Hot Air Balloon Ride with Mom

A few years ago, Mom expressed the desire to go in a hot air balloon.  At that point, I decided that I would make sure that happened for her.  It took a while, but October was the month! Scheduling was a bit crazy, but I was off for a few days, so we planned our ride for a Thursday morning.

We see hot air balloons over two of my siblings' houses all the time, so we wanted to fly over their houses and have them go out in the yard so we could wave at them!  Sounds like fun, huh?  When I called to book our trip, though, I was told that, in October, the winds over their homes were a bit unpredictable and the winds over North Phoenix were better--and it was also a prettier view, so North Phoenix, it was.

We got up early and headed to the parking lot where a van would pick us up for our ride.  We got there early, which is nice because I got lost--which is pretty normal for me in a new place.  The directions we had were a bit interesting--OK, I will just say it --they were not right!  I don’t usually get too stressed about being lost, but I was a bit stressed this day because we were on a deadline.  I shouldn’t have worried.  We got there before our van showed up, then waited with the other early birds while the rest of the group showed up.  

We were driven to our launch site, which was pretty much out in the middle of an empty spot of desert.  We got out of the van and watched the balloons get filled.  

Then we got to climb in the basket and wait for the balloon to finish filling.  There was time for a picture or two while we waited!

We were off!  

There is a lake in the distance that was hard to see in the picture because the air was a bit hazy that day.

I was amazed at how calm it was up in the air.  We traveled pretty high, but it never felt like we were moving.  The only way I could tell we were moving up or down was when my ears popped.  We rode for about 40 minutes, then managed to land in the same spot we started!  That does not happen very often!  Also, our landing was very smooth.  We landed, drug for a few feet, then stopped.  That also does not happen often!  

All in all, this was a great adventure!  I can hardly wait for another adventure with Mom!  

The telescope adventure with Mom

I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and got two free tickets to tour the Mount Graham International Observatory.  Over the years, I have thought about visiting the Observatory, but never got around to it, so I was excited about the tickets.  Now I just had to figure out when I would go and who I would take with me!  I really wanted to take Dad with me, and he had planned to go, but then he had to be out of town on business for an extra day, so he wouldn’t be home in time to go.  He suggested I take Mom with me.  That was a good suggestion!

Our tour started with a small orientation at Discovery Park. Then we climbed in a van and started the 40 mile trip up the mountain to the Observatory.  Even though it was only 40 miles, it was about an hour trip because of the very curvy road!  The docents in our van, both the driver and the tour guide, were friends of mine, so that was fun!

We stopped for lunch before we visited the Observatory.  It was a bit chilly, but several of us ate outside.  This little guy joined me.  

After lunch, we headed up to the Observatory.  The road was very, very narrow.  We found out later that when they were trying to get land for the Observatory, they were granted only a few acres, and the road they had to create counted as part of their acreage!  

I had always thought that the Observatory was only one telescope, but on this trip, I found out that there are three telescopes:  the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, the Heinrich Herts Submillimeter Radio Telescope of the Arizona Radio Observatory, and the Large Binocular Telescope, the world’s most powerful telescope--at least for a little bit.  Another, more powerful, telescope is being built as we speak.  (I think it is in Chile.)

The Vatican Telescope

The Radio Telescope

This is the track the telescope runs on to rotate.  It is huge!  The weight of the telescope wears out the track, so they built the track in pieces.  When they need to replace the track, they replace it a piece at a time.  

Mom and I had to take a picture of this nitrogen tank for Dad!  He sells liquid nitrogen and we always had a few of these tanks in our living room. They use a LOT of liquid nitrogen in the radio telescope.  To extrapolate the data from the radio waves, they need them to be very cold, so they run the radio waves through liquid nitrogen!  Who knew that would work? Not me!!

Large Binocular Telescope

One of the mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope.  When they told us how big this was, I couldn’t picture it, but these mirrors are huge!

Mom and I in front of one of the mirrors.

Picture of the Large Binocular Telescope--This is HUGE!  The mirror in the above picture is just one of the mirrors in this telescope.  The whole telescope is several stories tall.  It was very awe-inspiring.  

One of the fires on the mountain got this close to the Large Binocular Telescope.  The fire was so hot things didn’t grow at all in that spot for several years.  There are a few green spots now, but most of it still doesn’t have anything growing.  That is a very hot fire!

I don’t have the words to describe how awe-inspiring this visit was.  I cannot imagine the thinking that went into creating telescopes of this magnitude or the process that went into figuring out how to explore space with those telescopes!  And then there is the magnitude of space.  I cannot even comprehend the vastness of space.  The whole trip made me feel very small.  Another perspective came to mind, though.  In all the vastness of space and the multitude of stars, planets, universes and solar systems, God knows each of us individually and loves us individually.  I still feel small--but important.

An adventure with my daughter and my friend

#25  Be a tourist in Arizona

#29b  Do touristy stuff with Jessica

#52  Go to a dinner and a movie theater

Some of the things I have enjoyed planning are the adventures I am going to have with my family.  This month, it was time to have an adventure with my daughter, Jessica.  Her choice of adventures was to go to Crossroads movie theater in Tucson, a movie theater that serves dinner.  This gives a whole new meaning to dinner and a movie!  I added a couple of things to our adventure--I wanted to tour San Xavier del Bac, and I wanted to go to a miniature museum I had seen in Tucson.  A friend of mine, Felicia, was also in Tucson for a few days, so she joined us for our adventure.

Our first stop was San Xavier del Bac,an over 200-year-old Catholic church that is about 10 miles south of Tucson. http://www.sanxaviermission.org  The San Xavier mission was founded in 1692 by Father Eusebio Kino.  Later, as the current church was being built in the late 1700’s, the money ran out, so the belltower on the right was not finished.  Since they want to keep it authentic, they won't ever finish it!

 Felicia, Jessica and me in the parking lot, ready for a tour!

We visited the gift shop before the tour. I did not have to look very far to find something I wanted to buy there. I collect nativity sets, and they had an abundance of them! I chose my favorite one, then saw the one that looks like San Xavier del Bac, so I had to get it, too. At that point, my budget was spent, so when I saw all of the nativity ornaments, I couldn't get any! Luckily, I know how to get back there, and, before Christmas, I will be going back to get an ornament or two.

My favorite, San Xavier del Bac, and my birthday present from Felicia

I was amazed by the amount of artwork in the church.  I can’t even imagine the amount of time it took to complete all of it.  First, just finding the wood in the desert for all the carvings would take a very long time!  The docent told us that many of the statues needed to be transported from Mexico City, a one year round trip by ox cart.  I admire that type of dedication and commitment.  

A very small portion of the artwork 

By the time the tour was over, we were thirsty, hungry, and hot.  The only place that had air conditioning was the gift shop.  The church just had a lot of open windows to catch breezes and a few fans to help create a few more breezes.  It was a bit warm!  We bought some fry bread and water on our way to the car.  My fry bread with red chili was very good!

As we headed back to Jessica’s apartment to cool off, Felicia mentioned that she had some coupons for food at Arby’s.  One of the coupons was for free food, so we decided to use them.  As we looked at them, we found they were only good for the Arby’s across town, but decided it was worth it because it was free food.  After we drove all the way across town, we found out the coupons were not good until a few days later!  Laughing, we decided that driving all the way across town for coupons that weren’t good yet was just part of our adventure!  Having a plan that fails makes for a much better story than having a plan that works perfectly! We ended up eating Arby's food, even though we didn't have coupons that worked, because we had spent almost the entire drive talking about what food we were going to order, so we were very hungry for Arby's!

That night, we got to go to the Roadhouse movie theater.  https://crossroads.roadhousecinemas.com  

Jessica’s friend, Alex, and Jessica’s roommate, Chelsi, went with us.  I really like the idea of dinner and a movie at the same time.  The nice thing was that the movie was a regular priced movie we didn’t spend more on food than we would have for popcorn and soda.  The choices were bigger, too.  We could have ordered anything from popcorn and appetizers to pizza and burgers. We also got to sit in recliners. You can't get much better than that!

I need to get better at taking pictures. I don't have any good pictures from this part of our adventure! I do have a couple of pictures of people with very strange expressions on their faces......but I want them to still speak to me, so I won't post them!

Unfortunately, we did not have time to go to the museum on this adventure.  That’s OK.  Now we just have an excuse for another adventure!

My first sister adventure!

#22 Get a pedicure
#23 Get a manicure
# 29d Get a mani/pedi with Julie.

On my midlife crisis list, the items I am most excited about are the things I am planning with my family.  I have asked each of my sisters, sisters-in-law, my mother and my daughter to choose something to do with me.  This weekend, I got to do my first sister adventure.  I got my very first manicure and my first professional pedicure!  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I had a ton of fun!  Julie has just moved, but she said she was ready for a break from unpacking.  She chose a place called Romantic Nails for our experience.  

I was reminded how ticklish my feet are!

I loved the foot and leg massage.  It was very relaxing.  

Julie, Chantel and I getting pampered!

Then I got a manicure.  

Finished product! I would definitely do this again!

Now that my toes look pretty, I need to buy new sandals!

Books, books, and more books!

Midlife crisis list:

#46  Simplify my life

#43a  Attend the Southwest Festival of the Written Word in Silver City, New Mexico (October)

#43b  Attend the Festival of Books at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona (March)

#42  Meet an author I admire

I love books.  I have loved books as long as I can remember.  I tend to pick up books wherever I go--those are my favorite souvenirs when I go on a trip.  Lately, though, I have noticed that I seem to have books everywhere.  Books two rows deep on my bookshelves.  Books on the floor by my bed.  Books IN my bed when I fall asleep reading them.  Books in the family room by my chair and in the living room by my computer and...you get the picture.  I have a theory that there is no such thing as too many books, just not enough bookshelves, but I was starting to push the limits of that theory!  I realized I might have a serious problem.  I started to feel better when a friend of mine told me a book addiction wasn’t a serious problem until you started using your books for furniture.  I was pretty happy that I’m not that far along in my addiction.  Then she said that also meant stacking books by the bed and using them for a night stand.  Definitely guilty of that one!

Deciding to do something about the abundance of books in my home, I took all the books that don’t fit on a bookshelf and put them in one spot.  This is when I realized how serious my book addiction really is!

You might not be able to tell in the picture, but the highest part of this stack is 3 books deep!

These are the books that DO fit in the shelves.  

Cookbooks and several folders of recipes 

Even if I never use all of these recipes, I have fun reading the cookbooks!

In this last picture, the small bookshelf only has one shelf of books. The others are full of movies. Even with those two shelves of movies taken out, I have a LOT of books!

The Plan:  Since about 5 of my bookshelves are full of children’s and youth books and my children are grown, I am going to give away some of those books.  I will keep the ones my nieces and nephews like to read when they are her and the ones I want to read with my grandchildren one of these days.  (This is where the Simplify My Life part comes in.)

My book acquisitions have been slowing down, which has not been easy for me.   If you look at the top of this blog, two of the things on my list are book festivals!  How do you go to a book festival and walk away without buying any books? I was proud of myself that I managed to keep my book buying to a minimum.

The Southwest Festival of the Written Word in Silver City, New Mexico is a smaller book festival celebrating Southwest authors--both those from the Southwest and those writing about the Southwest.  I almost didn’t go because I would be going by myself, but I am really glad I went.  The largest author session I attended was about 30-40 people.  All the others 25 or fewer people, so it made it very easy to visit with the author afterward if you wanted--and I did.  The workshops were scattered around historic downtown Silver City, and I did a lot of walking.  I have only been to Silver City a couple of times as an adult, so I was really glad I had my maps!  

My two favorite sessions were the writing workshop with Stella Pope Duarte and the writing about cooking session with two authors, Carolyn Niethammer and Rob Connoley.  Both of those sessions were held in a Quaker church.  I had never been in a Quaker church, so my day was filled with new adventures!  

Stella Pope Duarte talked about using your life experiences in your writing.  She took us through a few scenarios to get our creativity flowing.  She asked us to think of our childhood car.  Who rode in the car?  Where did we go?  Who did we go see?  She then told us to use some of those experiences and that emotions in our writing.  She was talking about fiction, but I immediately thought about applications for writing my life story.  I could write a ton of stories about our old tan van!

The two cookbook authors were very interesting.  They had not met each other before, but both of them write about using native plants in recipes.  Carolyn Niethammer first started publishing in the 70’s and she has been credited with the beginning of the movement to cook with native plants.  Rob Connoley owns a restaurant in Silver City, but the cookbook he has coming out this year is his first book.  I found it very interesting, though, that both of them had the same mentor in Silver City when they were learning about native plants in that area!  

I had a wonderful time at this festival, and am planning to go again next year.  I liked it so much, I have told one author about it and will be telling another actor about it over the summer.  Maybe I will see them there in October!

The Tucson Festival of Books is done on a much larger scale.  Although it was only two days long, there were over 350 authors in attendance, along with a LOT of people.  One news story I saw said that, in the past, about 100,000 people have attended!  That is a very large crowd, especially for someone who lives in a town of less than 1000 people!

In Tucson, there were several events where authors were speaking.  Since I was only going to be there for one day, I decided to just wander among the hundreds of tents and see what they had to offer.  I got to the site of the festival about an hour before it officially began and started wandering.  I had two limits on book-buying.  First, I couldn’t go over my budget.  Second, I couldn’t buy more books than I was willing to carry around the festival for the rest of the day!  Since my car was almost a half mile away, this was definitely something I needed to think about as I was buying books!

One of my favorite parts of the Tucson festival was being able to stop and talk to random authors about their books.  I liked to ask them to tell me about their books, then ask them which book was their favorite and why it was their favorite.  I liked to see their faces light up when they talked about their work.  

Two of the books I bought were completely spontaneous purchases.  I had stopped by a tent to sit for a few minutes and to listen to the authors talking about their books while I rested.  I enjoyed listening to the authors so much that I had to buy their books--and then have them autographed, of course!

Danielle Paige wrote the Dorothy Must Die series.

Rae Carson wrote The Girl of Fire and Thorns

At the end of the day, I finally got to the main reason I went to the festival--meeting one of my favorite authors, Margaret Peterson Haddix.  She writes for young adults, and I have liked her books for several years.  I was very happy to meet her, tell her how much my students have liked her books, and get her autograph on two books I bought!   

I am looking forward to attending both of these book festivals again!

Las Vegas!

After this adventure, I checked several things off my midlife crisis list!  

#14  Go to Las Vegas

#31  Visit a state I have never been to

#34 Visit all the LDS temples in Nevada (I did half of this one.)   (https://www.mormon.org/faq/topic/temples has more information about LDS temples.)

#60  Go to a town I have never been to

#68  Road trip with a friend

Several years ago, I was in Orlando, Florida and found out there was a store called M&Ms World.  Awesome!  When I went into the store, I found out that there were only two of them in the world.  The other one was in Las Vegas.  I decided that I would get to the store in Las Vegas one of these days. (By the way, there are more than two stores now.)

Last year, I found out that there was a church single adult conference in Las Vegas on Valentine’s Day, and it just cracked me up.  My first thought was that you could find your soulmate and get married, then if it didn’t work out, you could get divorced, all in one weekend!!  In their defense, they have been having a single’s conference every President’s Day weekend for the last 40 years, and sometimes that just happens to be on Valentine’s Day, but it still made me laugh.

The more I thought about it, the more I decided I wanted to go to Vegas this year. I could go to the conference, the temple, and the M&M store.

I had a friend, Melanie, all set to go with me, and she wanted to find a Las Vegas Elvis. We were pretty sure we could find one while we were there.

At the last minute, disaster struck! ALL of Melanie's kids got sick! Not fun!! There was no way she was going to leave them for a weekend, and there is no way I would ask her to leave them! A few days earlier, my friend, Pam, had told me to call if everyone cancelled on me and I needed someone to go with me, so I called her at 3:00 on Thursday afternoon, and we left for Vegas about three hours later. Whew!

I have known Pam for a long time, but we haven’t spent time together except for work.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into!  We had so much fun!!!  I had already packed a box with snacks and books on CD for the 10 hour drive, but we never needed the CDs.  We talked the entire trip up and back and still weren’t talked out.  I did joke, though, that I had no idea I was traveling with someone who documented her life on Facebook!   I was part of more selfies than I thought was possible on one trip, and I loved every minute of it!

Thank you to Pam for letting me use some of the pictures she took. She is a much better photographer than I am!

First selfie of the trip!

Heading into a new state!  

First look at the Las Vegas temple.  I wasn't sure this was really it!  

Up close, it is beautiful!

And, of course, a selfie!

One last temple picture.

Next stop, the Excalibur hotel, our home for the next few days.  

After supper, M&M's World was next.  

My favorite--the wall of M&Ms.  It doesn't look as impressive here because I couldn't get the whole thing in one picture--It took about 5 pictures to see the whole thing....

...and you can see how tall it is when you see the people right by it.

The craziest thing I did in Vegas that weekend!  I got this picture for Melanie.  The cute thing about this is that he introduced his real self before he kissed my cheek. 

As you can see, Day 1 was a huge success.  We had a ton of fun!  I didn't get pictures from Day 2 because I spent most of the day at the conference.  The speakers were very good and I met some nice people.  By late afternoon, though, the long drive, the traffic and the crowds were starting to get to me, so I headed back to the hotel.  I am glad I did because the parking lots were full!  I had to drive around for about a half hour just to find a parking spot.  If I had gotten there too much later, it would have been worse.  

On Sunday, Valentine's Day, we went to church in Paradise!  How cool is that?  I also took my first taxi ride because the parking lot was still packed and I didn't want to give up my parking spot!

Sunday afternoon, I went back to the conference.  I got to hear two people I have admired for a long time, Richard Eyre, who, with his wife, Linda, has written several books about teaching children, and John Bytheway, who writes for and speaks to teenagers. If there was time, I was planning on getting a picture with them, but both of them had to leave immediately after they spoke to catch a plane!

On Monday morning, we headed back home.  One last selfie--we had seen this scenic overlook on our way up to Nevada and said we would stop on the way home.  It wasn't quite as impressive on the way home.  The light was great on Friday, and not so great on Monday.  

Conclusion:  I would love to go back to Vegas, but not on a holiday weekend.  I would enjoy going to a show and exploring a bit more.  I would definitely recommend Pam as a travel buddy.  We had a really good time, and have started planning our next adventure......