Arizona

Well mom-in-law forgot to mention that we finally heard back from out house! If everything goes as planned, we should be moving in by October 1st!! Jeff took videos of the house, but they didn't turn out very well. I'll post one of the outside. But its a great house!
We had a lot of fun with Mom and Grammy this past week. I hope they had fun too. Lots of shopping, the Cheesecake Factory, and laying out by the pool. Sophie really enjoyed having her Grammys visiting. She refers to them as Gogie or just Mommy. She likes them more then me!
Since we have been in Arizona, Sophie has had Rosiola and now Chicken Pox. Poor child. Luckily she was vaccinated and only has 10 chicken pox. But they aren't bugging her too badly. We haven't stayed for all of church on account of her being sick, but we did manage to go to Sacrament meeting last week. We are excited for the new ward. Almost every family had a newborn and I didn't see hardly any kids older then 10. And the Bishop introduced himself and seems normal. We have had a string of odd wards for the past few years so we are looking forward to this one.
So now we get to hang out at the condo for a few more weeks and hope that our house closes when it is suppose to. My Mom and both Grandmas are coming on the 2nd to help clean and paint so it would be nice if they had a place to stay!
Anyways, thanks for letting us steal Mom and Grammy for a bit! Hope they had fun!!!

I finally got a picture of a bunny on my run this morning. It is very hard to see though. It is in the left side of the light. I think you can see the white dot of it's cotton tail. I decided to show you how pretty the desert is in the morning the next picture is of the terrain around our condo and where i run.
It's really pretty isn't it. Another thing about the desert is that inspite of the greenery and beauty of the plants almost all of them are thorny and vicious. This next plant is covered in little green leaves and it has really pretty orange flowers when it is in bloom. But don't let it fool you, it is covered with 1 inch thorns hidden by the leaves. When all the leaves fall off in the dry season it is not so pretty. It is just all thorns.
The next picture is of a tree my mom (Grammy) calls the Dr. Seus Tree. She calls it that because the bark is green and the tree has odd shapes.
The second picture is up close. The thorns on the "Dr. Seus" tree are about 4 inches long. I have decided that all the vegatation has thorns to protect itseld from those animals that would eat it. I have only seen about 2 or three plants that don't have them.
Pretty shrub outside our condo? Not! It is covered with thorns! They are dense and sharp about 1 1/2 inches long.
Strange tree with little pods that look like pottery hanging from it. This one actually doesn't have any thorns. It must be bad to eat or something.
This is a picture of out condo. You can see the deceiving bush by the walk on the left. Everything down here is southwest style of course. The walls are about a foot thick. The bedrooms all have tiny 1 foot square windows towards the top of the rooms. Mom (Grammy) really likes them. She says that if she ever builds another house that she would put those kind of windows in the bedrooms. There is also one large window in each room for a view. I won't be able to run tomorrow. Jeff, Grammy, and I are going to drive to the gulf (about 3 hours) and go to a tourist city in Mexico. It should be fun and safe. He had employees who went there last weekend and said it is a safe place to go. :o)

Arizona

I have been in Arizona for a couple of days now. I am running every morning and really enjoying it. The first night we were here, Jeff killed 2 rattlesnakes on the walk right in front of our door. (In the picture to the left) It has made me be a little more cautious and aware than I may have been on my runs. You never know when you might run into something you don't want to see. The first day I found this really cool running trail. (See the pictures below) I kept hearing the rattling sound and wondered if it was snakes or what. It turned out that it was some kind of bird that is pretty good at imitating the sound of a rattle snake. When I mentioned it to Jeff he said that he has heard them too. We decided it must be some type of protection thing they have developed. I have seen many little cotton tails on my runs but they run away too fast for me to be able to get a picture. Today I saw a couple of road runners. They didn't move away to fast the capture them with my phone camera but even though I zoomed in they are very hard to see in the picture. They are in the picture that looks like it is just a picture of the parking lot. There are many cacti here. The others are pictures of the trail and the view from the trail. The last is a picture of a prickly pear. They look really pretty with their pink fruit. This is the end of the rainy season. We had a major downpour on Tuesday. It was pretty cool, as the rain came down in buckets and all the little dry gullies fill up. My vacation is going way too fast, but I'm enjoying my stay while I'm here.