Finishing Up March, With Adventures Both Outdoors And In

Our biggest adventure in March, probably, was our family's awesome camping trip in Grand Canyon National Park. But we had time after that for a couple more adventures in nature...and other places besides. Since I am waaay behind on blogging, I hope to list them all off quickly!

By the time the second week of our Spring Break rolled around, we were mostly recovered from our camping trip and looking for something else to do. As luck would have it, our friends the Powells also had the week off of school, and we decided to go on a small hike with them in Madera Canyon.

The Powells moved to nearby Vail a couple of years ago, so we don't get to see them as often as we used to. But their kids (particularly Hyrum, who is Lorelai's age, and Ella, who is Celeste's age) are good buddies with ours and it is always fun to see them again. It also helps that the Powell family is very outdoors-y; they love camping, hiking, picnicking, and anything else that gets them out of the house. After meeting up with them for a picnic lunch, we hiked for a short time up the canyon creek.

There wasn't much water in the creek at that time of year, but that didn't stop my girls from stripping down to their swimsuits and splashing around whenever they could. Tiffany, the mom of the large Powell clan, was a great trouper for escorting six kids along a mostly-unpaved path, while being 20+ weeks pregnant herself! I wish I could be as tough as Tiffany; just herding around my three kids always wears me out.

The Powells have lived in the Sahuarita/Green Valley area for so many years that they know all the "good spots" to have fun outdoors. But there was one spot the well-traveled Powells had never before visited...the hidden waterfall at the mouth of Madera Canyon! Our family was lucky enough to introduce them to it.

We almost couldn't believe they had never been there before (although we'd only discovered it ourselves last year). The hike to the waterfall is a very short one, so both families were game to try it out.

 

My girls, having visited before, were quick to strip to their swimsuits and splash around in the pool. The Powell kids, who didn't come with swimsuits, contented themselves with soaking their feet and finding some local wildlife for my kids to play with.

 

 

 

These tiny toads kept my girls fascinated for several minutes, before it was time to hike back to our cars and head home. It is always great to see the Powells; we miss seeing them regularly, and hope we get to touch base with them sometime this summer.

Just one day later, we were outdoors again...but this time, we were in the middle of thousands of people, watching an outdoor pageant in Mesa, Arizona. It was the Mesa LDS Temple's annual Easter pageant, something Nathan and I had only attended once before--when I was pregnant with Lorelai.

The stage is that shadowy lump in the middle of the picture. We were still able to see everything, though!

The pageant weekend doesn't usually coincide with our Spring Break, so we thought it would be a nice opportunity to take the kids to see it. We also invited Grandma Barrett, who had also never seen the show. We went out to dinner in Mesa beforehand, then found some seats and settled down to watch the show.

The pageant started late, so not all the kids made it through the whole thing. Celeste fell asleep at the very end, so she missed the triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ, complete with a crowd of heavenly angels and the actor playing Christ suspended on wires in the air! She was bummed to have missed it at first, but then she just fell asleep in the car on the way home so it didn't really matter anyway. The other two girls liked it fine, but I don't know if it will be an experience they always cherish or not. In any case, we were all happy to have the experience together. Perhaps in a few more years, we will take them again when they are a bit older and can more easily pick out the scriptural references.

Spring Break ended with a flurry of small things...several play dates, a ward service auction, a friend's baptism, another friend's birthday party, and finally an Easter Sunday dinner with Sandy Barrett. But right after school began, Celeste and I had one more nice "outdoor adventure" with her second-grade class...

...we all visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum on a field trip. I was a chaperone for the day, and I got to hang around Celeste and her friend Skylar for a few hours while they checked out all kinds of neat creatures.

New to the Desert Museum was this small aquarium area, mostly featuring sea life found in either Baja California or the Gulf Coast. There was also a "touching pool," and the kids got to pet starfish and other tiny creatures. It was a pretty neat addition to the museum, and Celeste really enjoyed it.

We also had to keep an eye out for the prairie dog exhibit. Each kid in Celeste's class had been assigned to do a report on one desert animal that month. Celeste's assigned animal was the black-tailed prairie dog, so she was very interested in seeing many of them up close.

Speaking as someone who saw a lot of prairie dogs in my childhood (growing up in Colorado, they were everywhere), these were some fat critters! Living in captivity probably has that effect on them. But that did make them pretty adorable, I have to say.

The girls also got to see some really nice views (the location of the Desert Museum really is lovely)...

...and they got to see a lot of wildlife on this particular trip (probably due to the lovely mild weather that day, a large proportion of the animals were outside and active).

Kind of hard to see, but this is a mother hummingbird feeding her baby as it sits in the tiny nest!

 

 

I actually had to leave the field trip a bit early, due to piano students arriving at our home, but I was still really grateful I'd had the opportunity to go with Celeste. I try to attend at least one field trip for each child each school year, and I'm glad I got that opportunity. But with standardized testing week soon to appear, more field trips were soon to come!