13 days left before school starts... AAAAACK!

13 days of summer vacation left and I have to fit in a couple of days of work as does Lesa and there are two Sundays in there... We live in a great place and there's a lot to do. We gotta get on it! Here's our adventures for the week:

I got a thank you package in the mail for a corporate DJ gig I had last month that had some passes to a couple of local amusement parks. This is an indoor trampoline playground called Jumpstreet.

Here's Shaw winding up to pummel his mom in the dodgeball section of the playground.
And the launch... it's a miss!
He looks motionless here- no smile on his face or anything. Just levitating about a foot and a half off the ground.
Here's the action shot of the day.
I'm getting too old for this but had a great time anyways. How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?
Lesa too... crazy-awesome!
Here's some video to prove how much fun it was. I love Shaw and Lesa jumping together in this one.

Next stop- Sweeties- The biggest candy shop in Arizona!
We came, we saw, we conquered!

This is Shaw puzzling and puzzling how he can fit a $65 gumball machine into his $5 budget...

This is a picture of true happiness.Shaw's Cub Scout pack had a swimming party a couple of nights ago for this months pack meeting.
Movie and game night tonight with some candy from Sweeties!

More summer adventures around town

It's an interesting dilemma in life trying to find a balance between work and time with family. I don't work a traditional day job and the entertainment industry is naturally slow in the in the summer months around Phoenix. Lesa is a teaching assistant and is off for the summer. We have lots of time for adventures but not as much money for them. We are running a bit low and have decided to put a couple of the National Parks on hold for about 60 days. We've done almost all of the sites that are at higher elevations or northern locales that are cooler. The remaining ones are in the southern part of the state and would probably be too hot to enjoy. We are making a California run for Legoland and that will require some cash so we are switching to some local adventures for the remaining three weeks. We'll finish the National Parks on October break.
Above- This is a photo out in front of Skysong- it's a think tank adjacent to ASU that has a giant shade sail out in the courtyard. I just like the contrast in this photo. Lesa says that she was feeling like a blow torch was blowing in her face and that's why her hair is the way it is.

Below- Here's the SSIQ- Shade Sail In Question.

Down town Phoenix- US Airways center. The Phoenix Suns play there. Lesa and I went to see Sting and the Police in concert there a couple of years ago and Shaw and I went to see the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus there. The curved roof line behind it on the left of the frame is Chase Field where the Arizona Diamondbacks play- Shaw and I went to a game a couple of weeks ago. The roof is open today to get some sunshine on the grass inside.

Here we are outside of the Police Museum which we discovered too late is under renovation for a few months and will re-open in the fall. We are right beside the light rail train tracks or "Phart" as it is affectionately known around here- Phoenix Area Rapid Transit system.

A small bit of downtown Phoenix.

Here's us at the Arizona State Capital Building.

We are in the upper gallery/viewing area above the legislative chambers. This is a great picture of our family.

I'm standing where the Arizona Constitution was hashed out in the fall of 1910. Arizona joined the United States in 1912 on Valentines Day. It was the 48th state and the last of the "continental" states. Alaska and Hawaii joined still later. The State is gearing up for a centennial celebration next year and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is performing at US Airways Center (see pic above) as a part of the festivities. Tickets already sold out a year in advance.

There is a Liberty Bell replica out front- sans the crack. Shaw touched it and burned himself and exclaimed how hot it was and Lesa- ever curious- also had to touch it to see how hot it was. No permanent injuries thankfully.

Finished off the day with a street taco at El Taco back in Mesa. No pictures- we were too busy eating...

Ageless and timeless as Dorian Gray

Shaw took this picture yesterday when we went to Sonic Burger in Mesa AZ for lunch. It stuck out to me and it deserves a blog posting all to itself.
This next photo was taken in 1995 at a cafe at Venice Beach CA. If you study the two photos, you'll notice that I've become old and grey but Lesa has not aged one bit and is just as pretty as ever! Shaw didn't take this one, of course, but it's crazy-awesome that he can take such good photos now.

Monitoring Temple progress on two fronts now...

We drove up to north Phoenix today to visit the "other" temple site. I think we'll visit Gilbert and Phoenix on alternating months. Gilbert will be the 4th Temple in Arizona and Phoenix the 5th, behind Mesa, Snowflake and Gila Valley. Shaw has been getting antsy about the seemingly slow progress of the Gilbert temple anyways. With visits every 30 days, this will give us 60 days in between each site so there should be more visible progress each time.

How can you go wrong with a machine like this on the case?
I think I'll put a pic of Shaw up next time from a year ago when the Gilbert Temple grounds looked like this- just a flat surface. You'll see not only temple growth but Shaw growth too.

Sunset hike

We all learned a new vocabulary word this last week. "Haboob" It's Arabic for violent dust storm. Click here for a stunning video of the July 5th, 2011 Haboob by a local photographer. The dust was 5000 feet high and 50 miles wide. We had a pretty good wet monsoon (Desert rain storm) a few days later which washed all of the dust off of everything and cooled us way down. It was 95 degrees a couple of days ago when much of the rest of the nation was hotter than 100. Normal for mid-July around here is 105-115.

Our family took a sunset hike just outside of Mesa and it couldn't have been prettier with the parting clouds and the clean green desert trees and the sun setting on the surrounding mountains.
The trail took us down by the Salt River. Lesa sitting on the banks.

Shaw throwing rocks in the water- ok... I was too. It's a man thing...

God's Country!

We travelled on another leg of the grand tour of the Great State of Arizona. We spent some time in the Navajo Nation this week. We are at the half way point for visiting all of the National Parks and Monuments in the state. We are including other sites of interest and beauty along the way of course. There's a wind farm expanding outside of Holbrook in the high prairie country. These windmills are deceptively larger than you may think- each blade is nearly 100 feet long!

First stop at Petrified Forest National Park.

I took 120 pics on the trip and threw out 50 of them for closed eyes or bad light or whatever but still had to narrow it down for this online journal. I wanted to use this next pic to show the magnitude of these fallen, petrified trees. Look at this one continue down the hill behind Lesa's back.

When I looked at this next one closer, I decided to use it also. There's a desert creature posing for the pic on the right of the shot- a big green lizard. Just click on the pic for a larger view.This is Whipple Point at the north end of the park. It's a lovely vista of the painted desert portion of the park. Those Whipple's really know a good point when they see one.

Here's a Whipple at Whipple Point- the best looking of the Whipples in this bunch for sure.

Here's THREE Whipples at Whipple point!Next stop: Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site. The shop had a Jr. Ranger vest and hat outfit. Shaw sure looked good in it but it wasn't in the budget and he couldn't describe what he would do with it realistically if he had it so we just got a pic and hung it back up.Lesa and I both liked this stop better than any we had seen yet. We wished we had more time to spend here- just a feeling, a spirit about the place. Fun, professional, charming people like this man were part of the experience too.

After talking to this man for 5 minutes, we felt like old friends. He works for a division of the park service that operates the shops- like a concessionaire. He works with local artists and craftsmen to provide goods and things to sell in the shop. We longhairs have to stick together... Lesa was having an equally engaging conversation with a Navajo woman in another part of the trading post. She bought some strawberry/jalapeno jam and, on the recommendation of the shop keeper, some wheat flour that is particularly good for making Navajo Fried Bread which Lesa is already pretty good at.

Here we are on the edge of Canyon De Chelly- pronounced De Shay. I don't remember us being close to the edge but this photo looks as if Lesa were to lose her balance, she would fall of the edge. There is a 600' shear cliff behind us. I think we were more like 20 feet away from the edge.

Explorer Shaw! We have a painting in our living room by H. Edward Ross, Shaw's Great Grandfather, of this same vista point.

I'm at the bottom of the canyon at White House Ruins. You can make it out just above my head and at my right elbow.

Here are the White House Ruins from a ways up the canyon.

Water break. Shaw must be sad because he just learned that the name of the canyon isn't spelled the way it's pronounced. He's also flushed because it was a hot day and he wasn't drinking enough water.

This is Church Rock near Kayenta, Arizona.

This is our campsite at Navajo National Monument and our battle axe car that has been on so many adventures over the years.

This is the view at sunset from our campsite. My favorite shot of the whole trip right here...

This is Betatakin Canyon at Navajo National Monument. You can't see it in this shot, but let me zoom in...

About 150 people lived in this alcove. It's south facing so it gets some sunshine in the winter months and it is shaded in the summer months.

We hiked to a different spot in Betatakin Canyon. That alcove you saw before is down on the left canyon wall out of sight.

Most of this trip included stops at places that aren't on the way to anything. It is a very deliberate decision to travel there for that reason alone, not to make a stop on the way to something else. Four Corners is one of those places.

Lesa and Shaw are standing in Utah, and I have both feet in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico are 6 inches in front of our feet. It's the only place in the world where any states, provinces, commonwealths or nations share such borders.

There was a line of people waiting to take pictures and each family group would stand dutifully as we did in that shot above, but Lesa was feeling the spirit of the day and put her bag down exactly on the line where 4 states come together and attempted to stand on her head! The fellow traveller who was taking the pictures for us was a split second too late as she had already gone over the other way. The sidewalk was hot and she got a couple of blisters on the palms of her hands but I think she's awesome for doing it!This is Monument Valley in southern Utah, still in the Navajo Nation. There were some crazy people taking pictures right in the middle of the road. I'm crazy but not stupid. There's a scene in Forest Gump where Forest is running back and forth across the country, just running, and people are following him, seeking some little nugget of wisdom. When I watch the movie, it seems to be nothing more profound than flushing out some of the ugliness of his life- the Viet Nam War etc. making room for the next chapter of peace and happiness and love in his life. In the film, the last of the ugliness flushes out right at this spot in the picture and he just stops running. I felt a little bit of that too. There's something about the grandness of this country that connects you to God and helps you let things go- things that should be let go of...