The bike trip of a lifetime!

On our way to the mountain. There is some pretty cool stuff on the streets of Tucson.

Hey look! We found Stephanie!

There she is from the top of "A" mountain.

I told Micah to take a picture of the A.  I knew I should have done it myself...

 

A panoramic view from the top. I can see Mexico!

I look like I just biked straight up a mountain.  Micah has some sort of magical endurance so nothing fazes him. He always looks good :)

A cute little gazebo at the top!

Really tired.

THE SNAKE!!!!  (Look at the end of the post for an awesome video)  So for months now, Micah and I have driven underneath the belly of this snake, so we deciede to ride on over and check it out from the inside.

Fangs.

We then rode around campus to see what we could find.  This was a Native American celebration for Veterans Day. The guys in the cirlce on the field were singing some awesome stuff.

There are olive trees all over campus. Who knew?

Again, olive trees. A couple days after this picture was taken, we were reading Jacob 5. Micah suggested that we go sit in an olive tree and read it.  It would be fitting, but we didn't end up actually doing it.

The snake.  I didn't know how to make this right-side-up....and I didn't know how to make the sound work....but enjoy it anyway!

What a great way to spend Veterans Day / 11-11-11

Best Friends

This little girl is my niece, Bailey. 

She's the cutest!

She LOVES Micah so much.

  If he's around, she goes right to him and stays with him the whole time he's there. 

 If I'm around but Micah's not, she will ask me "Where's Micah?"

One time when we went over to my sister's house. 

Micah stayed outside for a minute and when I walked in the house, Bailey was getting a splinter taken out of her foot. 

She was not very happy.

She cried and cried...

until Micah came in.

"Micah?" she sniffed tearfully.

Then she stopped crying and just stared at him. Wow.

Micah has some hold on this little girl's heart.

I like watching him play with her and talk to her.

It makes me believe he won't actually shoot the clothes of our future daughters if they dress immodestly. 

He's too much of a softy.

I love it!

Halloween.

We skipped our ward party this year and decorated pumpkins instead. It was the Friday before Halloween and we decided a date was better than spending the night with the whole ward.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I got some awesome presents!  Micah and my parents and my in-laws spoiled me rotten and I loved it!

Micah is such a good cake maker. I told him the most important part of my birthday was the frosting. Rainbow chip-there's none better, y'all.

I just thought this was funny.  My mom wanted a middle piece, so Micah happily obliged.

Did I mention my mom and dad "surprised" me by coming to Tucson? I say "surprised" because I totally guessed that they were coming. I don't have a sneaky enough husband. 

We went to Cheesecake factory and played Skip-bo and ate cake.

Perfect.

Newsies

Is this what you thought of when you read the title?

Me too.  I LOVE this movie. I always thought it would be cool to be a newsie. My favorite part of the movie?

 "Never fear, BROOKLYN is here!!!" 

Man this movie is great.  When Micah got a job as a "newspaper carrier" I may or may not have had unrealistic expectations of what he would be doing.  To my dismay, the first time I helped Micah with his route I found out that delivering newspapers is nowhere near as glamorous as they make it out to be in the movie.

Here are the facts:

FACT. There is absolutely no dancing.

FACT.  There is also no singing (unless you count the sleepy off key singing I do along to the radio at 3 in the morning).

FACT.  The carriers aren't boys ages 10-16 who all live in the same place.  Most of them are drug addicts and Mexicans (we ARE in Tucson, after all).One guy even lives in his van.

FACT. Micah's job actually takes place in the middle of the night. Gross.

FACT. The bosses aren't mean guys out to get us. They are friendly. AND they helped Micah get a promotion!!!! That's basically the best part of the job--and the free coupons.

Here are some pictures of the our last day delivering papers:

I look REALLLLY tired because I am. And do you see all of those papers? This is a Sunday.  The papers are HUGE and they barely fit into our car.

As tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I'll say this:  I am so thankful I don't have to deliver papers with Micah anymore.

Adventures at U of A

The whole reason we are here in Tucson is because Micah is taking classes at U of A.  I grew up not liking U of A.  ASU was closer to where I lived and everybody at school always cheered for them at football games.  Because the two schools are rivals, I naturally thought U of A was sub-par. 

Now that I'm older, I've grown out of my school rivalry stage.  I don't really get what the big fuss is about. 

Anyways,  U of A is great.  It is a really bike-friendly campus which is great for us.  It's an old school, so there are a lot of things to explore. When we first got to Tucson, we took a short ride around the main parts of campus. 



This sign is funny, but oh-so-true (except the 3rd one-Micah thinks that one should be uncrossed).  We have actually spent some good time in the library together.  There are all of these pictures of desert plants and stuff around. It's really cool.

I don't know what building this is, but Micah took a picture of it the first time he came to campus. And there's a palm tree. We definitely are in AZ.

This is the view from the top floor of the library.  We are totes planning on watching a game from here sometime.  We're too cheap to buy a ticket.

Micah researches with the Department Head of Surgery at the medical school (at least that's what I think he is).  This is proof that he actually does go to the lab everyday.

More to come....

Lion King: The 20 minute deaf version

You read that right.  The deaf version. 

A friend of ours at church today invited us to go see this little gem.  She is a speech pathology grad student and worked with some of the deaf kids who were in the play/musical (yeah, they sang too).

There were about 10 kids ages 5-10 who all have cochlear implants so they can hear. One of them even had a device that helped him "speak." During Hakuna Matata all we kept hearing was a robotic "Hak-you, hak-you, hak-you, hak-you- na Matata."

It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen despite being totally lost.  I couldn't really understand anybody except Simba (way to go, 9-year-old boy! He was LOVING being on stage)  so good thing they had a script displayed on the backdrop. 

I really wish I had taken a video of at least part of it. Oh well.  Here's some deaf culture I found for you anyway:

I would totes see this show again in a heartbeat.