Annabelle at 1 Year

Oh Annabelle. You bring so much joy to our family. You are the perfect mixture of chill and affectionate. You are usually content doing your own thing (lately this involves pulling all the books off the bookshelf and climbing into drawers), but you are always so happy when someone comes to play with you. If I get down on the floor and smile at you, you will drop everything and sprint crawl across the room to climb onto me. You give the sweetest hugs, kisses, and reassuring back pats. You love belly flops and knocking over Elliot's towers. 

The aforementioned climbing into drawers.

She rubbed peanut butter on her face and got this alarming superhero mask of rash. We got her tested and she is somewhat allergic to eggs and nuts. We have an appointment with an allergist lined up. 

A favorite activity of both kids

She's a budding capitalist

I don't know why she keeps thinking she can fit through the bars at the park

She was so close to falling asleep in this weird position at play group

It has been quite a year, miss Annie! We are so lucky to have you in the family!

Rocky Point

We finally made it down to Rocky Point! Rocky Point, aka Puerto Peñasco is the closest beach to us. It is 4 hours away in Mexico. We made the trip with the Wiscombs (our veteran Rocky Point goers) and the Knells. Annie and I rode with the Wiscombs and Aaron and Elliot rode with the Knells so that we could save on Mexican car insurance. We found a rental house on Airbnb that was in a gated community and only a 5 minute walk to the beach. 

Arriving at Hacienda de Bouginvillea

Isn't it cute? ("It" referring either to the baby, the house, or that guy I married. Take your pick)

There was a courtyard dividing the casa (kitchen, living room, and one bedroom) from the casita (3 bedrooms and a mini kitchen). It rained the first day, which knocked off this layer of flower petals. It was kind of fancy and kind of annoying to walk on barefoot, especially when it was raining

Who needs the beach when there is so much great sand in the parking lot?

The house cleaners were running late, so we headed to dinner at the famous Pollo Lucas. The only things on the menu are chicken, rice, beans, and tortillas. And they are so good at those four things!

The place was packed. We foolishly picked the week that most Arizona schools have their fall break. The Wiscombs were continually surprised at how much busier things were. We gave up on waiting for a table and decided to eat at home.

The gals went on a grocery run while the guys waited for the pollo. We attempted to get some mildly adventurous Mexican snacks that were mostly flops. When we came out, we saw what was literally the most gorgeous sunset I have ever seen.

The guys beat us back to the house and went on a quick sunset walk on the beach

This first day at the beach was also Annabelle's first birthday! I had thought about making cupcakes or something, but it quickly became too logistically challenging so I just bought her a cake at the grocery store in Mexico. It was so the right call- this cake was delicioso! (I apologize for the Spanish words that I will not be able to stop myself from interjecting in this post)

Singing happy birthday with the remnants of our pollo feast proudly on display 

The babe was pleased! She was all business at first, but we got some good smiles by the end of the slice.

The next morning it was time to head to the beach! There was a big storm predicted for Friday, but it ended up only raining at night. We didn't have to miss any beach time at all!

Making the long low tide trek. This whole area is under water at high tide. 

As you can see, we had pretty much the whole beach to ourselves!

There was a very even inch or two of warm water covering a huge area. Natural kiddie pool!

There were also these cool rocky tide pools a bit farther out. There were tons of hermit crabs, a few bigger crabs, and snails. We spotted a dead purple-striped eel. Chris has a sting ray phobia, but sadly we had no encounters with these mild mannered creatures to tease him about. 

The water felt great. It was pleasantly warm, not at all what I would expect of a beach in October.

Water levels starting to rise

On Friday and Saturday we enjoyed some low tide fun in the morning, came back for lunch and naps, and then went back out for a couple hours in the late afternoon. Elliot was the only non-napping kid, so he got to watch some TV while the grown-ups played board games and watched with confusion as Aaron and Chris laughed themselves to tears over a dumb Star Wars sand video. 

Elliot started making this face all the time. My theory is that it is based on this "steely eyed" look that Brother Castillo uses sometimes during primary singing time. 

The beach at high tide was completely different! There was a steep drop off that let us swim over the nice soft sand. Swimming at low tide was rough because there were toe-stubbing rocks around. Not at high tide! We took turns watching the kids on the beach while the others floated around. 

We are standing/treading water this close to shore. Weird!

Theodore and Annabelle

Beach baby in all her sandy glory

Something irritated her eye. It was pretty red and puffy, but it went away after we rinsed it and she slept it off. 

Trent with his fancy pina colada. People selling things wandered by us periodically.

I kept forgetting to bring cash. Finally I remembered during our last afternoon on the beach. I bought a mango frio from this nice guy with a wheelbarrow. He was super fast with peeling and carving that tasty little treat!

We looked up a nice seafood restaurant for dinner on our last night. We found one that had a balcony overlooking the ocean. The view and the food were great! Although it was a little weird there were people wandering in and out of restaurants trying to sell us food while we were in the middle of eating. It seemed like a questionable business model to me. The musicians and the kids folding flowers out of palm tree strips made a bit more sense. Regardless, the food was great! I got to try my first fried ice cream. Every one else was not super impressed by it, but Elliot and I thought it was awesome.

On Sunday morning, we went to Sacrament meeting at the local church. It was a testimony meeting. I was disappointed that I only understood about 20-30% of what was being said, even after all of my Spanish practice. I'm still working on it, and hopefully it will be better next time we make the trip! 

The Rest of Summer

Elliot and Dad with their tallest tower ever

Elliot loves pretending to eat the donuts off of Annie's PJs

That one time that Elliot snuck out of his room and fell asleep on the top stair

We went up Madera Canyon to help with an Eagle Project that ended up finishing right as we got there, so we just hung out instead

There were swarms of migrating butterflies! Our car was pasted with their remains. It was sad. But very cool seeing them alive! They are Queen butterflies, which look similar to Monarchs but are smaller. It was hard to get pictures of them flitting about. 

The back window of Aaron's car was hit by a rock while he was parked at work. We have now had to replace the front windshield twice, replace the back window, and get a crack patched all within about a year. The van has been glass damage free, but it had some crazy issues with the auxiliary battery that left me carless or with a rental for 4 weeks. Luckily we were at the beach for half of that time!

Elliot with some buddies at the primary program practice. Elliot did SO GREAT in his first primary program! His line was "My name is Elliot and I can choose the right by learning about Jesus." The kid nailed it. 

I went on a fun hike with the cub scouts! I was only in cub scouts as the assistant committee chair for less than a year. I was called as Primary President at the end of October.

Prickly Pear Lime Jelly

I felt super cool after making Prickly Pear Jelly a couple years ago, but Aaron wasn't a fan of the hours of boiling and straining. Luckily my friend Rachel Sevey was super excited about trying it out with me. I had forgotten most of what I learned two years ago, so it was back to reading articles online and watching YouTube tutorials. Here's the recipe that we most closely followed: https://www.rootsimple.com/2010/08/low-sugar-prickly-pear-jelly-recipe/

Step one was picking the prickly pear. We looted a cactus patch at the end of a cul-de-sac while walking to preschool. Glaucia and Allison tagged along with their kids to help pick. Elliot and Wyatt were particularly enthusiastic about grabbing the cactus fruit with the tongs and dropping them into the paper bags. We ended up with 3 or 4 big bags, which turned out to be WAY more than we needed.

Rachel met a knowledgeable man with dreadlocks at a farmers market that advised her to freeze and then thaw the prickly pears to make them easier to juice. This sounded like great advice, so I put the fruit in the freezer and set them out to thaw the night before our canning party. What we had failed to understand was that the juice comes out of fruit as it thaws. This would have been great if I had set it up to strain and drain into a big bowl. As it was, I ended up with a magenta murder scene from all the juice that leaked out of the paper bag. The juice in the party pail and pot was contained, but we had to re-strain it because it was mixed with spines. 

The magenta droplets covered an impressive radius. Luckily it cleaned up pretty easily. 

We tried a whole bunch of blending, mashing, and straining methods to get the juice out. I think that the ideal strategy for the future would be to freeze them, then let them thaw overnight on either coffee filters or cloth. That way all the juice will strain out into a bowl. If you wanted to squeeze out more juice, throw the fruit in a blender, spines and all. Then dump the mush into a cloth, fold it up, and wring it over a bowl. It took way too long to wait for the juice to seep out through the cloth. 

Anywho, I had a lovely time with some lovely ladies while Elliot and Aaron played Starcraft with Jason Sevy. 

The final product! I made two cases of these bad boys and wish I had brought more jars to fill up with this goodness. 

We froze some of the leftover juice in an ice cube tray. We use them to make vibrant smoothies

Elliot: "Can I have some of the BEAUTIFUL prickly pear jam that we made?"