Fun at Fiesta Sahuarita in 2015

Time to get caught up...at least a little bit!!

So here we are in late October, and here I am still blogging about September...or at least, the very end of September. October does this to me every year! With Fall Break, my birthday, and Halloween all at once, life just becomes too much to deal with. Hopefully I'll be able to sneak in several short updates over the next several weeks.

When last we spoke, dear readers, our family was getting into the swing of our fall schedule. Things were going well, we were feeling good, life was going all right. And as it so often does in the fall, life starts to fill up with one event after another. I am starting to think of it in my mind as the "beginning of the end"...that is, the "end" of the calendar year, which always seems to come into my life like an avalanche!

Fiesta Sahuarita, the yearly party thrown by our lovely little community, is starting to feel like the official "beginning of the end" to me. It's always held on the last Saturday of September; it is held to honor the anniversary of Sahuarita's founding, but it also serves as an unofficial welcome to the fall season as well. Ironic, because almost every single year, it is always really hot on Fiesta Sahuarita day!

This year was no exception. Ugh...the heat was a little overwhelming! Thankfully, one of the most prominent parts of Fiesta Sahuarita is their water park, which is filled with a variety of large inflatable water slides and a few other wet and wild activities. This is usually where the kids and I spend the bulk of our time at the Fiesta, and even though the shade is practically nonexistent, there is at least a lot of water around to keep us cool.

Every year, the Fiesta has at least one really tall waterslide for the more adventurous visitors. Most years, it has been a 25-foot-tall behemoth that takes up most of a soccer field. This year, the festival planners really went all out and ordered this monstrosity:

This slide was over 50 feet tall (that's over two stories high!). It featured a very steep drop, followed by a thrust-out bottom, which sent people literally flying several feet through the air, before finally landing on the soft inflated cushion at the bottom.

I like to try some new things out, but I confess I chickened out when I saw this slide. My deeply ingrained fear of falling from high places won out over my desire to have a new adventure. My kids (thankfully) were also put off by the slide. We all took one look and said, "NOPE." Were we ashamed of our cowardice? Maybe a bit...but we still had plenty of fun trying out other things instead!

This year, I ended up being the designated place-holder in some of the longer lines...like the line for these hamster-ball flotation devices. This activity has been featured at the Fiesta for the last two or three years now, but we have never had the patience to wait. This year, I told the kids I would hold their place in line, so they could go try out the other rides first. It was a system that seemed to work; the girls all had fun trying out a variety of water slides, while I waited a long time to get to the front of the line. But it finally paid off in the end!

At one point, one of the spheres got a puncture, and a worker had to haul it out of the water and try to fix it. This slowed the line down even more, but we managed to hold out until the very end. Loading and unloading people from the inflatable spheres was an awkward, noisy affair...it involved heavy zippers and leaf blowers to inflate the spheres.

 

The girls all covered their ears and cowered away. FEAR THE LEAF-BLOWERS!!

But it was all fun and games once they were inside the hamster balls and floating along the pool.

 

They tried to "go to war" with one another a few times, but it ended up looking like nothing more than crazed flailing. Oh well, they all had fun anyway.

 

After our water-park hi-jinks were all done, we decided to go check out the rest of the festival, and see what other activities were available for the girls (free activities, mind...we are cheapskates). The girls seem to be mostly "over" jumping castles; they barely gave them a second glance as we passed them by. However, they were all excited to try out the kiddee Ferris wheel...

...and they were even more excited to try out the climbing wall! All three girls gave it a try, with varying levels of success.

 

 

 

Celeste got a pretty tough side of the wall to try (it had a large overhang that she couldn't reach around), but she and Aurora both did well enough for a first try. Lorelai did even better; she actually managed to get a little over halfway up the wall without any help!

They all complained when it was time to unharness themselves from the wall; Lorelai in particular insisted that if she could just have one more chance, she'd be able to get all the way up! (of course, she said that several times...) But we had to make way for other aspiring climbers to have their chance. It was time to grab a quick snack and head home...

What better way to cap off a hot afternoon outdoors than with sorbet?

After getting home, Lorelai and I quickly changed clothes; we had to drive to the church building that night, in order to watch the LDS Church's General Women's Broadcast. The first year we did this, it was kind of difficult; Lorelai had a hard time sitting still during the whole broadcast, and would fidget constantly and occasionally complain to me of her boredom. This time, however, I noticed definite improvement in her behavior. She brought a quiet puzzle activity to occupy her hands, and she actually listened to President Uchtdorf's message with more interest than I'd ever seen her express before. Although I know she isn't fully following these broadcasts yet, I am starting to have hope that she will get more out of them as time goes on.

Of course, by the time it all got finished, it was 8:30 at night, and neither of us had had a proper dinner. So off to the grocery store we went, frantically looking for something to calm our growling stomachs. We were both pretty slap-happy by this point, so we were having a lot of fun giggling uncontrollably at each other. We crashed pretty hard into our beds that night, I can tell you!

So it ended up being a busy last Saturday in September, but a good one. We had a rowdy, fun afternoon, followed by some good spiritual bonding with my eldest. I was pretty excited to realize that for the next Women's Broadcast, I'll have both Lorelai and Celeste with me! I look forward to that night (not least because it will be in late March, and not in conflict with Fiesta Sahuarita again!)