Gingerbread Houses

Our annual gingerbread house party was a hit once again! This year we had a "Cooper Street" party. (our street) Recently, some members of the ward bought a house down the street, and another neighbor was baptized last month. These new friends/neighbors and ourselves pulled our creative hats out of the closet and dusted them off to make lovely gingerbread houses. No, they are not made with real gingerbread, that is a LOT of work. They all turned out beautifully! Thanks Jessie, Annjanette and Brent!

Spencer's Hogan/Wigwam

Lindsey's House

Annjanette and Brent's Houses

Jessie's House

Adventures in the wash

Tucson is surrounded by a very unique and wonderful national park called Saguaro National Park, which is full of tall saguaro cactus, dense enough to look like a cactus army marching along the landscape of the southern arizona desert. We really like to get out to the trails to explore and be out amongst the cactus and the desert wildflowers.

Yesterday we did a hike down to Tanque Verde wash, northeast of Tucson. For those of you who aren't familiar with southern Arizona or with washes, they are basically a desert term for a every-once-and-a-while flowing river bed. Everything around here is pretty much called a wash, because they only flow when rain falls, either in the Tucson valley or in the mountains around. Otherwise, there is no such thing as a river around here in Tucson.

On our hike, Lindsey took a lot of great pictures of the plant life and views of the Tanque Verde Wash area. I've included some of the best she took here. There was a little bit of water down in the wash from rain in the valley and snow in the mountains the weekend before. It provided an opportunity to try to get Sadie to 'explore' in the pools a little bit.

Cute 1st cousins once removed

So, this last week I went on a business trip to Chicago for a couple of days. The business stuff was fairly ok, but visiting my cousin Dorus, her husband James and family was much funner. They have 5 girls and one boy, the youngest, just like Lindsey's family. I warned James that he'll need to watch out for his little guy so that he doesn't become too girlified with all those older sisters. I had lots of fun with the kids, especially Sophie (2 yrs old) and Jenny (5 yrs old). Here are some videos I recorded of them on my camera phone. They are really cute girls!

It's Finished!!!

Since Christmas break I have been working on a fairly challenging project...that of building a dog house! We needed something to chain Sadie to for whenever we left the house, and thus the dog house project was born.

I found a really simple design online and set myself to work. The house has a very simple frame of 2x2's with a 4x4 base topped with a plywood floor. It was amazing how much work the whole thing required! I had all the tools I needed for the job, thanks to a nearby Harbor Freight tool store and my father-in-law, who donated the tools he bought to work on the house they bought rented out here in Tucson. There was a lot of sawdust in the garage by the time I was done with the woodworking. After hammering many nails and making lots of measurements, along with a simple paint job using painter's tape here and there, here is the finished product!




















We got the shingles from the Habitat for Humanity store here in town for less than half the price you would pay at Home Depot, so we were really pleased about that and how it added a great touch to the house. Lindsey got some wood chips to provide a cushy floor for Sadie to lie on, but as you can see it made a bit of a mess until I put the piece of 2x2 at the bottom of the door.

Being the typical engineer that I am, I probably built the thing a lot more robust than it needed to be, but yet that just ensures it will last a long time through several dogs' lifetimes and I shouldn't have to make another one.