So...besides our trip to the Phoenix Zoo, what else did the girls and I do over our Spring Break (besides watch more TV than usual, of course)? Here's the rundown:
We went swimming a couple of times. Even though I live in Arizona, I am not a "swim all year round" person. I can't quite make that leap! However, by late March, I am usually ready to venture back into the pool...and so are the girls. They were begging me to go for days leading up to Spring Break, and I would have been a monster to refuse them. We ended up swimming twice during the break. Mostly, we stayed in the large pool, with one or two small trips to the toddler pool (which my two younger girls still love). The splash pad and waterslides won't be open until after school's out, so this was a pretty mellow, relaxed outing. It was great to sit poolside, trusting that the girls can take care of themselves! Aurora is still wearing a life-jacket, but we are hoping to "wean" her of it this summer. It feels so weird (and liberating!) to not have to watch my girls the entire time while swimming any more!
We picked, canned, and ate a lot of grapefruit. My mother-in-law Sandra has a nice grapefruit tree in her backyard, and it's usually loaded with fruit this time of year. She invited us to come pick some and take them off her hands. We were happy to oblige.
Coincidentally, I had just ordered a whole case of Ruby Red grapefruit from a local produce coop as well, so I was in the unusual situation of having more grapefruit than I knew what to do with. In fact, as of this writing, we
still haven't finished it all off!
However, another gift Sandy gave to me recently is a book of specialized home-canning recipes...and included in that book were several recipes for canning grapefruit. I decided to get a little experimental...
...and this was the result! It's a grapefruit-raisin compote, although it looks and tastes just like a marmalade. I actually overcooked it a bit, so it is pretty stiff; I actually have to heat it up in the microwave for a few seconds to make it smooth enough to spread on toast. But I was surprised at the nice blend of sour and sweet in the compote. It was a fun experiment, and I definitely want to try canning more grapefruit products in the future. In the meantime, I have a bunch of fresh grapefruit to eat.
We had a movie party at our house. Last year, about thirty-five girls crashed our house for a
Frozen-themed movie party. Everyone ate ice cream, huddled up together on our couches, and sang along with Anna and Elsa. All was well. We decided to throw another movie party on March 20th, this time showing the latest Disney hit,
Big Hero 6.
The turnout wasn't quite as big as the previous year (many friends from last year's party were out of town), but it was still a cozy group, including some friends that we don't see as much anymore, like Hyrum and Ella (their family moved to Corona de Tucson a year or two ago). Ice cream was eaten, popcorn was consumed, a good time was had by all who attended.
The girls went "camping" in the backyard. In past years, the girls have always liked sleeping outdoors during Spring Break. When they were very small, we managed to squeeze one or two of them into a tiny play tent. In more recent years, they opted to sleep on the trampoline. Now that we finally have a full-sized camp tent in good condition, they were able to stretch out in comfort (especially because we moved one of our futon mattresses outside for them to sleep on).
For the first time ever, all three girls managed to spend the whole night outside! It was a nice warm night and the girls cuddled up warmly with their stuffed animals and with each other. They read books by the light of our lantern, they told each other stories...it was delightful. Maybe we'll do it again before it gets too hot!
We went golfing...both the "mini" AND the "grown-up" varieties. Arizona is known for its great golf courses and golf climate; why not celebrate that by hitting the green?
In recent months, Nathan has become much more interested in golfing than he's ever been before. A lot of it has to do with the fact that he has been able to use his late father's membership at the Green Valley Country Club for several months, which has given him time to learn the ropes and hone his skills. He's even been able to use Glenn's clubs, so basically he's been golfing for free for almost six months now. He's become a bit drunk on the privilege, and has been heading out to twilight tee-offs with Sandy once or twice a month, as well as the driving range whenever else he can.
So, on an otherwise uneventful Saturday, Nathan took the whole family along to the driving range, so we could see him in action.
Not only that, he helped all the girls with their stroke motion!
Some of the girls were more excited than others. Lorelai was very eager to learn, but also got frustrated very easily once she realized how much finesse was involved. Celeste and Aurora took a few swings each, and then went off wandering and exploring the course.
This time, I even got into the golfing action! I think this was the first time I've ever officially taken a swing on an actual driving range.
Since no one had left-handed clubs, I had to practice driving right-handed. The results were about as you'd expect...not great. However, I did manage to get some air and some distance on a few of the balls. Sandy seemed impressed by my efforts, and said they were really good considering I was using my off hand. However, Sandy is a very polite, positive person, so perhaps she was just saying that to be nice? Either way, it's an experience I wouldn't mind repeating again someday...hopefully with lefty clubs! But don't tell the rest of the family...I'm not ready for the golfing lifestyle yet!
Several days later, I found some coupons I thought I'd lost months ago. They gave each girl a free round of miniature golf at
Funtasticks, a family entertainment center in Tucson. We had never been to Funtasticks before, so the girls were excited and willing to try it out.
It was a really fun course, full of cute waterfalls and clever holes that were
just challenging enough to keep Lorelai interested. She got impatient with herself in the early going (I kept telling her that a good short game in golf is a lot more difficult than you'd think!). However, somewhere on the back nine, she got more confident and improved considerably. I suspect she'll do even better next time! Celeste and Aurora, on the other hand, spent most of the time scooting their balls across the green with their putters or otherwise cheating their way through the course. They also complained about the heat and lost interest pretty fast. Maybe in another year or two, they'll have a little more fun golfing.
Funtasticks has a lot of other cool activities, such as laser tag, go-kart rides, bumper boats, an arcade, and several small children's amusement park rides. On this day, however, mini golf was to be our only activity (we had many other errands to run and lunch to eat). We definitely want to return to Funtasticks later, though, and take more time to let the kids do everything they'd like.
We hiked to Tanque Verde Falls with friends. This was probably the biggest "outing" of our Spring Break next to
our Phoenix Zoo trip. When I say "biggest," I mean "required the largest time commitment," at least in terms of planning and driving. After living in Arizona for almost twelve years, I was a little embarrassed to admit that I'd never even heard of
Tanque Verde Falls until just a couple of weeks ago. But a few friends of mine took their kids on a hike there and took some lovely pictures, and I got very interested in seeing it.
Originally, I'd planned on taking the girls up
Sabino Canyon, something I've done a few times in the past. There is a large creek in the canyon that is fun to wade and swim in during the spring, before it dries up in the summer. However, Tanque Verde Falls offered a very similar landscape (a hike down to a running creek), with one advantage; I didn't have to pay to take a tram to the water! So I talked to my friend Keri, who has children the ages of my children, and we decided to try out this hike.
Finding the trail head wasn't too difficult, although it was a good hour's drive away from home. Basically, you drive on Tanque Verde Road until it ends and becomes an unpaved trail. Then you keep going for another mile or two before coming across a primitive parking lot, with lots of potholes and no lined parking spaces. We parked our vans there, and then loaded up the kids and took them down the trail.
The trail was very beautiful this time of year; lots of bushes and trees are in bloom, and the weather is warm but not too hot. The trail itself had lots of loose gravel and several switchbacks, but it was nothing our families couldn't handle. To get to the bottom of the trail took no more than ten minutes.
We were all mildly disappointed to see that the falls themselves weren't there, at least not at this time of year. Ah, the perils of living in a dry desert! It's possible that if we had come after heavy rain, the falls would have been there. However, there was still a sizeable creek flowing, and lots of big smooth rocks on which to clamber around. The kids happily dove in.
I was happy to cool my tired feet in the chilly water as well.
Lorelai and Ryan, Keri's oldest son, took turns skipping and throwing pebbles across the water. The younger kids all took turns exploring, sunbathing, and playing pretend in the creek. After goofing off for a while, we broke out our lunches and refreshed ourselves.
There were a few minor hiccups in our trip to the falls; I tried to carry too many supplies across the rocks and dropped Lorelai's personalized water bottle, breaking it. I felt so terrible about that! A short time later, I was trying to carry too many things across the rocks with me, and I took a big tumble into the stream. In the process, my phone got wet and so I couldn't get any more photos of the rest of the trip. Thankfully, the phone wasn't permanently damaged, but all our towels got wet!
There wasn't a lot of shade in the creek bed, so after a while it started to get uncomfortably hot and my girls all started to get glowing complexions from the excess sun. So we reluctantly slipped our shoes back on and trudged back up the trail. However, since we were all nicely damp, this wasn't so bad! Poor Keri was getting a little burnt out from the hike, but we immediately drove to a McDonald's and each got a cool treat, which helped us all feel much better in short order.
In conclusion, I'd say that Tanque Verde Falls is definitely worth another visit. It was an easy, scenic hike, with lots of places for the kids to climb around, get wet, and explore. Next time, we might try visiting after heavy rainfall (or earlier in the year, after the winter precipitation), to see if the falls will be running at that point. In the meantime, it made for a fun afternoon out.
Just a couple more things!
We went to the zoo...again! No, not the Phoenix Zoo--the
Reid Park Zoo, where we are long-time members. We were running a bunch of errands up in Tucson, and we decided to drop in and say hello to a few of our animal friends. It wasn't a very long visit, but we stayed just long enough to hear the jaguars snarling angrily for several minutes (she must have been very hungry), and for the girls to pose inside this "eggshell" in the aviary:
Someday, I will have to post all the pictures I have of my girls sitting inside this egg. I sometimes feel like I have taken a picture of one or more of my daughters here on every single trip to the zoo! It would be fun to set all the pictures side by side, and see how tall, stretched-out, and grown-up my girls start to look as the time passes.
We participated in an Easter-egg hunt with our LDS ward. In the past, our church's annual Easter-egg hunt has been at a local park in our neighborhood. This time, probably wanting to have more control over the crowds and over the egg-hiding locations, our Primary presidency opted to hold the egg hunt outside an LDS meetinghouse. It turned out to be a great idea; there were a lot more creative places to hide the eggs, and the kids had fun exploring the new venue.
Since my girls are all of different ages, they were running willy-nilly everywhere and I didn't really get any pictures, except for all the older kids taking off at the "starting whistle," so to speak. Watching everyone scramble frantically to find a bunch of hidden eggs with candy in them never really gets old.
We went to see a movie with Celeste's Girl Scout troop. Normally, we don't go see too many movies in the spring-time; our theater-going peaks in the summertime and has a brief revival around the winter holidays. However, the girls (and myself!) were all excited to see the new live-action version of Disney's
Cinderella; the girls because of the fairy-tale aspects, and myself because of the great cast.
We all ended up enjoying the movie for a variety of reasons. I particularly thought the production design and costumes were gorgeous; it was so awesome to hear all the little girls in the audience audibly gasp every time Cinderella appeared in some new, sumptuous gown. My favorite part of the movie, though, was its message: "Always have courage, and be kind." That was the advice of Cinderella's mother for her daughter early in the film; and even though it's such a simple message it's very powerful. Such an attitude makes it so much easier to bear up our burdens and overcome obstacles in life. If everyone would follow this advice, I'm convinced the world would be a better place. It's a great message for everyone, boys and girls alike, and I hope it's a message my daughters take to heart.
The same day as the egg hunt and the movie (Saturday, March 28th), Lorelai and I attended the LDS General Women's Meeting. Immediately after that, we had dinner and games with our dear friends the Perrys, who are soon leaving us behind and moving to Colorado Springs. We have known the Perrys for nine years now; they are our oldest friends in Arizona, and although we are happy for their new adventure, we will miss them terribly. The one comfort in their moving is that they will be in Colorado, in a city we frequently pass through on the way to visit family! Hopefully this means we will still be able to visit with them once in a while.
After that jam-packed Saturday, it was a relief that I "only" had to lead the ward choir in a song on Sunday, plus attend a ward missionary meeting. With that, our eventful Spring Break came to a close and real life began again. We had a great time and kept ourselves busy, but in a fun way! Hopefully the next couple of months won't be too much for us; the last quarter of the school year can sometimes be a bit overwhelming. Here's to a successful spring!
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