before.  A group of sunbathers came over and informed me that they'd seen Evan leave our group and run uphill behind the bathrooms towards the road.  Anyway, I had started to cross that street to check back at the car when the sunbathers called to me.  I found Evan with the baby-duck-guy and his wife.  They had walked north around the lake, and found Evan just trucking along by himself as fast as he could go.  When I asked him what he was doing, he said, "I was beating you!"  Anyway, we're so grateful nothing bad happened.  If you've ever been to Echo Park you know what a dodgy neighborhood that is.
  

Evan's Annoyed Look

We had a nice, full Easter week this year.  We did a Resurrection Egg hunt at home on Palm Sunday, the cemetery for FHE, some videos, egg coloring, the church Easter Egg hunt, resurrection rolls Saturday night, and Easter Baskets after church on Sunday.  It was just the right amount of tenderness and fun.
  

Church Egg Hunt/Picnic (This was the only picture I got.)

Happy Easter!

   
We ordered caterpillars again this spring.  The kids had fun watching them develop, and Connor and Elise got to hold them before releasing them in our backyard (Evan declined.)

  
I finally got a picture of the matching aprons my mom made us for Christmas!  Now I have to learn how to bake something adequately fancy.
  

Evan wanted his picture taken, too.

   
Connor and Elise have been learning physiology this year in their Thursday science class.  They brought home these clay lungs, which were still kinda squishy.
  

Anacapa Island

On the last Saturday in March, we went with some friends on a day-trip to Anacapa Island, in Channel Islands National Park.  (It had been rescheduled twice already due to weather problems.)  Visiting the island requires a ticket on a charter boat, which left around 8am.

We had start our drive really early.

  

 

  

  

The island itself is entirely surrounded by drop-offs, so there isn't any beach access, and it's a bit nerve-racking with toddlers, but it was absolutely beautiful!
   

Stairs from the Dock to the Island

    

This is supposed to be one of the greatest views in California.

  

    
The island originally had a ton of unique native plants, but most of them were taken over by invasive ice plant years ago.  The Park Service is in the middle of a huge restoration project, and has been slowly killing off the ice plant and planting natives again.  Since it's such a small island, it's doable, but still a huge job.  The island is famous for its Giant Coreopsis, which look dead most of the year, but burst into bloom in early spring (we were there at the prettiest time of year!)  There were also thousands of seagulls, standing around the island.  Their nesting season was about a month off, but they were getting good spots, I guess.
    

  

Giant Coreopsis

  

    
Connor and Elise did Junior Ranger badges while we were there.  We had to take all our own water and food, since there were no services other than restrooms, and the boat didn't return until 3:00.  On the way home, we got a more scenic tour of the rocks and sea lions.
     

    

 

Things we did Around Here

One day at Joy School we did a unit on trying new things.  I made "Green Eggs and Ham," and had them draw a still life picture (fruit.)  Half the kids liked the eggs, and all tried their best to draw the still life.  Corinne was later caught eating it.
  

Just Eggs and Ham and Spinach

Ryan showed up at the end of our Friday park day once, and brought Evan's long-ignored big-boy bike.  Evan coasted for a few minutes, then found the pedals and took off!  Yay Evan!  Ryan took all the bike-riders to Hansen Dam the next week, and Evan led the pack.
    

  

That's Evan in the distance.

    
I went to a crafting party at my friend Jennie's house.  I am not a very good crafter, and my FHE board looked the worst of anybody's, but I still love it!  It has made our Family Home Evenings exponentially better organized and more ambitious.
    

    
Corinne's got the cutes.  Pretty badly.
   

Eating or Playing an Instrument?

We joined our friends at the Los Angeles Arboretum in Arcadia one afternoon when I just needed a field trip.  Corinne obsessed over flowers, the little boys kept getting way too close to the turtle pond, and everybody spent an hour climbing trees, with lots of scrapes as trophies.  It was awesome.
  

Don't eat the flowers.

  
Ryan had the chance to take a curling lesson when our friend's wife broke her toe at the last minute (It was the husband's birthday present, and was nonrefundable, I guess.)  I think he has a future in the sport: