The Dinosaur Buttprint

Day 1 of our weekend Allsop Party was dinosaur day! In 2006, some farmer was leveling a hill when his excavator revealed a huge, perfectly preserved dinosaur footprint. The area is still actively being worked on by paleontologists. They built a museum right over the site with a boardwalk over the original ground. There is a room in the back where paleontologists were scraping away at some fossils, and there were helpful signs showing what was what on the site ground. 

The most exciting part (at least for Elliot and me) was the buttprint! There have only been 9 dinosaur buttprints discovered, and we saw one of them. What an honor. 

This is the full set of footprints, with the butt and tail between, and a pair of handprints pressed into the mud in front. It squatted there for a while, and then there are footprints from it walking off. I don't know how those paleontologists figure all that out. 

A statue of the dino who left it's buttprint behind so many years ago. 

There was an outside play area with dinos to climb on and a big sand pit with plastic dinosaur bones to dig up. Sure recipe for fun right there. 

We went back to the house for lunch and a nap break, then we were off to Thunder Junction! 

Thunder Junction was... a lot. It was a huge dinosaur themed playground, splash pad, and generally very fun place. We were promised that the volcano would erupt every 40 minutes, but apparently that part was out of order. We managed to have fun without it. 

My littles being nuzzled by a triceratops

This girl has always been obsessed with eggs hatching

Elliot was in heaven. Exploring is his favorite. 

St George, Hoover Dam

A few months ago, our friends the Allsops proposed that we meet up in Southern Utah. We took them up on it and had an absolute blast. It was absolutely worth the drive! We broke up the 9 hour drive on the way up so that Aaron could work a half day. We stayed at a motel. I don't think that anyone has ever loved a motel room as much as Annie loved it. She was SO EXCITED that we would all sleep in the same room. We had a really nice Airbnb in St George, but she said she liked the motel room better. 

Isaac did not like the motel room. He had this lingering cough that we thought he was mostly over, but that night it was back with a vengeance. Somehow the other kids slept through it. Even after he fell asleep, he kept coughing in his sleep. He was up around 6 coughing some more, so I jumped in the shower with him and let everyone else sleep a little more. Aaron ran to Walmart to get some cough drop lollipops, honey throat spray, and more bananas (we all love bananas), then we pressed on to the Hoover Dam.

I've always loved a good engineering marvel, and this one did not disappoint! There was a great visitor center that outlined all the innovations made to create this unprecedented concrete structure. 

The old visitor center was completely empty since it is far lamer than the new visitor center. We checked it out anyway and enjoyed roaming the theatre during the old school recorded presentation of the history of the Colorado River Basin. There was a big model that would have parts light up as they were being discussed. 

It was a nice pit stop. The only way it could have been better would be if my dad was there to crack his favorite dam jokes. 

Dino Zoo & Book Circus

Tucson isn't a huge city, but every so often we have something awesome come to town. Like huge animatronic dinosaurs at the zoo. 

 

I told the kids to act scared. Elliot wins. 

Elliot was very dedicated to completing the activity page handed out at the front gate. We had to find all the dinosaurs, get a letter from the informational sign next them, then unscramble to solve a hidden message. He is all about that kind of stuff. 

Meanwhile, Isaac was extremely confused. I don't know if he could tell if they were alive or not. 

The Tucson Festival of Books has been cancelled for the past few years because of Covid but it was back on this year! Naturally, it featured circus acts. Some of the performers were dressed like Peter Pan characters, and that's based on a book so I suppose it was relevant?

I think these girls were supposed to be mermaids. Annie was transfixed. 

They stacked these chairs one at a time and had some girl do handstands on them. Top notch entertainment!

Elliot and Aaron waited in a long line to try the VR headsets in the science tent. It was a tour of space hosted by the U of A. 

Annie was all about the bug display. She had no qualms whatsoever about holding the giant hissing cockroach. That's my girl!

After the book festival we hit up this place called "Defy" for a friend's birthday party. It was an intense foam pit/trampoline combo type of place. Annie clung to me the whole time, but Elliot was all over the place exploring and jumping off of things. 

Fancy February

In February we did a number of fancy things- like going to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show!

 

Butterfly wing geodes! Genius!

The kids both had money saved up and bought some souvenirs. Ones that were much smaller than these behemoths. 

A pretty place to play peekaboo

The coolest exibit was this trailer full of these backlit metal/gem art creations. They looked so incredibly cool. 

My parents should own a fossil sink like this one day

There was also a fancy box fort complete with shiny ceiling streamers

Annie got a cookbook from the library that had a recipe for yogurt parfaits. It exactly like our normal yogurt, just in a fancy cup and with the layers not mixed together. Annie adored it. She also got really into making herself "icy lemon water." 

Aaron's work had a valentines activity for the kids! They gave each kid a box of a dozen cookies to decorate with all the frosting and sprinkles that could ever be needed. The kids love these zoom activities. 

Annie gravitated to the black frosting. 

I babysat the Barnett kids over rodeo days. We departed from our usual fancy ways to go play in the dirt. It had rained recently so the dirt made these clumps that break apart when you throw them. Dirt bomb heaven.

We made oh so many slow motion videos of dirt bombs exploding. 

When we weren't playing in the dirt, we played with water and ice cubes and food coloring. 

We played out on the dirt trails a lot early this year! It feels wholesome to me. 

Annie nailed the "stoic pioneer" look. This is in the treefort in the wilderness area near our house. 

I got this Methodiq jacket from my main client and wore it almost every day of our short desert winter

Grand finale: McClain Foster left his mark in the cow pie at the park right before he moved away! This was right before they moved and Michelle was watching him while his parents packed up. Naturally the park bathroom was out of soap so we doused him in hand sanitizer before sending him home for a bath. The handprints dried out and were there clear as day for several months after the Fosters moved!

Shower Power

We did a thing! Or rather, we paid Jesus the contractor to do a thing. We added a shower to our downstairs bathroom! 

The bathroom shares a wall by the garage. There was some dead space between the water heater and the garage door that was just big enough to fit a shower! We can't drill into our concrete foundation because there are pretensioned steel cables, so the drain situation took some thinking. Luckily, Aaron was able to dig up a video we took of our house while it was still under construction. It showed all the pipes and whatnot before the drywall went up. We discovered from the video that there was a pipe from the upstairs bathroom passing right through the spot where we wanted to put the shower! 

Garage view of shower construction. The black pipes are from the upstairs bathroom. The shower drain connects to the pipe on the floor before it goes into the concrete. The pipes used to go straight down inside of the drywall, but here it shows them moved to where the back of the shower will be. 

Walled in shower!

This is the construction view from inside the bathroom. 

Tile going up! Shout out to my Mom for coaching us through tile selection. And for having the idea to build a shower in the first place. And for sketching out multiple ideas on how to build it and generally being very supportive of this project. 

The finished project! We love it! The kids now only want to shower down here. It's a great place to wash off dirty feet when coming into the house, and it is so nice to have a downstairs shower right next to the guest bedroom. It makes the house way more functional and we love how it turned out!

All of Elliot's Teeth Fall Out

Elliot lost his first tooth (bottom front) last summer. It started getting wiggly while eating a burrito on a camping trip and fell out a while later when he was eating some canteloupe.

 Unfortunately, his top teeth decided that they did not want to space themselves out nicely and he ended up losing 4 across the front top over a short time span. 

The exodus of the top teeth began when Tauriel accidentally kneed him in the mouth while they were playing stairs slide. One feel out right then, and one or two next it got loose. I was able to pull a VERY wiggly one out a week or so later. 

Two missing on the top

Another fell out when Dad swung him onto the couch. I pulled tooth number six out after Ethan kicked him in the face a month later. 

A great shot of his gumline nowadays! With some bonus crazy hair.

Oh how I love my silly boy!

 

He finally has a top tooth growing back in. It was rough for a while there because he didn't have enough teeth to bite stuff. We had to cut up things like pizza and apples for him to be able to eat them. Thank goodness that teeth grow back!

We Can't Escape the Inflatable Obstacle Courses

 I went for a jog on a sunny Saturday morning in March. When I was turning onto our street, my neighbor Mike Hartmann drove past and invited us to hike Tumamoc Hill with them. I went inside, scarfed down breakfast, and filled up water bottles, then we headed off to hike! 

Tumamoc is a paved trail up a very steep hill. It was nice because we could put Isaac and all the water in the stroller. We pushed through the burning calf muscles and made it up to a marvelous view of Tucson. Elliot was an absolute champ on the hike. Annie mooched rides in the stroller for a lot of the ride up, but liked running downhill. 

Our one plan for the day was to attend a town of Sahurita event advertised as "giant lawn games." We have no clue what this meant. By the time we got to the top of the hill, we realized we probably were going to miss the giant lawn games. Elliot was devastated. But the universe had plans to reward him for his diligent hiking. As we turned into our neighborhood, we saw people blowing up a giant inflatable obstacle course and a sign saying that there was a free party starting in 5 minutes. Perfect! 

This is why Rancho Sahuarita is awesome. There was free face painting, balloon animals, hot dogs, etc. Apparently this was a "new move in event" that they don't advertise, so there were no lines. I sent out some texts and soon it was somewhat of a ward party. 

Annie was scared to go on it at first, but we went together and she LOVED it. My girl is getting so big!

The facepaint made up for my feeble face painting attempt 1 week earlier at the Rodeo Roundup.

Elliot didn't want facepaint, but his buddy Kelton got this hilarious frog mouth getup. Kelton is my favorite of Elliot's friends.

Annie used some of her money to buy a rainbow snow cone, which she generously shared with her cash-strapped brother. 

After running 2 miles, climbing a small mountain, and then hitting up the party, I was outside for 7 hours in the sun and got my first sunburn of the year. We soaked up plenty of vitamin D!

The next morning, Elliot woke up puking. This is always unfortunate, but especially so since he was on the top bunk. His blast radius made it to the opposite wall. Annie wasn't feeling well either, so we holed up for a day of snuggling and napping. 

Life is full of surprises! Some good, some bad. I'm grateful that generally there have been far more good surprises than bad ones with our family.