Routine

Every morning the alarm goes off at 6:30ish and Ryno then sits by the bed and starts whining.  He won't jump into bed with us until we acknowledge him (thankfully).  We have a family cuddle and we all start getting ready for the day.  This dog is a smart one.  He knows that once Mom (that's me) puts a bra on, it's time to go.  He starts prancing around the apartment nudging us towards the door until we finally all leave.  I take Ryan to work where Ryno practically shoves him out the door because he knows the next stop - the dog park.

I found the dog park on our first day here and it took no time at all to become Ryno's favorite spot.  It's closed on Wednesdays and he gets all sorts of confused when we come home after dropping Ryan off instead of going to the park.  This boy loves to run.  As you'll see in this video, as soon as we open the gate he takes off and hopes that everyone chases him.  Sometimes no one does, and other times he can have about 5-6 dogs on his tail.  He's quick though! He can outrun almost all of them and he does.  After the first go he'll sniff everyone and usually plop down in the shade for awhile until he decides it's time to do it again and takes off sprinting.  He sure loves this place.

Sorry if the video is a little boring.  I don't narrate if I can help it, I hate hearing my voice on tape.

"Waterfall" Canyon Trail

On Friday we were supposed to go to the water park but it was RAINY.  Seriously? It's been nothing but hot and sunny here for the whole month and now it was cloudy and drizzly.  Hence, no water park.  But I wanted to make use of our weekends so I found a hike that is only 30 minutes away.  Besides, the cooler weather is much more my style for that kind of outdoor adventure. There will be no hiking in triple digits for me.  And yes, it has still been triple digits until this point.

As we headed out, we realized we were driving into this. We were really hoping it wasn't as bad as it looked.  In our opinions, it looked pretty bad.

 Once we got there, it was actually a beautiful 80 degrees with occasional sprinkles.

These little guys were EVERYWHERE.  I'm sure most of you have seen penny frogs, but these were half the size, if not smaller.  I couldn't get anything near them in the picture to compare because they were so quick.  But, their bodies are only 1/2 inch long.  They're just itty bitty!

This guy was NOT itty bitty.  I was trying to take picture of the frogs and I turned around to see this.  My skin still crawls even looking at these pictures.  Again, it's hard to get a comparison but he was 8-10 inches long and just his body was an inch wide.  Gag.

 

This is the waterfall...

We forgot we live in the desert.  It only falls after humongous rain storms.  Oh well.

 

Somebody wanted to climb all over the rocks but forgot he was on a leash and almost took me or Ryan out multiple times.  Stinker.

These cactus are my favorite! I get genuinely excited every time I see them.

  

Somebody now loves the car.

Making mom proud pt. 2

Today I'm the proud mama. My little boy is all grown up and now lifts his leg when he pees.

Making Mom Proud

Thanks to the wonderful sewing skills of my Mama that she passed on to me, 

I made this skirt yesterday. Woot, woot!

 

(And yes, I am standing on my bath tub due to the lack of a full-length mirror)

She wouldn't be so proud of the aftermath though...

Salt River Tubing

I've been going through all of our old pictures and I'm way behind on posts so once again I think I'm just going to give up.  I know, I'm home all day. I'm sure you're thinking I have nothing better to do with my time.  But you're wrong! And really, I just have no motivation to blog.  Sorry gang!

When everyone asks us how we like Arizona, I say one thing. "It's hot." Because it is.  And I don't do heat.  Seriously, I can't handle it and I don't know how anyone does.  So if it's going to be hot, you should be around water, right? Right.  On Saturday we went tubing down the Salt River with our friends Chris and Erica Jensen (be jealous Kristina!) and her family.  They are a riot and it was a blast! They are professionals when it comes to this whole tubing thing so all we did was show up and share our beef jerky and peanut m&m's.  We had instant friends after bringing those gifts. 

 The scenery is slightly (okay much) better than the Niobrara River in Nebraska.

 Ryan and Chris

 I hate the heat, but I love cactus.  

I might get giddy every time I see "real" cactus with arms and everything.

 Wild horses!

 We need shorter friends.  We always look like little people.

 Alright, this might be the best picture from the trip.  

This would be Erica's sister Christine. PASSED OUT.

But serving a very important purpose as a cup holder.

Chris and Erica also stopped by on their way out of town yesterday AND we are going to see them in three weeks in California.  Too bad we don't always live this close!

Bath Time = Crazy Time

Our dog is ridiculous sometimes.  

Like after a bath.  

The water in his ears must influence his brain because he is CRAZY! 

This was even the tail end of his freakout.  Enjoy!

Family History

As I feel like most of the world knows these days, our church is huge into Family History and Genealogy.  I've always been told I need to take part in discovering my roots, but the Family Trees on both my parents sides already go back nine generations or so.  I definitely do not have the skills to try do anything beyond that.  Save that for the professionals.

Insert Ryan.

Because he is the first member of our church in his family, no one has linked all of his relatives together yet.  Good news for me, I have plenty of work to do!  About a year ago, I asked his Aunt Dee to put together as much as she knew about their family.  When we saw her in Colorado, she had done just that and I was so excited.  It gave me somewhere to start which is just what I needed.  Last week, I went into one of our Family History Centers for the first time and started digging.  They have access to Ancestry.com for free (hooray!!) and there is just a wealth of information there.  Modern technology has done wonders for tracing our past, it's amazing.  I got so excited that I could see the WWI Draft Registration Card for Ryan's Great Grandpa, Stanislaw Wzorek, or that all the pages from past census's were right there to see, and even phone books! Isn't that exciting??

I've been saving all the information while writing down as much information I can find about information including all their addresses over the years.  It's been fun to see that the 6 houses Stanley lived in were all within about 2 miles of each other (they're all in the "Polish" part of Omaha - he immigrated in 1905). Or to find out his occupations over the years.  Did you know that used to be listed in the phone book? Pretty cool, huh?

One of my favorite things about Ancestry.com is that users can upload photos of the individual.  When I saw a picture of Ryan's grandmother (left), I knew EXACTLY where his father got his looks! I told Ryan and he didn't believe me.  He thought his dad always looked like his grandpa.  Maybe he did, but there is no denying that these men are her sons!

I'm bummed the Family History Center is closed for the holiday weekend, but I will definitely be back next week to continue the search.  I'm hooked!