BACON!

I randomly logged on (on our old computer) and found this sitting in the drafts. I clicked on it to see what it was, so I lost the original date, but I'm pretty sure it was from 2015.

Andrea: Elsie, do you want some eggs with bacon?
Elsie: No, just plain.
Andrea: Just plain eggs?
Elsie: NOOOO!!! BACON!!!!

Also,  according to the Blogger analytics, this blog had 16 pageviews last month, which, if you had told me there were 16 pageviews last year, I would still have thought that was too high. Weird.

Elsie's Own Alphabet

When I was little, I loved the book "Grover's Own Alphabet", in which he makes the shape of each letter with his body. I would always see which letters I could do.

So after looking for the book every time we go to a thrift store for the past since I've been an adult, we finally found it! And Elsie followed in my footsteps of trying to make all the letters herself. So here's what she figured out:

Layna's hair was so short!

Everyone can do "M"

Fun!

Young Thespian

So when I was little, every summer a team from Missoula Children's Theater would come to our town and put on a play for school-age kids, in which auditions are Monday morning, then rehearsals through the week, then two performances on Saturday. And I loved it, and it was great.

So since we've moved back here, we go see the performance each summer, and this year was the first year that Elsie is old enough to do it. Now, Elsie--by nature--is super shy/anxious about a lot of things. And whenever we told her that she could be in the play, she never wanted to, because of her shyness.

In her kindergarten, though, they had a Christmas program, and that was her first "on-stage performance" situation that wasn't a Primary program, and she learned her songs and parts, and when the time came, she did an awesome job. So after that, she realized that performing is fun!

Since her school was run by the Yavapai-Apache nation, they commemorate the 1875 Exodus of the Yavapai and Apache people, which was when they were forced to walk from their land in the Verde Valley, 180 miles to the San Carlos reservation, before finally being allowed to come back 25 years later (at which point white people had taken over their land). So they do an Exodus Play at the kindergarten every year, and Elsie was in it.

She was a villager who cried when the soldiers came...

And rounded everyone up.

Then when they were taken to San Carlos, they weren't allowed to speak in their native language.

Then at the end, they were finally allowed to return home, and wore the camp dresses they had learned to make from petticoats that were discarded by officers' wives.

After the play, Jacob was glad Elsie made it back safe.

Elsie in her camp dress, which one of the Tribe members made for her to wear (but not to keep, unfortunately)

So that went really well, and after school, Elsie was super excited to do the Missoula play, which was "Robin Hood." They have a few main character parts, then a lot of group parts that are divided by size/age, and the smallest kids played skunks that keep the Royal Guards from catching Robin Hood.

As a plus, there were two boys from her Primary class, plus a girl from her school that were fellow skunks, and she had a blast!

So we love watching her perform, and we're glad she's getting a little farther out of her shell and expanding her horizons &c.

W for Wupatki

So, back last September, it was National Public Lands Day, which means free admission to all national parks, monuments, etc. And since there are tons of those type of places in Arizona, we decided to visit one of them, Wupatki National Monument, north of Flagstaff. 

Wupatki was the biggest Native American pueblo in the area (possibly a trade center?) about 800 years ago, but was abandoned by 1225. It's near the Sunset Crater Volcano (which will be another trip), which erupted around the year 1085, so on the way there, there are a bunch of lava fields:

And there's still tons of cinders covering most of the area.

So there's a visitor center, of course, with the typical Native American artifacts that you find in visitor centers:

And there are some cool displays of local bugs and critters

Jacob looooves spiders!

Because it was a special occasion, there was a park ranger with kidstuff activities, such as planting beans in a cup.

This is the main complex part of the pueblo, made of sandstone and mortar:

 

And there's a little arena down below

 

And a ball court of some kind--like you'd find in Mesoamerica--which was full of water from a recent rainstorm when we were there.

There's also a blowhole (which is actually more like a suckhole), which you can read more about here.

Sitting on the bench down in the arena

Elsie lies down in the cool, cool shade

They just incorporated a lot of the giant, immovable rocks into the structure; you can see the two sides of this rock on either side of the wall

Some of the sandstone looks like a huge multilayer cake