Tubac Schoolhouse & Bathroom Sinks

We drove down to see the Tubac historic sites this week. Tubac was a fort built by Spanish colonists in the 1600's. It passed back and forth between the Spanish and the Apaches, but eventually the Spanish won and built a community in the 1800's with a church, schoolhouse, and several buildings. It was interesting because the site had archeological digs showing foundations from the 1600's fort, native american artifacts, and then the still standing buildings from the 1800's. There was a lot more going on than we expected, it was well worth a trip!

Picnic Peek-a-boo 

Elliot's first day of school... haha

My favorite part was the old schoolhouse. They wrote all the rules from back in the day on the chalkboard with how many lashes you would get for breaking the rules. 

I'm glad I didn't go to school in 1848

Elliot's favorite place in the world is the bathroom sink. Fussiness immediately turns to squeals of delight when you seat that boy in a sink. He likes checking out his warped reflection in the faucet and patting the handles. Fortunately he hasn't figured out to turn the water on yet- I'm looking forward to his reaction when he douses his pants for the first time!

Heaven on Earth

He has learned how to roll/crawl over to his toy basket on the bookshelf and empty it out. 

Another happy place

 He recently started using his arms in his army crawl instead of just pushing off with his legs. 

 Our primary class loves taking care of him during our lessons.

Cute girls, and a baby that somehow became huge

His hand-eye coordination leaves quite a bit to be desired, and he maintains his 0% success rate of putting cheerios into his own mouth. When you put food in front of his face, he won't try to grab it. He just opens his mouth and lunges. 

Attempting to eat mesquite pods at the park. So close, buddy.

 He's still my happy baby boy, even if he does look ginormous to me some of the time. He's growing so fast! 

Prickly Pear Jelly!

I fulfilled a lifetime dream by foraging in the desert and making jam from cactus fruit! The younger version of myself that loved Robinson Crusoe and Survivor would be so proud- I've always loved learning about edible plants and wilderness survival. 

I feel like canning is some sort of mystical ancient art that I have scratched the surface of. I helped someone from church can a bunch of peaches and she taught me the basics. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and followed this recipe that I found online to get the low down on prickly pear jelly.

Prickly Pear Cactus. They get really pretty rose-like flowers before they fruit. 

We went on a walk around our neighborhood and picked a bunch of prickly pear fruit. Alas, we did not get a picture of our foraging. The trick is to use tongs. The fruits have tiny needle hairs all over them. We filled a big paper bag with about 10 lbs of fruit and carried it home in Elliot's stroller. 

Quartering the fruit without touching it

There are lots of black seeds that are edible but really unpleasant to chew, so most people just scrape them out when the are eating them. The fruit tastes similar to watermelon.

I felt so hardcore (is it weird that I think of making jelly as a hardcore activity?)

We added some water and boiled it

We mashed it up through a strainer and an old shirt to get all the seeds, skin, and thorns out. We miiiiight have used a hammer for the mashing because we don't have a potato masher like they recommended. Then we added lime juice, sugar, and pectin and boiled it some more, then put it in the pretty clean bottles.  

So shiny!

We made two batches. The second batch had more of the smaller fruit that was lighter in color, so the jelly turned out lighter. It also jelled better. We taste tested both and they are delicious! The lime gives it kind of a kick. It is a pretty unique flavor.

We had some juice left over so we added lime juice and sugar and drank it. I wasn't a huge fan, but Aaron thought it was good. 

Prickly Pear Juice

It took about 2 hours to do a batch, but a lot of that was letting things boil again and again. Maybe we'll do it again next year!

Back up Mt Lemmon

We ended up going camping again just one week after our Rose Canyon trip. I volunteered to help out with the stake 11-year-old girls camp after we already had the Rose Canyon trip planned. It was pretty convenient- I washed all our smokey stuff then put it right back in the suitcase! 

Some pictures of the drive up Mt Lemmon:

It was Elliot's 4th camping trip in his 8 months of life. I'm pretty proud of that. He did really well! We pulled up just before his bedtime and he went down easily. On Saturday he took great naps and Aaron was playing with him around our tent while I was teaching a first aid class, so when we got to lunch a lot of people were like "wait, has that baby been here the whole time?!?"

Our girls were a lot of fun. We brought this big tent for them to sleep in, but it was too big to sleep on the tent platform and the ground was way too hilly to set it up on the ground. Brother Blaine convinced them that it was fun and exciting to sleep under the stars. They were excited about it until night came and a skunk started wandering around our campsite. We missed most of the excitement because we turned in early with Elliot. No one was eaten by the skunk or other critters. 

We had some high quality campfire chats with many funny stories being shared. Brother Blaine has had an uncanny quantity of bear encounters. We roasted hot dogs and made campfire churros for dinner. 

Our ward was in charge of teaching the first aid rotation. I got to tell a lot of stories about doing first aid on my accident prone mom during my teenage years. We got an unfortunate amount of hands on experience. One girl passed out and fell off the bench during the lesson. I partially caught her, then we got to do the whole "lie down in the shade with feet up and drink gatorade" thing. The poor girl was embarrassed, but everyone else will always remember what to do if someone blacks out! 

A big storm rolled through just before lunchtime. It made it suddenly very chilly. The really nice guy from the Spanish branch lent me his sweater to wrap Elliot in. He was in the campsite next to us and we helped him set up his rather complicated tent in the dark the night before. I got to practice my very limited Spanish, which was fun. 

All cuddled up during the storm

 There is a cool cave tunnel at the church's campground. You go in through this cave and contort a little bit, then climb up through this small opening. The 11 year olds fit a lot better than we did. They were also better at catching horny toads.

Aaron going in the cave

Me climbing out the top