In a very round-about, long-story kinda way, we ended up going to Arizona for Thanksgiving. It is very rare for us to travel on Thanksgiving and honestly, it wasn’t numero uno on my to-do-list. I’ve been working like a rented mule and driving 10 hours twice over 4 days (as opposed to lying around in our jim jams for four days) didn’t sound awesome, but we had the opportunity to see my dad’s sisters and their husbands and it really doesn’t happen often, so we went for it.
The trip out was happily quite uneventful. We made quite a few stops thanks to driving with six people two of whom were small kids with small bladders.
The scenery south of Colorado Springs into Arizona through New Mexico is not my favorite, but we got to see some cool things, including some “Javiers” or cacti as normal folk call them.
We got in super late on Wednesday and had dinner at my aunt’s house. The kids were falling asleep at the table, but rallied nicely the next morning for Thanksgiving. We had a nice day together with breakfast and cooking and thanksgivings. And really, that’s how most of our time in AZ went. It was lovely hanging out with some family that I hardly ever see and seeing old photos and hearing some new old family stories. Ben and Tabby had a nice time getting to know some of that branch of the family too.
One highlight for me was getting to try out the brand new Rummoli board I made just before we left for AZ. Since I didn’t have time to gather up poker chips, we used glass marbles, which worked great in a pinch!
But the big highlight for the kids was our critter encounter. My aunt and uncle had bid on and won a critter encounter from a reptile rescue at an auction the summer. So the critters came to visit on Friday afternoon. Both my kids are big into animals and this was an extra special treat.
Ben’s favorite was this baby box turtle, Benny, who not only shares his name, but is also the pet he is very desirous of.
My personal favorite was this super chill iguana named Tamale (because apparently they use iguana meat for tamales!) and Tabby’s was this pair of cool geckos, one of which is perched on Ben’s head.
It was great because of the small group, the kids could really hang out with the animals. They just wondered around with us. I was less fond of this with the snakes, but I loved the tortoise (Sequoia) and Iguana. It was such a cool thing for the kids. What a treat!
Heading home early Saturday morning was a trial for all, especially this bed hog (his sister is pictured as well if you can find her!), but we made it. And now we’re spending the last day of break mostly just chilling.
The kids look so grown up. Ben looked like he adored those animals and especially the turtle. We got a couple of tiny aquatic turtles about three or four months ago and besides cleaning the tanks about every 7 days they are pretty low maintenance.