Archive for the ‘sightseeing’ Category
Weekend fun
This past weekend, we went to Heritage Square in downtown Phoenix and had lunch at a Victorian tearoom and then toured a Victorian house built in 1895. The girly grandchildren had “Children’s Tea” – they loved it! I had a chai latte (which I haven’t had since prepregnancy) and *delicious* veggie sandwhich. Yummmmm.
The tour was wonderful – it was supposed to be a 30 minute guided tour, but took an hour because the kids were so engaged and had a kabillion questions.
Here’s Jake, playing airplane with Mira…
Grandma so happy to see her baby! In the two months since she last saw him he went from barely creeping and rolling over to mobile, into EVERYTHING baby. She’s amazed at the changes!
Grandma Karen left yesterday. What fun, but a whirlwind! She’s back next month for a week – we’ll miss her in the meantime.
Here are a few pictures that I snagged off HER camera, which is cool because she caught some shots I would usually not get!
Here are a few from the Sunday afternoon tea party:
Waiting for the tea, was getting boring. I love this shot LOL – it shows perfectly how restless they were getting. (The littlest one is their three year old cousin, my SIL’s daughter)…
Ah, now they have “tea” (which was, in fact, hot cocoa lol)…
I was looking at Bailey at the “chldren’s table” that day and thinking how close she is to outgrowing that. This was probably one of the last occasions where she’s going to be one of the Little Girls. And HM is right on her heels. Wahhhhhh.
Not a fabulous pic, but a RARE candid of Scott, me AND Jake!
Here we are sitting down to dinner…
I love this photo of me and my boy. 
His silly side shows through a little here – he’s wearing Jake’s hat… Jake is technically in the photo, too – he’s on my back! 
And the gratuitous baby shot! He’s cruising around the outside of his walker (brakes engaged!)
Apache Trail adventure
For the third weekend in a row, we had a fun outdoors family excursion.
On Sunday, we loaded up the van and spent the day on the Apache Trail.
We had lunch at Tortilla Flats. We white knuckled through Fish Creek Canyon, a scary part of the drive that included tight hairpin curves, sheer drops off the edge of a one lane dirt road and… no guardrail!!
We stopped to check out Theodore Roosevelt Dam, which was a pretty impressive feat of engineering and then for the best part of the day: Tonto National Monument – a very cool ruin site of ancient cliff dwellings.
That cave is a 1/2 mile hike up a (paved) path – 350 vertical feet! <huff puff> with baby in sling. Hear me roar! I had to pace myself by walking very, very slowly. And I did not appreciate any of my children coming to a dead stop in front of me; maintaining a slow, steady slog was essential. This trail was *steep*.
Tonto National Monument consists of the ruins of two cliff dwellings established by the Salado Indians in about 1300 AD. The southeast-facing settlements were built quite high up a steep hillside within well-protected natural caves overlooking the Tonto Basin, which is now flooded forming Theodore Roosevelt Lake, though originally the Salt River flowed through the Basin which was therefore well irrigated and fertile. As with many other ancient peoples of the Southwest, the Salado appear to have abandoned their villages suddenly, early in the fifteenth century, for reasons which are not known.
The two-story ruin originally had 19 rooms; these are quite well-preserved and it is permitted to walk around the inside. Originally, the only access was by ladder leading to an entrance at the far left of the structure, which made the settlement easy to defend.
Here’s a pic of Mira doing the hike up to the ruins:
Here we are in the ruins:
See the wee little parking lot way down there??
Gorgeous Arizona:
The least enjoyable part of the trip was the drive through Globe-Miami – a copper mining town. Strip mining has really defaced the mountains in this area.
This is an interesting town, established in 1876 after a large globe-shaped boulder of silver was found nearby. Both copper and silver were later mined extensively, and several old buildings remain from the boom times around the turn of the century. A few miles west, huge copper ore extraction operations still continue around Miami, and US 60 passes several miles of tailings ponds and spoil heaps.
Visiting a ghost town (Goldfield)
Another gorgeous weekend in Arizona!
Yesterday was devoted to errands… first, we got the oil changed in my van, and while we were waiting, I snapped this lovely shot. 
Also, I ordered a new pair of prescription sunglasses that are oh-so-cool and superflattering Guccis. I can’t wait until the come in!
Today we spent the afternoon in Goldfield – a restored ghost town (read: tourist trap) just east of Apache Junction in the Superstition foothills.
We had an early dinner in the Saloon, checked out the live reptile exhibit, had some ice cream and rode a narrow gauge train. Oh, and we saw a gunfight!
Funny little touristy experience that is only about 20 minutes from our house. We’ll go back sometime for the goldmine tours and maybe a trail ride…
Of course, some pix!
We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo
There is no better day for the Phoenix Zoo than superbowl Sunday – the weather is usually comfortable and the place is practically deserted!
We had all the kids today, plus Superbowl Sunday (in 2005, that was Feb 6) is the anniversary of our first date (three years ago) and we chose the zoo as our first meeting place.
We also introduced our children to each other at the zoo, later that spring.
When Scott first saw me walking (so proudly lol) into the zoo with my children that first time, he said, “ahh, there you are – with your little ducklings all in a row.” So sweet. I feel all melty just thinking about it again. ♥
Here’s a pic from that day, almost three years ago:
Two years ago, when we were celebrating the first anniversary of our first date, we went to the zoo sans children, rented one of those bicycle surreys and debated whether or not we should have a baby together while we cycled around the zoo. I went off the pill mid-February and the TTC fun began.
I say, we sure have done a lot of living these past three years!!
Here are some pix from the day we had today. I can’t BELIEVE what a good time we had. Not one meltdown. Okay, Andrew really didn’t want to be there, but he was a good sport in spite of it. Yes, HM is wearing shorts. It was a gorgeous day!
Bailey, HM and Mira:
Weekend trip to Tuscon Zoo
The weather here in AZ was PERFECT this weekend and we decided to load up the girls and take a road trip down to Tucson's Reid Park Zoo. (Phoenix Zoo members get in free
The girls and I had never been to Tuscon, so it was neat to see some of that city. It's much hillier and prettier in that area than I imagined.
Much like Phoenix, it's bordered to the north (and east?) with a large mountain range. A very impressive mountain range, too – the Catalinas – with a peak of over 9,000 feet, that range gets an average 180" snow per year. On our way back home, we drove by the entrance to the Catalina State Park. We're very interested in exploring that ara someday.
What a relaxing day we had. We didn't rush out the door, but took our time. Regardless of weather or size of zoo, we knew that between my third trimester endurance levels and typical kid behavior, we'd have maybe a 2-3 hour window of opportunity at the zoo anyway. So we headed out around 8:30 am, stopped at BK for a fast food breakfast and then hit I-10 for the two hour drive. I-10 sucks.
We loved the zoo! We're regulars at the Phoenix Zoo, so it was a fun and different contrast. Reid Park Zoo is a small, community zoo. It wasn't too crowded – nice to see the exhibits without all the jostling crowds. Also, the habitats were significantly smaller than you see in the larger metro zoos, so that means we were able to FIND the animals in nearly all the exhibits.
Anyway, it was such a small zoo that we saw the whole thing in two hours. Perfect! We were ready to go by then, anyway. We had a late lunch at PF Changs and took the back way (through Florence/Queen Creek) home. In all, a really nice day.
For the I-Can't-Take-Them-Anywhere file
The most intriguing exhibit, as far as the girls were concerned, was that of the polar bears.
On the glass of the enclosure, a small placard explained that you might find the polar bears engaged in mating behavior: nuzzling and nibbling, rubbing against each other, potentially we'd even see some mounting. If the zoo was lucky, they would breed and later there would be a little polar bear cub.
So we approached the exhibit, along with another mom and her preschooler. All my girls had to, of course, carefully read the sign out loud and observe, that yes! The bears were nuzzling and nibbling and rubbing and… "Oh look, he wants to mount! They're going to mount!"
"Okay, girls, let's move on… Yes, now. N O W."
(Anyway, our enjoyable Saturday was followed by an even more relaxing Sunday – including a visit from Andrea and McK for brunch. The girls had a good time playing with their baby cousin. The rest of the day we just hung out at home, needing to go nowhere.) It felt soooo good, that downtime.
Pregnancy progress: Sibling bonding
Here are a couple sweet belly bonding snaps from our visit to Tuscon's Reid Park Zoo yesterday afternoon (more about that and pix in a separate post later).
Mom to 4 kids and 2 stepkids, I am a writer writing in the heart of chaos. I am the co-founder and former editor of 
