Just Like Daddy

Isaac and Paul were talking the other day about more Army "training." This lead to Paul getting out some of his old Army books and photos, and that lead to getting out his Army jacket. Of course Isaac promptly tried it on. As a bonus they found Paul's hat in the pocket, perfectly tucked away, the brim still pristinely curved to Paul's liking. Isaac tried it on and it looked so good that the hat now hangs in Isaac's room and has been worn every day since. I'm not a big fan of hats, but I LOVE this hat on Isaac. Somewhere there is a picture of Paul, as a kid, dressed in his dad's military uniform. If I can get Paul to scan it, I'll post that picture soon.
Max's cut little rat whiskers are in the bottom left corner, for good measure...

Hiking Pima Canyon

This weekend Isaac spent all day Saturday hanging out with Paul. It's a new thing for us all to be off on the weekends together. I went to my friend Heidi's house to scrapbook and the boys spent part of the day geocaching/hiking and the other part at the park. For those of you who don't know, geocaching starts by downloading the coordinates of a cache into your GPS (global positioning system), then you hike to the location of the cache and open it to retrieve your treasure/trinket. You leave behind a trinket for the next geocacher. For Isaac it was a good chance to do some treasure hunting as well as some hiking, doesn't get much better than that!

The big bummer is that there was nothing in the cache!!! Isaac was so bummed that he had to call me almost in tears. Luckily, they still got a hike in and then moved onto the park where they played soccer and Pokemon (however you do that!). I am so excited for all of us now that we have the chance to be able to do cool stuff like this with each other. Next up, camping we hope! We have a long weekend in February (we get Rodeo Break here in the wild wild West!) so hopefully we can get a little camping done somewhere nearby and not too cold!

Desert Sky

Yesterday this was the view in Tucson! To the left is the view looking down our street to the West. Not so bad, eh? Below, the view looking straight out our front window toward the Catalina Mountains. The camera wasn't sure what to focus on, nor how to light up something so far away, but the shot is still a good one. Gee, we sure have it rough here...

The Ultimate

Isaac has discovered my secret...DRAT! Snuggling with Shelty (newest nickname: Saint Shelty) is the BEST! Luckily, Shelty has a leak in her "love tank" and so it is physically impossible for her to get too much love, she'll take it anytime it's offered. She is the reason I didn't use a body pillow when I was pregnant. In the winter she gets under the covers and snuggles with me, and when I was pregnant with Isaac she was the perfect belly pillow. Yu-hum-my!

Reward!

Grams' reward for all her hard work (aside from our gratitude)? A custom back rub from Isaac. When Grams expressed that her back was hurting Isaac said "Just get two chairs and put them together." I explained that he gave great back stomps. Next thing you know, Grams is on the floor moaning and groaning and stealing my childhood phrase "That hurts so good!" I hope it helped relieve some of the knots!

What Else Did We Do?

So you may wonder, "what else did they do while Grams was visiting?" Let me tell you...My mom asked what was leaking under the kitchen sink. I explained that the water shut off valve for the hot water was an old, lousy thing that leaks just enough that we have a cup under there and have to empty it periodically. After taking a look, it seemed a simple fix: buy a new valve, turn off the water to the house, take out the old valve and put in a new one. A simple project...I'm sure you know how those turn out! This one turned into re-plumbing from the water heater to the kitchen sink. Luckily, they are only 8 feet between them. It turned out the end of the waterline where we needed to put the new valve couldn't be adapted to anything new, which led to other issues, which lead to the only solution: re-plumbing. Sure I am happy to have the "jerry-rigged" plumbing out from there and replaced with shiny new copper pipes. However, it was quite an undertaking with two days without water in the house, too many trips to Ace and Home Depot to count, frustration galore and time taken away from just visiting with Grams. Thank goodness she was here since I haven't the slightest idea how to solder! (Or do most everything else she did. I was a good assistant, though.) But everything was back in order and cleaned up eventually. Maybe next time she visits we'll replace the weird plumbing in the bathroom...JUST KIDDING Mom!

Gingerbread Train

My mom, AKA Grams came for a nice long visit the Friday after Christmas. One thing she brought was a gingerbread train kit. On New Years Day Isaac and she set about building it. Turns out, Isaac is like me and sees the cover of the package as how the train should look and followed it like a pattern. Once the process began, Grams realized that the decorating should have been done before putting it all together so she didn't have to apply icing on a vertical surface...Oh well! Isaac was thrilled with the outcome and had a lot of fun building it with his Grams.

Grams was here a whole week so she and Isaac had a lot of time to play, create and snuggle. For Christmas, Grams gave Isaac a zip cord which we set up between the play structure and the back porch. Isaac can zip through the yard, he has tried going frontward and backward. Adults up to 225 lbs could ride it too, if it didn't start tipping the play structure over...I guess we'll have to figure out another place to attach it so that everyone can ride it! We are looking forward to Grams' next visit!