A is for Arizona

I abandoned Nate over Memorial Day Weekend and flew off to Arizona to visit my pal Jill. Jill showed me a great time. I got to meet all of her fun friends, check out her cool ward, and chill out at her condo. Jill and I had a great time just hanging out like old times. (Beware there will be a lot of self-taken pictures in this post.)

One of the greatest things about vacationing with Jill is the food. We made the famous chocolate chip cookies. We ate at Cafe Rio, The Barrio Cafe, and The Wildflower Cafe. We also made some fabulous lunches, really tasty eggs, and great waffles. We even packed an awesome lunch on the day of our hike.



Jill and I also went on some adventures. I was all for seeing some desert flora, so we went to the Botanical Gardens. A few times a week the Botanical Gardens holds a flashlight tour where the gardens stay open late and visitors can move from station to station learning about the flora and fauna of the desert. We learned about the scream of the Woodhouse Toad, a really enormous beetle, king snakes (which we got to touch), tarantulas and scorpions. We also learned all about Mesquite tree, Saguaro cacti, and Palo Verde trees. Jill could pretty much survive in the desert now.

These cacti above were really hairy--they are called the Old Man Cactus. (Note the flashlight in my hands. We are prepared to learn on the tour.) We thought the cacti below looked like big, prickly beach balls.

And these cacti look like snakes. Below, Jill and I pose after dark on the flashlight tour.

On Monday Jill and I took a roadtrip. Our first stop was Montezuma's Castle, which is an ancient cliff dwelling built by the Sinagua tribe. The 20 room, 5-storey structure is built into a recess in a white limestone cliff about 70 feet above the ground. The Sinagua (Spanish for without water) began to built the structure around 1125 A.D. and lived there until the early 1400s when they left for unknown reasons, and the tribe virtually vanished; there is no Sinagua tribe today. The name, Montezuma's Castle, is a misnomer. Early explorers thought it was constructed by the Aztecs.
Next we made our way to Tuzigoot, another Sinagua ruin. This was particularly exciting for Jill because she had been involved in a case that dealt with land disputes around the area. Tuzigoot was built on a big mesa, and visitors can climb up and see the ruins up close. You even get to go inside one of the rooms. In its heyday about 300 people lived at Tuzigoot--about the size of my high school class. Here's Jill with the rooms and the valley beyond. And then the two of us with the ruins behind.

Just like Montezuma's Castle, these structures were begun about 1000 A.D. and then abandoned around 1400. During the Great Depression they were excavated with funding from the C.W.A and W.P.A.

Next stop: Sedona. Jill and I went on a hike among the red rocks. It was beautiful and so fun to hike. Here we are getting started.

Gazing at the view from the top of the climb. Jill looks so tough and prepared with her Camelback.

We saw a Mickey Mouse cactus and some pretty awesome rock formations.



What fun! Jill, thanks for all the good times. Here's to 11 years of friendship!

The Big S, The Big W, and the Big Z

When Jen and the kids were here, we were all really impressed with how well the kids did with the cat, and, more especially, how well the cat did with the kids. Zephyr was a big draw for Savannah and Will. They LOVED her. They followed her around the house; they called her (which didn't really work because she's a cat); they played with her. Zephyr was so into them too. She wanted to be right in the thick of things. As you can see, she's like a third kid. Zephyr was really nice to the kids too. She didn't ever scratch or bite them, and she even put up with Will's body-slams. In the process we discovered that Zephyr is like an 18-month-old. Will and Zephyr have a lot of common interests--they hate when any doors are shut; they hate when people leave them; they like the same toys; they'll eat off the floor. At one point, the two of them were even chewing on separate ends of the same toy. So, I think The Big S, The Big W, and The Big Z all made some new friends.

Stephenie Meyer

Some of my friends and I are just a little obsessed with Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series. So when we found out she was coming to Kansas City on a book tour for her newest novel, The Host, we decided to fully embrace our nerdiness and started planning. We got our tickets, we made our shirts, and we figured out rides. Thanks to all of our great planning (props to Karen and Shannon) we got awesome seats--five rows from the stage. The ten of us took up a whole row. While we waited for the event to start we talked to some of the other fans. We met one group that came for a Young Women's activity. Lots of people had shirts, but we got quite a few compliments on ours. Several strangers even asked for our pictures because they loved our shirts so much. Here are some pictures of the Vampire Girls.


All TEN of us. Back Row: Karen, Trina, Shannon, Maren. Front Row: Carolyn, Jen, Michelle, Leiann, Me, Kim.

Here are the early arrivals before we got into the auditorium. And below Jen, Trina, and I save seats.

Stephenie Meyer talked for about half an hour. She did a reading from her newest (non-Vampire) book and answered some of the questions that had been submitted by the audience. She seems like a really impressive person to me--really nice and down to earth. She talked about how she never aspired to become an author but that once she started writing she couldn't stop. After her talk we waited to get our books signed. It took a long time. I got my book signed around 9:30 and the last person in our group got hers signed around 10:30. All the waiting was totally worth it.