::sandy reads a book::

I can't believe it's already the last day of April. That month zoomed by. The worst thing is that I still haven't posted my photos of easter. Ergh. But what can one do when there's no extra time in a day? Anyway, yesterday Sandy looked so adorable in his church clothes so I ran and got the camera to try to capture him forever. And like an obliging little boy he decided to be cute. He is obliging, isn't he? Goodbye to April! You may be gone for good, but I captured my little Sandy of late April for posterity. Enjoy him posterity, we sure do.

Desert Living

While desert living has its inherent drawbacks (remember my shoes after stepping on the Cholla), we like to focus on the good stuff around here. Here are 3 examples.
1. Lately, I've been on a salsa making kick. I bought a book from the Santa Fe School of cooking with nothing but recipes for tacos and salsas. I've made salsa verde, roasted tomato salsa, red chili salsa, chipotle salsa, roasted pineapple salsa and orange & grapefruit salsa. Some have been great, other kind of sucky. I usually take them to work and let the staff assess how well they turn out. So far they've been pretty impressed.

Today, we had some company for dinner, so I decided to make a new salsa to go along with fish tacos. But, there was one problem. I couldn't find any prickly pears at the grocery store. Fortunately, we have plenty of cactus and prickly pears around here. It was actually kind of exciting to reap part of dinner from the yard. I don't think I've ever done that. (we don't do gardens).
The recipe looked like this:

And the harvest:

After cutting 2 paddles free, I took it inside to prepare--and that's when things got tough.

As it turned out, cutting the spines off this particular pear was really tough. I ended up getting little spines all over the counter and in my hands. 

It's not the best picture since I couldn't get my phone to focus on the finger. Still, you can see the spines. This made Ginna really nervous and she didn't want to eat any because she thought she would get spines in her mouth. I'll admit I was a little nervous too.

The recipe had poblano and red peppers in it too. It tasted pretty good, although not as good as some of the other recipes. Everyone had some at dinner, besides Ginna and no one was injured. Correction: Ginna did try it and she had reason to be nervous because she got spines in her hand just trying to help clean up.

2. Many people don't like snakes, but little boys almost always do. My dad would have never pulled over to take a picture of this beauty and it was particularly ironic because I was driving his car.

It wasn't a rattle snake, but it kind of looked like one.

3. We have great biking trails all over the neighborhood. Max and I went on a little ride this weekend and did this:

And lastly, here's a picture of the airstream on the driveway. Who doesn't love a picture of an airstream at dusk anyway?

::boys & bikes::

Max and dad were going out on a ride the other night. It was an extra special ride because Kris designed some cool spandex bike outfits with our logo (and some other friends as well) on them, and this was the inagural ride. Well at least for Max's kit. Kris had already been out in his. And Max LOVES his outfit. He's been wanting one forever and this one is so awesome because it says Dentistry for Kids on it!! Sandy could not be left out, and he wanted to go out with the boys. So I came out and took some pictures. I'm sure I was supposed to get better pictures of the jerseys, but I just got good pictures of boys instead. After this picture came an absolutely PERFECT one, but I'll save that for the last and show you the not so good ones first. Hmmm, not the best. Um, where is the baby going? Second best--Kris looks really cute. And for the best: DARLING BOYS!!! And I'll get some good shots of the new outfits and post them later on. Sandy was very very sad when they rode off without him. Soon enough little Sand, soon enough. I'll just snuggle him up in the meantime.

::little wiglet::

He moves so fast it's hard to get a good picture of him, no matter how hard I try. Even this one is a little blurry because he was sitting up on a chair in the kitchen and I was concerned he was going to jump off at any moment--which he proceeded to do. He sure is a darling. Sweet faced and sweet natured. A good combination.

::disneyland::

This post is looooong in coming (just like all my others lately!) We got to go to Disneyland in March--luckily Kris had a conference that was almost important/interesting and of course I thought that would be a good excuse to go out there, have fun and visit Bryce & Nancy. The conference turned out to be less than useless, but the fun was completely present, so it was great. We were planning to stay with Bryce and Nancy for the long weekend, but right before we left I came down with a miserable cold which the boys also got, and then the day before Kris got it. Rather than share we thought we'd spend a few days at a hotel, then join the Randles right at the end. (Sandy in the hotel lobby) The proximity to the parks was awfully nice, and the good news was that everybody ended up feeling better. We had lots of expensive food--some of it tasty. Sandy's fruit/veggie paste had to be the tastiest though. This is the big boys taking a picture of the little boy eating. One night Max and I stayed out a bit late with the Bryce & Derek & Nancy & Gina Randles. I got to ride with Derek in the autopia car and Max drove alone behind me. Is that Bryce in the far background looking so crazy? I have to say, Derek is not the best driver. I'd think he'd have had more autopia experience by now! The next day we had some morning hours with just boys and I. We hit good old Disneyland and did as many rides as we possibly could before it started to get too crowded. Max in line. Sandy was somehow big enough to ride a carousel horse on his own--the big leather belt didn't hurt of course. And of course Max could also ride on his own! I had use of both my hands for the length of one carousel ride. It was amazing. We ran around and did tons of fantasyland rides--ones I never even remembered existed like Pinnochio and Casey Junior. It was great. Sandy spent lots of patient time riding around in our trusty old stroller. And Max did the teacups. I've never braved them, being of a weak spinning constitution myself. He loved them of course. We always love Tomorrowland, though the absence of the people mover there was rather distressing. But there are large and delicious churros readily available there that make everything ok. The Buzz Lightyear ride is the best. Even Sandy liked it. Later that day we met up with Bryce and did a bunch of stuff in the CA adventure too. Max was dying to do the big ferris wheel since we could see it from our room. Sadly Sandy was hungry and tired by then, so he spent at least half the ride bawling. Luckily the other occupants of our compartment was a nice little asian mom and daughters and they didn't mind--or maybe speak enough english to complain! We got to swim and shop and rest and eat and it was a great time. We even tried to take Bryce and Derek to see the new waterslides at the Disneyland hotel--they look like the monorail. But of course we got there right as the slides were closed for the evening! The last night we took Bryce & Nancy and family out to dinner at their favorite burger joint (YUM!) and hung out at their house the rest of the night. It was quite fun and I'd do it again in a second. And here is the photo we took as Bryce left for church and we left for the airport--specifically for the blog. See Bryce, you made the blog, impressed? Thanks for hosting us, Randle family. Let's do it again--it's your turn this time! We don't have Disneyland out here, but we do have some dang good eats.

::::

This was Kris's shoe after he was doing some stuff outside the other night. Think the cactuses outside have it out for us or what? Yikes. Glad he was wearing shoes....

Dawn til Dusk

Per Ginna’s request and since I she’s out of town and I miss her (& the boys): a report on my weekend, Dawn til Dusk.

This weekend was supposed to be about the first endurance mountain bike race of the season, a chance to work out all the kinks in the gear. Last fall we bought an old Airstream trailer and this was the first weekend trip using it. The biggest challenge turned out to be that I waited until the last minute to get the Airstream ready. The biggest problems were that I had never had or even used an RV, not to mention tow something that big.

I ended up working on it all night everyday of the week. With some help from several friend who came by, by Friday I had the lights, plumbing, water heater, stove and range working. The only major thing I didn’t get worked out was the heater. And the forecast was calling for rain and possibly snow.

In case the previously picture didn’t give a good idea of how long the airstream is, here’s another.

I took this picture at the church, where I parked it Friday until I could finish work and leave.

I got the airstream out to Gallup, NM to the High Desert Trail System, where the race was to be held. The weather was decent. Windy, but not too cold.

The airstream was basically designed to sleep parents and kids. There is one bedroom and a pull out bed, certainly designed to sleep kids.

My friends Trent and Sean were there with me and they sure snuggled up on the bed.

In order to create some heat in the morning, I decided to bake up some biscuits for breakfast and use the oven.

We started racing at 7, but were late to the start and had to catch up. The first 13 mile lap was fun. The weather was cold and windy, but dry. I checked on Sultan at the end of lap one and all was well, so I started off on my second lap.

About half was through the second lap, the snow started, then the wind picked up and it felt like blowing ice. Soon, I had a flat tire and after several attempts to reinflate, I slowly rode into camp to the the bullhorn announcing that the race would be cancelled due to weather.

The other guys were cheerful enough, even though we had to stop racing.

Here I am inside talking to Ginna, of course.

Sultan was relaxing. He was happy to have not been left home.

The parking area was just a field and the road in was a very rough dirt road. We remembered from last year, when it was also cut short due to snow, that many cars and rvs got stuck on the way out, therefore we decided to wait until the storm blew over to try to drive out.

We decided to drive into Gallup and get some dominos so we the guys could teach me how to play Mexican Train.

The desert dries up nice and quick; soon we were packing up and driving out.