Tucson

This has been a week full of surprises. I decided at the last minute to drive down to Tucson for a family dinner. It is a long way to Tucson.  I broke the drive up into two days, staying the first night in Redlands, California.  The first day went well, and we made it down south fairly easily.

Then the kids and I hit the road again on Friday, pulling into Tucson in the afternoon. We met my mom and siblings at Funtasticks, and the kids were able to run around and do something that did not involve a minivan.  It was lots of fun: go-karts, carnival rides, and skeeball. 

After that, we all headed over to our hotel, the JW Marriott. It is a super fancy 5 star hotel, tucked up into beautiful saguaro hills to the west of town. It has been pretty darn cold down here, but everyone went swimming that evening.  The pool was heated so it could not be passed up, except by me.  I left the swimming to Jamie, Leah, Mike, Cody, and my kids. I took the pictures.

When it was time for everyone to leave and for the kiddos to go to sleep, Catye decided at the last minute to stay at the hotel with Heather and me.  I thought that was a bit strange, but I was deliriously tired and was like, whatever!  So the three of us sat in the hallway waiting for the kids to all fall asleep.  We were talking and playing games on our phones.  And the two of the them had some kind of joke between them. They kept twittering with each other and I was ignoring them.  But when I looked down the hallway and saw Rinar walking towards me, my jaw just about dropped to the floor.  My rascally husband flew down to be with us for the weekend.  He still has to work, but just came for the dinner so that we could all be there. Catye was really sticking around to drive back to my parents house with Heather.

But boy, was I surprised!!

And the surprises just kept on rolling in.

We got to the church on Saturday around lunch for our get-together. Rinar and I pulled into the parking lot and looked over at Christi's car, and I'll be gosh darned.  I could not believe who was in the front seat: Grandma Wilma!  What!?! Christi had flown her in from St. George so that she wouldn't miss the dinner either.  It was pretty darn cool.

This is everyone in our family.  I can't even remember the last time we were all together. It has been ages. We had to get a family picture.

And all the women...

This is Christi's Mya. What a cutie.

Christi and Thomas brought a pinata, and the kids had a lot of fun whacking at the thing. We also played a riveting game of Duck Duck Goose and Curses. Leah's family was in town, and they all came to the dinner, as well as Leah's brother Roy's in-laws. Whew, that can get confusing.  But they all came and feasted on Mexican food, joining in on the celebration. The more the merrier.

We went back to the hotel for a second round of swimming, this time with Thomas and his kids.

It was much better to swim while there was still some daylight. It was not nearly as freezing cold as it was the night before. 

Today, my parents and siblings came back to the hotel to hang out and we also were able to get a few more pictures with the beautiful scenery. Julia was really happy to see Grandpa.

We went to church with mom and then hung out at their house for a little while.  Rinar headed back to the airport and I headed up to Scottsdale. 

After all, I have a long drive back!

Oh, Eli!

And...some days, you just don't want to eat black bean soup.

This was THAT day.

Some Snapshots

We went to Red Robin on Friday night.  Eli and Harry thoroughly enjoyed the ketchup. All other food items were just apparatus for moving ketchup from the plate to the mouth.

Why do I buy them food? I think you can get ketchup for free.

I told Julia I wanted to take her picture. She gave me a lot of different angles, but the facial expression never changed.  What kind of a face would you call this?

Harry modeled a hat for me for about 0.000687 seconds.  Thanks, Harry. You look fabulous.

Farewell to Adam

Adam left last Sunday, but not before he cooked us an English staple of pasties. It is a meat pie. It was quite delicious, despite the fact that I messed up the pie crust.  We enjoyed it anyway. But we especially enjoyed having him be a part of the family for the week. The kids loved him and we were able to do lots of fun things together.  

We got Adam hooked on a couple of our favorite shows, Burn Notice and Storage Wars.

He took a picture with the kids and then put it in a frame for us to keep.  Since I never get rid of stuff that is framed, I guess he is enshrined forever.

Later, it was time for bed.  I realized I had no idea where Zach was. He wasn't in his usual locations.  I finally found him zonked out on the couch. He had been reading a Fablehaven book. There are 5 in the series and he rereads them everyday. But it was a long day, with soccer camp and everything, so I guess he was just wiped out.

Benihana Take Home

Cousin BJ called and said he was coming to our house to cook us dinner. I didn't really realize what he meant, but he really came to our house to make us dinner. Lindsay and her kids were over, as we were preparing for our yard sale, and she didn't feel like cooking after all the work we had done. So, she was going to take her kids out to dinner. I invited her to stay for dinner instead.

"Hey, Rinar's cousin is coming here to cook us dinner and I am sure there will be plenty of food. You might as well stay."

So, uh...yeah. My instincts were right about there being enough food. BJ and his dad Jerome stormed into the house, broke out the knives and pans and started cooking. They really went all out making us two delicious dishes, like two chefs from Benihana's. Lindsay and I just sat at the island and watched them cook and cook. They were fast and efficient, cleaned up all their stuff, gave us a hug and kiss and said goodbye. Then they left.

All we were left with was this...

We sat down to a feast and Lindsay and I just ate and ate that shrimp dish. Rinar is allergic to shrimp, hence there was a pork dish as well.

Yum-o!

I don't think there are two nicer guys on the planet. They are both totally awesome and it was great having them at our house, even for a little while. Top-notch.

Then today we had our big yard sale.

It was a big success. Four families and lots and lots of stuff. Now all that stuff is gone.

Goodbye stuff!

St. George Arts Festival Trip

We had a fun weekend in St. George for Easter. Rinar didn't work on Friday so we headed up to spend time with the family and to go to the arts festival. St. George has a wonderful arts festival. I really enjoyed perusing the booths and I even indulged in a few prints for our house. We drove over there with Grandma. We were hungry and headed to the food court and she just cruised the exhibits. The only problem was that we couldn't find her later on. We looked and looked. Finally my cell phone rang and it was Grandma calling from home. That's right, people. She walked home. My arthritic-ridden Grandma couldn't find it and hobbled home. I know I will be getting the granddaughter of the year for that, huh? She also lent me her cute blue sweater and I forgot to give it back to her. I hope it doesn't get too cold up there. I am just racking up the brownie points with her these days, I tell you.

At least I have cute kids that she can squeeze.


Eli had fun at the festival also. He has a cute little habit of holding beverages in the crux of his arm. He will walk around for hours holding it just like that. What a sweet little thing he is...most of the time.


Here is Zach in a silly picture.

We can't forget Raef.


Then we had dinner with Rinar's parents and the whole family. They have a pecan tree in their backyard and Raef went to town collecting pecans. He gathered an entire grocery bag full of them. Then he was cracking them and eating them.


So the only logical thing to do would be to make a pie...pecan of course.

I have to tell you what happened on our way home. We left unusually early on Sunday, around noon. I was anxious to get home and it is a pain to load and unload five kids all the time, so we pulled into Vegas around 2pm. I happened to look at the caller id and I noticed that there was a Hawaiian phone number that called two times in three minutes. I wasn't sure who it was, but I figured it could be a family member passing through at the airport. It happens all the time. If they have a big layover, we will go get them so they can hang out with us since the airport is very close to our house.

I call the number, which I usually don't do, and it was Beth, Rinar's cousin. Yes, she was really stuck at the airport... 16 hour layover due to a little miscalculation on her part. Just remember that Hawaiian Airlines uses military time! Anyways, we rescued her and she was soooooo happy. It was fun hanging out with her. She even got to take a three hour nap on our couch. I took her back to the airport at 12am.

There you go, Beth. Now you have made my blog as well! Make sure to tell your mom.

Welcome Home Jamie

Two days after Christmas we drove to Phoenix to have a family dinner at Heather's apartment complex and welcome Jamie back from his mission. He came home two days before Christmas. It was so great to see him and we had a wonderful time together as a family. This is a picture of all of my parents' grandkids. I have three and my sister Christi has four. What a crew, huh?

We took some facebook pictures of ourselves. Glamorous, huh?

Then we made sure to get some family shots. I put Thomas' facebook picture in the wrong collage, darn it. I don't feel like changing it, but it would have been better in the collage above this one.

Here we are (except for Cody). These are my sisters and brother in a rare family photo.

After our delicious enchilada dinner, we went to Cody's game on the other side of town. Here his is after he stole a bunch of bases and scored a run.

It was really cold in Phoenix, holy cow! I pulled out every blanket from my car and spread them around for everyone to use.