So my best friend got to come to town to visit me! She's from Orem, UT. We've known each other since Freshman year at BYU when we lived on the same floor in the dorms. We've pretty much been inseparable since then, being in and at each other's weddings and me watching her kids grow up and having them be like they were my own niece and nephew. So I was really glad when she could get a chance to visit the Old Pueblo and enjoy some of the fun that we have to offer here. We wish the weather had cooperated just a little more though. There was a chilly wind and it even "snowed" on Sunday! (It really did snow overnight on Saturday though. Sunday morning the mountains surrounding Tucson all had been "frosted" and were covered in white! We (James and I) were pretty excited about it.)
Thankfully the weather was good on Monday so we could wear short sleeves and capris and Erika could get a picture next to a Saguaro :)
Our first lovely adventure started with my lovely little "Boom Boom" (as we call him). Oh he looks innocent enough in this picture but...
he's not. He's been in an exploratory phase that I (nor some of my things) are very happy about. Well, I started some laundry and when I went to dry them, I did as normal and started the dryer. All of a sudden I felt warm air on my feet coming from under the dryer. That was not normal. I had a small freak out where I thought my house was going to start on fire (come on, I've had an apartment burn down and also melted a plastic lid in my oven and caught that on fire so, uh, yea, I had a little bit of a right to be nervous) Anyway, I turned off my dryer and pulled it out. This is what I found...
He'd eaten my dryer tube. So Erika, being the good friend, let me have my "oh-my-gosh-that-little..." session and then we got to fixing this thing. Funny thing was, we needed duct tape and we didn't have any! Who doesn't have duct tape? Apparently we didn't :) So I called my home teacher and friend down the street and tried asking my neighbors and none were able to provide duct tape. So I called Amanda Jones. She's so crafty I knew she had to have some. And she did! So we were able to fix it. Hooray!
Erika, being the smaller one, got behind the dryer and re-attached the tube. I was the prison warden and watched the culprit and took pictures.
Innocent...bah!(So far, my Boomer has only cost me about $12 in repairs-a new dryer tube and some duct tape)
So, with that adventure out of the way, Erika and I could get down to more important things:
SHOPPING.
We went to Kohls and spent about 4 hours there :) Ok maybe not that long but almost. It was fun! And Austin (her son) was such a trooper! He was the perfect man to go shopping with. He didn't hardly make a peep, said nothing about the money or time we were spending there and smiled at everything. He was just perfect. Erika had purposely not packed hardly any clothing because she and I wear the same thing and she was coming shopping. Why bother bringing stuff! When we were roommates we went around in each others' closets all the time. Just like old times this time around :)
And our last and final adventure took place at the
Arizona Sonora Desert Museum
This place was awesome! We were there from 10a to 5p. Seven whole hours! There was so much to see and do we had to do it all :) And this was the day that weather actually was really nice so we were able to wear some of our summery stuff like shorts. Awesome...
SHOPPING.
We went to Kohls and spent about 4 hours there :) Ok maybe not that long but almost. It was fun! And Austin (her son) was such a trooper! He was the perfect man to go shopping with. He didn't hardly make a peep, said nothing about the money or time we were spending there and smiled at everything. He was just perfect. Erika had purposely not packed hardly any clothing because she and I wear the same thing and she was coming shopping. Why bother bringing stuff! When we were roommates we went around in each others' closets all the time. Just like old times this time around :)
And our last and final adventure took place at the
Arizona Sonora Desert Museum
This place was awesome! We were there from 10a to 5p. Seven whole hours! There was so much to see and do we had to do it all :) And this was the day that weather actually was really nice so we were able to wear some of our summery stuff like shorts. Awesome...
My favorite was the underground Cave and Minerals exhibit. It had this area where you could go "spelunking" and explore through the cave. I loved it. It was dark in there too so our smiles are really funny (especially mine) because we were anticipating the flash.
This was fun too - another testament to Austin's great behavior. This is what we subjected him to:
He never had trouble finding us in the cave though...
This is Erika smelling the Creosote plant. This is what makes that very distinctive smell after it rains here in AZ. It's that wet dirt kind of smell but it's actually quite nice. I love it.
The highlights of the day were the bird shows. We went to both the 10a and the 2p shows. The 10a had the Big Horn Owl, Perigrim Falcon and the Feruginous Hawk (Spelling?)
The show we liked the most though was the Harris Hawks (spelling?) This was a familial group of hawks that hunted together. I think they said it was only 1 of 2 species that did. We loved watching them fly all around us and show off their skills. I did get some great videos of them flying but they took foooorrreeevvvverrrr to load. So, I will have to just post the pictures.
The above shows the 3 on the perch and then the other shows all 5 (3 on the perch and 2 on the Saguaro cactuses)
We got some good closeups of them. They were really neat birds to watch.
Other things we did and saw were the Javalina, Coyotes, Ground Hogs, Snakes and Spiders (with goosebumps and hair on end the whole time *shiver*), Beavers, the Otter, Big Horn Sheep, Grey Fox, Cougar, Ocelot, Bobcat, Racoon, Wolves, Deer, Black Bear, Cafeteria and Ice Cream Parlor.
(that last one was pretty amazing. Reeces flavored ice cream....yum....)
We also saw...um, were...the turtles. They weren't in their exhibit so we thought we would be the turtles that people could see. Got a chuckle out of a few :)
Other things we did and saw were the Javalina, Coyotes, Ground Hogs, Snakes and Spiders (with goosebumps and hair on end the whole time *shiver*), Beavers, the Otter, Big Horn Sheep, Grey Fox, Cougar, Ocelot, Bobcat, Racoon, Wolves, Deer, Black Bear, Cafeteria and Ice Cream Parlor.
(that last one was pretty amazing. Reeces flavored ice cream....yum....)
We also saw...um, were...the turtles. They weren't in their exhibit so we thought we would be the turtles that people could see. Got a chuckle out of a few :)
We ended our day with the birds. We saw lots of humming birds. The one below on the left was in the Live Bird Aviary and the one on the right was in the actual Hummingbird exhibit. She was nesting and the Daddy didn't like us taking pictures. He nearly took off my ear flying so close and almost gave Erika's bangs a cut flying close to her forehead. We figured we were done at that point :)
These were some scenery pictures that Erika wanted to take home with her. She loved the cactus covered mountains and the purple-red prickly-pears.
It really was an enjoyable time together. We had lots of fun and I hope we get to do it again soon. Hopefully with the rest of her family with her too...
Thanks for a great time friend!
And in other news, we weighed Boomer on the Wii Fit a week ago and he was 7lbs. We weighed him last night (5 days later) and the little pooch had gained 1.8lbs! The little porker is growin! My sweet lil Boom Boom won't be a little one much longer!
