Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Catching up...

I am back...arrived back in town Sunday night after a 30-45 minute delay of our return flight from Phoenix. Weather was so bad up and down California that any plane coming from the state was late and many out of Phoenix to the southern part were cancelled...thank goodness that I had a direct to Oakland...so it was only late, not cancelled!

The weekend in Phoenix was wonderful. It started out with an early arrival on Thursday, March 17...just Matthew and I that whole day. We were able to get a room downtown Phoenix for the first evening because the team hotel was booked. My goodness...was the Phoenix airport a mess, for it is spring training and there were so many baseball fans - San Fran Giants, Oakland A's, Los Angeles Dodgers...on our plane, in the airport and waiting in the very, very long line for the rental car bus. Thank goodness that we were taxi-ing to the hotel for my patience would have been shot if I had to wait in that!

Anyway, once we reached the hotel and got checked in, we pulled out some mac-n-cheese and created a little room picnic for Matthew so that he could get in some lunch before we headed out to explore the city.
Mac-n-cheese, sour dough french bread, applesauce and apple juice...good source of fuel for the walk to the first museum.


I guess Matthew wasn't quite done eating when we started out to our first museum. Stopping to touch a cactus, something that he wanted to do immediately, I caught him mid-chew of his last bite of bread.

After he finished eating and I finished unpacking, we headed out and walked down the street to the Heard Museum, where there is one of the nation's largest collection of Native American cultures - especially the cultures of America's southwest. Matthew and I really enjoyed walking around the museum, there was a lot of wonderful information to read and activities to do.
Matthew outside the Heard Museum in the sculpture garden. It was a very warm day outside...upper 80s.

A mask from the Kuba (?) Tribe from S.America...Matthew thought that this was a very cool mask, because it reminded him of one of the first units he studied this year in Social Studies; so of course I took a photo of it and emailed it to his Social Studies teacher :)
After the Heard Museum, we headed further down town, taking the light rail so we didn't have to walk the short 3 miles in the heat we weren't use to :) While downtown, we visited the Science Museum where we only had enough time to watch a movie in the IMAX theater; for afterwards, most of the "fun" science activities had lines of kids and it was close to closing time...aside from which we were also hitting our wall of exhaustion & hunger. So, before we went back to the hotel, we took the light rail to one of our favorite restaurants - Sweet Tomatoes...the endless salad bar, with a pasta station, bakery and dessert counter (fruit & soft serve ice cream). We had a nice day together, Matthew & I. It has been a long time since we have traveled and did something non-hockey related. It felt great.

On Friday, after a good night's rest, a great 8.25 mile jog downtown and back, Matthew and I packed up. Our little mini-vacation was over and it was time to get back to reality. We were here for a hockey tournament...and the last one for the "official" season. One of the other hockey families were kind enough to pick us up and bring us to the "team" hotel in Scottsdale.

With a game Friday evening, 2 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday....eat, sleep, hockey (and I did get in some stitching; took out Family Sampler while sitting around the rink waiting for the game to start or at the hotel while we were resting) is about all we did until leaving Sunday evening. While the boys lost 4 games and tied 1 - they played amazing!!! The losses were only by 1-3 points for the most part. They have come a long way since their first games back in September. We are all proud of them...and I am proud of Matthew!

Matthew is in back - the one with the blue shirt and tie/no jacket
(fyi-this is only 1/2 the team)
Now it is really back to reality...laundry, work, *The Business*, continuing hockey practice for Matthew, track & field for Robert, school...never ends, does it?

Anyway...hope you all are doing well and until next time, take care and remember...

Live, Love, Laugh and Stitch often!
Lisa

2 comments:

jayne@~an eye for threads~ said...

Thanks for sharing the pictures. What a fun weekend.
As always

CalamityJr said...

What a great together-time - good for you!