Grandma's visit March 2016

We always love it when Grandma comes to visit! It was right on the heels of our Spring break. So, we had a marathon of fun, which to be honest isn't the best for me or the kids. There is always a little bit of fallout when our schedule is interrupted, but this time it resulted it quite of few weeks of fighting between sisters that we are just (hopefully) snapping out of.

 

I guess that is just life though. One day when my mom was here we visited the railroad park again. We had only been there one time before with my mom. We definitely felt the difference this time because Eliza is in full day school so she wasn't with us. 

Grandma was super generous and bought a lot of tickets. So Miriam was able to ride the train twice and the carousel three times. Holland got to ride too. She was pretty mesmerized by the carousel. I was feeling the beginning of motion sickness after the second ride. So we had to take a break before the third ride. 

We were all pretty tuckered out after that. So I got these sweet shots of my girls sleeping. Even Miriam who never takes a nap these days, took a nap. Oh we love naps! 

Starting to wake up.

Oh, good morning!

It was St. Patrick's Day while Grandma was here. We had two special meals for it. A green dinner with a rainbow fruit salad. And we made a traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner. It was fun to have Grandpa in Scottsdale who could come visit with all of our special meals. 

We also made some shamrock pops.

We also had a BBQ one evening at the park and a turkey dinner on Sunday. (We bought two turkeys at Thanksgiving and thought this would be a good time to use it while we had two extra people to enjoy it.)

Pretzels covered in tinted white (green) chocolate.

Pretty fun!

On Friday we had Eliza skip school and took her with us to the botanical gardens. Eliza wore her romper, pearls, and pink sun hat. It was adorable. All three girls are adorable though. 

 

The cacti were starting to bloom. Miriam wasn't in the best mood for a lot of it, but it was still beautiful to see the gardens. One funny moment was when we were trying to find a shady place to sit down and discretely eat our lunch. We borrowed a couple of chairs near a couple of other people who looked like they were on their lunch break. Turns out that we couldn't have picked a busier spot. Over the next 15 minutes an entire wedding party congregated there. I wish the people would have told us that when we asked to snag the chairs. The wedding wasn't actually preformed there, but the entire time we were there, more people kept showing up and they stood around chatting. Don't mind us! I am just over here issuing threats to my daughters to eat their lunch. Pretty cool.

On Saturday we went to Saguaro National Park again. But this time we went to the east side where we haven't visited before. Once again, I am impressed with how beautiful the desert can be.

I don't know if this picture truly does it justice. The rugged rocky ground, towering saguaros, blooming flowers, bright pops of color from the ocotillo, and the prickly pears that are everywhere!

We didn't have a vehicle that could accommodate all of us, so we borrowed my dad's suburban. It doesn't have working a/c, but fortunately it didn't matter that much because of the cool weather. It was nice that we could all ride together.

I really enjoyed this day. I love when John can come with us on activities and adventures. He really is the only person who when I am around him, my stress level always goes down. Every time. What a blessing that man is to me.

Sweet Holland pooped through three different outfits this day. Good times baby.

My girls pretending to be Saguaros. They came up with the Saguaro dance at this time too.

We went on a couple of different walks/hikes.

On these walks there were many rocks that were collected, yearned for, and then discarded. We love rocks at our house!

I love seeing all of the different chollas and cacti. It is so cute hear the girls express delight at seeing some kind of plant. They can actually correctly identify a lot of them.

We hiked out to see the ruins of an old homestead. ('Ruins' is being generous. There were just the cornerstones left.) It is astounding that people could live in this harsh climate without modern conveniences (i.e. a/c, running water, pest control!). 

These sticks were their hiking staffs.

The girls were so good on this mile long hike. There were different activities for the kids to do posted on signs along the trail. Find three signs of wildlife, etc.  

Holy cow! We are a family of five!! They were all so good on the hike.

Little Holly eventually fell asleep.

Eliza wanted a picture taken with this hedgehog cactus.

We did another hike near the evening. What a lovely day! We had dinner and watched the sunset over the valley!

One memorable moment was when we stopped to use the pit toilet. I needed to go so Eliza and Miriam went with me. Eliza had her pink hat still on from the walks and hikes. She was sitting on the potty getting ready to go #2 and looked up at the ceiling. Whoops! Her hat slid right off of her head into the pit toilet! This is gross, but it wasn't that far away. Eliza was trying to think of a way to get it. I told her that I would gladly pay for 20 hats rather than have to retrieve that hat. The saddest part for her was that she still had to go #2. Of course, she noticed all of the signs that say, "Don't put trash in the pit, it is extremely difficult to remove." We didn't mean to!!

It was especially fun to see the young saguaros that grow under the Palo Verdes and compare them to the one we just transplanted in our yard. (More on that later.)

Eliza wants to say, "We found a saguaro baby hidden in the rocks. We thought it was cool, but a little dangerous when it grew up."

Here is a video of The Saguaro Dance.