Past Two Weeks

The time has flown by incredibly fast. We have had a wonderful time with local family, friends and family who were/are also visiting Phoenix, and with our younger son and his family who just left today.

We have been to quite a few ballgames with visits to Cubs Park (Chicago Cubs), Salt River Fields (Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks), Phoenix Municipal Stadium (Oakland A's - their last season there - next year they will be at HoHoKum which the Cubs just vacated for their shiny new park), Scottsdale Stadium (San Francisco Giants), and Camelback Ranch at Glendale (Chicago White Sox - also home of the LA Dodgers but we didn't see them). We went to several games at Salt River Fields with friends and family. Here are some photos of a lovely evening with Gary's brother Steve and my sister-in-law Jan, my brother John and sister-in-law Nancy, friends Cammy and Rich, and my sister-in-law's husband, John (Gary's sister Mary had a cold and was unable to attend).

Two of my wonderful sisters-in-law, Nancy and Jan

Steve and Gary

The two John's - my brother looking at the camera, and my brother-in-law, the other John. Rich is in the background.  Sorry, Cammy. For some reason I didn't get a photo of you that night.....

When John and Nancy were here, we did a hike at McDowell Preserve. Here are two photos of that great hike.

Gary, John, Nancy and I also had a great walk at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve at Water Park - a water reclamation project for the city of Gilbert. This wonderful place is just loaded with migratory birds of many species over-wintering here. I run there as often as I can. Mary, Cammy and I also walked there one day. Here is John feeding the Percherons which are at a neighboring farm near the preserve. Somebody gave us some carrots to feed the horses, so John did it.

Great Blue Heron - not in the water......

And a visit just finished - a wonderful one with son Rob and daughter-in-law, Maria and our two grandchildren, Henry and Annie. Here is probably the best photo I have ever taken of Henry and Annie. The three of us were laughing at our inability to find a place to hang out in the very nice resort, The Sanctuary, while we waited for Rob to finish a phone call and for everybody else to get ready for a SF Giants night game.

Yesterday was just about non stop fun and one miracle.

We went to our second Giants game during the day at Camelback Ranch - great game in this beautiful newer stadium. BTW, the Giants did win both games we saw. 

Then we decided to drive over to the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden where there is currently an exhibit of blown glass called Chihuly in the Garden. This has been one of the hottest tickets in town this season. We wanted to see it after dark because the blown glass sculptures are lit, making the tour through the gardens a magical time. The Web site said that Saturday evening was sold out. This did not deter Maria one little bit, (who shared with us a story of how she had just talked their way onto a refurbished Thunder Mountain ride at Disneyland last weekend after the ride was maxed out that day). 

By some miracle we found one parking place in the Botanical Garden parking lot that we squeezed our two cars into.

Then we watched as Maria performed her miracle. Her secret is that you can almost always get in to a museum, garden, almost any attraction where memberships are sold. She walked up to the Membership booth with waiting staff eager to sell memberships, bought a year-long membership which admitted their family and which included two adult one-time-only passes. She paid probably less than ticket admission would have been (if we even could have bought tickets!) for all six of us. Then she found out that, while the restaurant was full, the grab-n-go food was readily available, so voila! Dinner. We could enter the grounds at 8:00pm which was exactly what we wanted. It was amazing. Gary and I were giving us all no chance of getting in. It shows what determination and persistence can do.

It is an amazing display at night, viewed with the cacti and other desert plants as part of the displays.  Here are some photo highlights:

Final photos: at the White Sox/Giants game:

Anniversary Dinner

We had dinner Friday with good friends and the family members who live in Scottsdale. Lovely time! I don't know why I didn't get a photo of everyone. Growl. I guess I was just having too much fun to remember this. But here is the dessert that surprised us, and here are the old folks enjoying every minute of our special day.

More Fun with Friends

We attended our first Spring Training baseball game last week with Sue and David Astin, and Cammy and Rich Iverson. We were at Salt River Fields and saw the Colorado Rockies crush the Arizona Diamondbacks - something like 12-0. It was a beautiful day and Salt River Fields is truly a wonderful facility. What was even more fun was seeing two of our "own" former Minnesota Twins players play for the Rockies. Michael Cuddyer has been with the Rockies for several years now, and I believe that he has done extremely well for them. He is a great guy in every way. 

But now the Rockies scored another of our star players - the much loved and respected Justin Morneau who was, sadly, traded to Pittsburgh just prior to the playoffs last year. Justin got some great play time with Pittsburgh and a run at a championship. Of course that didn't happen. But then he became a free agent and signed on with the Rockies. Lucky them. He is the starting first baseman. He got two at-bats (maybe three) but didn't get on base. We will be following him throughout our time here and beyond.

Here is our merry band at the ballpark. Once again, I am sure David has some great photos (see my previous post below), but none with him in them!!!

This was the first game of the Spring Training Season at Salt River Fields, and all team members on both teams lined up on the field prior to the National Anthem. 

Fun with Friends at Boyce Thompson Arboretum

This has been a bonanza year for having fun with friends in Arizona. There have been three other couples here with whom we are good friends in Minneapolis. We are all escaping the severe winter Minnesota has been having, so we all sigh and agree that life is good here. 

One of the get-togethers last week was a hike at Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park which is about 55 miles east of Mesa. We all met there mid morning and hiked around, looking at the various plants and trees which were collected in earlier years by the original owners who wanted a specimen garden. It was very dry and so the blooms that we might normally have seen were missing in the drier parts of the property. But there is a water source and a constructed lake giving the property year round water in this riparian area. They do some irrigating so there was green and there were blooming plants. We also were birdwatching. One of our crowd is an avid birder. David Astin is also a citizen scientist who regularly goes to a Nature Conservancy location in the Twin Cities area to monitor prairie plant life. He is a wonderful photographer and you can, for sure, tell which one he is from this photo! He carries a   camera with a powerful telephoto lense on a tripod (camouflage), another really good camera, a good pair of binoculars, and a backpack with all kinds of gear. Not a light load.

 

We had a great time with a nice hike and then lunch in nearby Superior. Here are the four ladies:

Other photos taken that morning. I will have to wait until David sends me some of his photos which will be much better than the ones I take on my iPhone!