Two spring break activities in one day

If I didn't have pictures to prove it, you'd never believe how much fun we crammed in to one day.  We started the day at Jambo's Indoor Amusement Park.  Lesa and Shaw being chased by a giant elephant.  Lesa's hair is really whipping in the wind.



Bumper cars- Shaw looking for his prey...

Lesa looking for her victim...

Bring it on!

Had some lunch at home and then hit the desert north east of Mesa in the late afternoon.

That's a lot of love for a cactus...

The sun is setting on the mountain range in the background. 

Masters of all we survey.

My buddy Scott Blood from Orange County California.

Clan Whipple.



Air and Space Museum

We discovered an underutilized treasure in Southern Arizona.  The Pima Air and Space Museum. 

My buddy Scott was in town from LA to help me with a big DJ job so he was on camera duty.  It was kinda nice to have a couple of pictures of all three of us for once.  That's a Wilbur and Orville Wright replica plane above our heads.  

My favorite plane of the day.  SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.

Our WWII Grandparents would have appreciated this one.  Here's Lesa- thinking of Gramma Speirs. 

There were a few WWII veterans around the property- both docents and visitors.  That generation is all but gone.  I engaged as many of them as I could and thanked them for their service and listened to their stories.   It sure is good to be free!  I found myself rather emotional about it.  There's a scripture in the Old Testament as the Hebrews were just about to be enslaved in Egypt that says that another generation grew up "who knew not Joseph" There is already a generation being born that doesn't know about Pearl Harbor and World War II, The Shuttle Explosion, John F Kennedy, even the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks.  I hope we don't forget. 

On a lighter note, the docent reminded us that the first flight by the Wright brothers wasn't the length of this wingspan and the plane would not have cleared the top of this fuselage! 

There are about a half dozen hangars and a large amount of property outdoors for other planes and for some that are too large for the hangars.  There were a couple of B-52 bombers on site.  They are HUGE!

 Finished off the visit with some local tamales.  Deeeeeee-LISH!

Spring break activities

There was a great music and art festival in Mesa over Spring break that we paid a visit to.  This thing is called the Mirazoso.  It's an inflatable sculpture that you go inside of.  It's a bit disorienting and very comfortable at the same time.  Pictures don't do it any justice.  

Here's Shaw juggling with a steet performer.  He would throw a 5th ball in to the mix and then catch it when the juggler threw it out and then Shaw would throw it back in.  They went for about 10 volleys before he stopped. 

There was a band from Los Angeles that had this cool harp instrument.  The wires were attached to the performing arts center behind me about 5 stories up.  There were large brass tuning blocks bolted to the wires at varying distances from the harp. 

The strings weren't plucked as I imagined they would be.  The musician who built it wore gloves with violin rosin on the fingers and he would stroke the stings longitudinally as if it were a bow on the strings.  Lesa took a turn playing it.  (above) and here's the inventor/musician (below)

Springtime in the desert

Between Facebook updates, writing magazine articles regularly, and updating two blogs- one of DJ adventures and the other of family adventures, I sometimes feel a bit talked out and I don't want this to become simply a photo journal. We do love the desert and it sure is beautiful in the Spring.

                                    

I (Curtis) hike a great deal on my own too and I do some more strenuous trails but we have a couple of favorite family trails that are close to home, with a light to medium strenuousness level and they aren't loops so that you can just go a short distance if you are tired or pressed for time and just turn around and head back when ready and there's not a specific vista that you have to hike to to make it worth the trip.  The scenery is great all along the trail from beginning to end.   

Even though we have been on these trails many times, it looks different in the morning than it does in the afternoon, it looks different throughout the seasons.  We feel really  blessed that this is just 10 minutes north of our home. 

This is a Saguaro cactus.  You can tell that this one is full of water because the accordion folds are spread quite far apart- such that you can stick your finger in and feel the rubbery skin of the cactus.  Late in the summer, the folds may contract and get so close that the quills are nearly touching and you wouldn't want to attempt touching it.  The root system of a cactus may only go down a couple of feet but it may spread out several feet in all directions.  I once watched some time lapse video of a Saguaro cactus drinking up a desert rainstorm over the course of a couple of days.  The folds expanded and expanded so that it could survive 110 degree heat for 2 months at the height of the Summer.    

I didn't get a pic of another cactus that may have not had as much water in its system, with the accordion folds collapsed, but this is what they look like when they die... I bet you didn't know that they had a skeleton like that inside of them. 

Lots of life out there.  It's been a fairly dry winter so there is already concern of a harsh fire season for some of the higher elevations with Ponderosa Pines.  Even lower elevations with desert plant life can burn.  There are lots of Mesquite and Palo Verde trees and other brush.  It would be a tragedy to have a fire out there. 

The reward of a hiker is that you get to lay on a rock and rest your joints.  I say it a great reward!

Shaw is 11 years old!

We hired a mobile video arcade to come to our house for Shaw's 11th birthday.  

If you have one of these pull up at your house, you are the coolest kid in the neighborhood.  The only thing that could have made it cooler is if they could have picked him up from school in that. 

Lesa made a candy cake with all of Shaw's favorite candies.  The picture doesn't do it any justice but it's a feat of engineering! 

 Here's Shaw and several of his mates in the game truck. 

Lesa is giving instructions on what will be a pinata style distribution of the cake.  We intented for everybody to take turns grabbing a couple of packages of candy from the cake in an orderly fashion but it became a free-for-all with some hurt feelers and everything.  Everybody got free candy in the end but some got more than others and it damaged the sense that all is right with the universe...

Shaw opened a few gifts aftereverybody had a slice of pizza and went home.  He got about $50 in cash and gift cards!  SCORE!  Happy 11th Birthday to Shaw.   

He's getting growed up ril gud!

Shaw earned several Cub Scout awards and they were presented at the Blue and Gold Banquet a couple of weeks ago.  Although I didn't get a picture of them, we got a visit from Gramma and Grampa Ross who drove from California and got here just in time for the dinner and ceremony. They forgot the 1 hour time zone difference and they were really cutting it close.  Grampa Ross treated us to Italian gelato after and they had to go to thier hotel and they drove back to California the next morning.  

The Cubmaster fired up the Time Machine after dinner...

...and we had a visit from Lord Baden Powell with some stories from his adventures in North Africa in 1899 and the birth of the Boy Scouts. 

                                 Cubmaster McKay

We retired outdoors around the fire of the scouting gods for the presentation of the Webelos and Arrow of Light awards. 

There were feats of strength... along with other feats of memory and bravery.

Also in attendance were Uncle Garry and Aunt Cindy- my (Curtis') siblings. 

Congratulations to Shaw... you ROCK!