And welcome to Arizona....

This is a sign that we saw as we were on our drive. Gotta love AZ.


Prickly pears are ripe right now so, we decided to go on a afternoon drive to Sonoita & pick some.

Even Marlee "helped" us- I like the picture above because it looks as if Marlee is about to fall into the cactus.

Porter has his game face on

Clayton with a prickly pear he got

The boys were such a big help & it didn't take long until the bucket was full.

Marlee on the other hand was a good observer.

Marlee loves sitting in the driver seat & looking out the window.

And the boys love sitting in the bed of the truck.

Our dog Sage had a good time running around.

Marlee loves being outdoors & trying to keep up with her brothers.

The boys found these really cool walking stick bugs.

Checking out the bugs

The boys like taking along their bug bucket because they usually find cool creatures.

Marlee loves to "drive".

It was such a beautiful day, the weather was perfect & it was so green. It is crazy to think that Sonoita isn't very far from Tucson but looks so different.

The boys looked cute in their matching Utah State shirts-Go Aggies!

We ate at this cool restraunt in Sonoita where they have live music; there was a violin & guitar player & they sang. Marlee loved it & would dance. It was the best she has ever behaved at a restraunt before. The boys liked the music too. The downside is that Laun & I were only impressed with their french fries & the rest of the food was just so-so.

Before we headed home we stopped by coldstone for some dessert.

When we got home we had all these beauties to deal with, which means Laun & I had to stay up late-Laun does most the work though.

Laun cut them up & put them in a big pot with water on the stove & mashed them to get the juice out.

Then we use a cheese cloth to strain out the seeds & needles from the juice.

This is some of the juice we got from the prickly pears.We put the juice in food saver bags & freeze them for later. Then when we want to make prickly pear jelly or syrup, we have the juice already to go.

My favorite is the prickly pear syrup. We try to have enough juice to last us through the year so we can always make that syrup.

Yesterday...

Marlee has been wearing Porter's shoes lately:

Last night our ward had a chili & ice cream cook-off. Laun got 2nd place on his chili but, the bummer is that our chili ran out before everyone could try it so, not everyone that voted even tasted it. And I'm pretty sure that Laun would have bagged first. So lesson learned-next time make a HUGE pot of chili so that everyone can sample it. There was a prize for the 1st & 2nd place & the kids were so excited that we won this:


When we got home, Marlee enjoyed snuggling up in the laundry & "reading" a book:

Could she be any cuter?

My friend Allison Esplin is a photographer & she took these great photos of our Marbar -these were taken on May 13th:

I love that they are in both color & black and white.

Thanks Allison, I love them!

wooohoooo!!!

I am very excited today. I found out that I got accepted to the BYU-ID Pathway Program! The classes are online but, I will meet at the institute building once a week for a Book of Mormon class & then the Pathway class will be afterwards. I am really excited about this program because it will be nice to be able to do most work from home but, still have assistance & live bodies to meet with once a week. Plus, for the first year the 3 semesters start off slow with only 2 classes per semester. I like this because it will gradually get me used to college again with out overwhelming me as much. My last semester at UofA has been over 2 years ago so, I need to get crackin' so I can graduate someday. The institute class starts in a week & I have 2 more weeks until school starts. My boys think it is exciting that I will be a student again. And I am so thankful for Laun's support, because I couldn't do this without him.

Ready.....


Attack....

Clayton is such a good big brother. He likes to make Marlee laugh.

Thinking of Cooper...

I was really missing my Cooper today & then Jeff called me & read me this quote from a book he was reading:

The Lord takes many away, even in infacy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth; therefore, if rightly considered, instead of mourning we have reason to rejoice as they are delivered from evil, and we shall soon have them again.

This was taken from “discourses of the prophet joseph smith”

It was just what I needed to boost my spirit.

CUTE


CUTER


CUTEST

I just love these cute kiddos

Marlee's UMC visit...

Marlee had an upper endoscopy & colonoscopy w/ biopsies today at UMC. She has Dr. Ghishan just like Porter did. Everything went okay & we are just waiting on the biopsy results.

Waiting on her bed before her surgery.


She was trying to check out what the nurses & doctors were doing, she was skeptical of them & sorta shy. I braided her hair today just like my mom used to do before my surgeries.


Our Sleeping Beauty- they gave her that ^ cute stuffed dinosaur & she loved it.

Also, it was the 1st day of the semester for Laun-back to the grind stone. Although when you're a grad student you are pretty much busy year round anyways.

What is up with Tucson?

We have had a lot going on the last little bit. On a personal note, I had a miscarriage & that is a bummer. I was having issues & went to UMC, which is a little emotional since that is where I went when I was having issues in my pregnancy with Cooper & where he passed away. It brought back some sad memories for me but, grateful ones too. I'm sure UMC sees my track record there & thinks I have all sorts of problems. But really I don't, I usually have great pregnancies (well I don't feel good but usually everything goes well) & fast labor, except for in the city of Tucson. I told the doctors that I want to have more kids so, maybe I should just move out of Tucson since we don't have the best of luck here. I feel like we are all doing okay though. The way I see it, if things aren't going well, it is better for me to have a miscarriage now then further into my pregnancy. This makes me even more grateful for the healthy kids I have.


This picture has nothing to do with the post but, I like how Marlee looks freakishly happy all muddy & wet. And that is a bug catcher she is holding -you can tell she has older brothers.