Christmas in Arizona

Our last Christmas as Illinoisans was also our first Christmas in Arizona. We packed up the van and drove to Tucson, rented a house with Andrea's brother and his family for the week, met our realtor and looked a few houses, took in a few of the local attractions, and generally enjoyed the warm, sunny weather.

We first had to get out of our driveway, which was being covered in ice by a steady drizzle from a slow moving storm that bumped along our route all the way into Oklahoma. A brief hockey game broke out - I don't know who won.

This is pretty much what New Mexico looks like.

Tucson! First stop was the top of Sentinel Mountain to survey our new domain. Our house is out there somewhere kids! Or not.

The only picture I have of our rented living room also features two other familiar characters; Steve and JoAnne decided to drive down from Idaho to join our adventure.

One of the must-see attractions (especially for a certain teenager in our family) was the Pima Air and Space Museum. It's really very impressive. Plan on spending most of the day.

One of the most impressive of many is the venerable SR-71 Blackbird.

Kenrick slobbered on every plane in the museum

Paxton and Hayden next to some serious landing gear.

We also took a day to go for a hike on the Finger Rock Trail - one of my favorites in the area.

The kids lead the way. Don't get too far off the path, you might get stuck!

Lunch time.

Byron and I took the three older boys further up the trail after lunch. We didn't make it as far as I wanted before we had to turn back, but still managed an impressive climb up out of the valley.

Christmas morning dawned with snow in the mountains! Alas, no snow on the ground in the valley, but I guess that's to be expected. Christmas dinner featured ham and taters, salad and lots of other good stuff. Say cheesy stuffed mushrooms!

After dinner we went for a drive up the mountain. The view from Windy Point was stunning.

A rare and beautiful Snow Bird.

Finally, a trip up Sabino Canyon to enjoy the rarest of sights in the desert: running water!

We had a great trip, got to know Tucson a little better, and are starting to feel a little more connected to our future city. Unfortunately, we didn't find a house, but that's a story for another post.

On our way home we met up with our good buddies Aaron and Jenimae in Albuquerque at Shane and Malita's and traveled most of the way back home together. I miss the sunshine already.

Collarbroke

This post was supposed to be about an epic snowboarding trip to Colorado with Kenrick and Anthony and Aaron and Brad. Sadly, it turned into a story about the consequences of snowboarding badly in Colorado and then having to watch everyone else have an epic trip.

The five of us piled into Aaron's bus about three weeks ago and kept driving until we got to Loveland for a few days of snow and slopes. It was bitter cold, but the lift lines were short and we were in good spirits until I snagged the nose of my board on a rope fence going full tilt down the hill, smacked down on the hard packed groomed run, and broke my collarbone into five pieces. Note to self: stay away from the ropes. Ouch.

The rest of my day looked something like this.

If you look close, you can see that my left shoulder just doesn't look quite right. The break was bad enough that I needed to have surgery, which happened that same evening. One titanium plate, eight little screws, and a healthy dose of Percocet later, I was almost as good as new and Aaron hauled my groggy rear back to the condo to finally get some sleep.

 The next morning was bright and sunny. Everyone felt sorry that I would have to sit in the lodge all day. Briefly. Anthony stole my coat.

Classic Colorado.

The guys spent another day at Loveland and then part of Saturday at A-Basin, so managed to rack up some decent vertical. There were no more major incidents, although we did manage to break a couple of binding straps and Aaron's rig wouldn't start on Saturday morning. And someone kept stinking up the van on the way home...

I had a follow-up exam Tuesday and snapped a picture of the before and after.

Supper

Things that happened during supper tonight:

1. Anya thought the macaroni and cheese was too spicy 
2. Paxton burned his chest when a hot macaroni noodle stuck to his shirt
3. Anthony couldn't stop eating orange slices
4. We contemplated colored snow: "We might have to say we got caught in a fuschia-out!" 
5. Kenrick stabbed Paxton in the ribs with a butter knife
6. We ate peanut butter ice cream birthday cake

Thankfill

Thanksgiving was at the Pandemonium ranch this year and my family all came to help us celebrate one last Turkey Day on the Prairie. It was super nice to have everyone.

Mom and dad actually came out a few weeks early to help me manage the ruckus while Andrea was in Ecuador. And it was a great help. I had a few jobs for dad to do, but I think he mostly enjoyed spending time reading with his granddaughter. And Anya enjoyed having someone to read to.

Mom did what she does best - cooking, tidying, spoiling her grand kids. And spending time reading with her granddaughter.

Am I detecting a trend here?

The rest of the family showed up during the week of Thanksgiving and then we really did have a house full. Everyone graciously tucked in to whatever flat spot we had available for sleeping and managed to find a bathroom to use. We relaxed, played a little football, explored the tree house, jumped on the trampoline, relaxed some more.

Turkey Day is always a much anticipated event for my foodie family, and this year was no exception. Nor were we disappointed. The setting, pre-bird.

The spread.

After the dishes were cleaned up and leftovers put away we gathered our sleepy selves into the living room and played a Thankful game, pulling a paper feather out of a hat and trying to guess who had written the message of thanks that was on it. Then we pinned the paper feather on the paper turkey, created courtesy of Auntie Sally and her crafty minions.

We have much to be thankful for.

Mom took advantage of having another willing ear in the house to read a story or two. Or maybe it was Dorian who had the advantage.

It really does seem like there's a common theme here, but not sure I'm putting my finger on it...

We took the opportunity to have a double 16th birthday celebration for Kenrick and Mia. It's a little early for Kenrick, a little late for Mia, but nobody complained too much.

What kind of 16th birthday party would it be without a pinata? Everyone got a whack with the blindfold, but then since it was a little cold we just let the birthday kids have at it. Kenrick connects, but doesn't get it to split.

And Mia finished the job with a fine flying swing.

Our babies are grown. You can tell these two are related, can't you?

One last group hug, I mean picture, before it's time to go home. What a nice looking bunch.

Thanks again to everyone for coming out! We really enjoyed it.

The house seemed kind of empty last week.

Like Weeds

When Kenrick hit his teenage growth spurt a couple of years ago I was kind of kicking myself that I hadn't been keeping track of the kid's heights. It would have been fun to have a record of how quickly Kenrick stretched.

Well, Anthony wasn't too far behind, so about this time last year I started making marks on the door every month or so for each one of the kids. Sure enough, Anthony started growing like a weed, but what surprised us was that both Paxton and Anya started shooting up too! Must be something in the water.

Since last November, Paxton has grown 2-3/4 inches, Anya has grown 3-1/4 inches, and Anthony has grown 4-1/4 inches! Kenrick seems to have slowed down for the time being, but still gained a little more than an inch.

The engineer in me just had to make a couple of charts

(Also, the engineer in me measured the heights in millimeters, sorry. There are roughly 25 mm per inch)

Marching Man

Kenrick the Marching Band Man played his last show of the season and his last in the Sages purple and gold a couple of weekends ago in St Louis. The competition was impressive - big schools and big money - but the little Monticello band held their own. They sounded good, looked sharp, and should be proud of what they accomplished this year. Go Sages!

Practically Sitting in the Stadium

After 108 years and a come-from-behind, seven game series with the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago Cubs have finally won it all. We'll be able to tell our grand kids that we were living in Illinois when it happened. In fact, I think I heard the cheering. Way to go Cubs.

New Horses

The month of October saw the addition of a few new horses to the family, all corralled in a shiny blue Civic Si.

Who says commuting shouldn't be fun?

Who Are You and What Have You Done With My Kids?

Halloween, 2016.

The I's Have It

In preparation for her trip to Ecuador, Andrea has been taking a conversational Spanish class at a local community college. We were all sitting around the supper table the other night trying to wrap our tongues around the rolling "r" that is so characteristic of the language.

"Burrrrrrrrrrrrito."

"Señorrrrrrrrrrrita"

Paxton wasn't having much luck. He sat quietly for a couple of minutes, then announced proudly that he couldn't roll his "r's", but "I can roll my eyes. I can even make them shake back and forth!"

Hello Again

It's been so long since my last post I feel like I need to introduce myself again.

Hello, my name is Rob and I live in the middle of the Midwest with my beautiful wife and my four little chaos makers, ages teenager, teenager, imp, and princess.

I starting this blog a few years ago as a way to capture a little bit of what goes on around here - partly to give far-away parents and far-away friends some pictures and stories that they wouldn't otherwise get and partly to just to have a record of our crazy life. It seems that blogging is a bit out of fashion now days, and some of what I used to post has found its way to the family on WhatsApp, but social media in general just doesn't appeal to me. I don't twit or like or link or swipe and I'm perfectly happy not knowing every detail of even my best friends lives. I have enjoyed the few comments I've gotten on this blog over the years, but I never wrote for comments or attention, nor to vent political frustrations or ponder social injustice, so I'm not sad when months pass without a peep from beyond these pages. In fact, I've found that I've enjoyed going back through my posts and just recalling the milestones, the vacations, the simple activities that have all contributed to the Pandemonium on the Prairie. My motivations seems to be just to write stuff down. So I'll try to keep writing.

One reason why there haven't been many posts this summer is that my (not so little) chaos makers have been ricocheting around in all different directions and while that makes for lots of memorable activities, it doesn't leave much time or energy for recording those activities. The prospect of trying to catch up with the entire summer is a bit daunting, so I don't think I'll try. Hopefully I can sprinkle in a few pictures and fill in a few gaps over the next month or so and maybe it won't matter that everything isn't in perfect chronological order. No promises.

Oh, and we don't have any pets, so if you are looking for cat videos you will have to go elsewhere.

Sore Feet in Indiana

A couple of weekends ago the two teenagers and I met up with a friend in Indianapolis and his two oldest kids to go hiking. We packed our tents and sleeping gear into the woods somewhere in the middle of Indiana and spent the night, then finished the rest of the 10 mile loop early the next morning before the thunderstorms hit.

The hikers, loaded up and still chipper at the trail head.

The packs  really weren't that heavy. Most of the weight in mine was my old tent, a sleeping pad (it wasn't thick enough) and some water. Kenrick had the food and some more water. We put a couple of rocks in Anthony's pack just to keep him from feeling left out.

We found a well used 'back-country' site and settled in. Someone broke out the Uno cards.

We shared the hillside that evening with a couple of nice size King snakes who were patrolling the area for tasty morsels.  This one slid past a very quiet frog who hunkered down in the leaves, then army-crawled in the opposite direction just as soon as it could. It was fun to watch. Half of us were rooting for the frog.

Typical of central Indiana, the trail wound up and down through the heavy forest, along well worn stream beds, then back to more sparsely covered ridges. It was a fun trail and a nice time of year to be out.

The hikers all did fine, even the one guy trudging along at the end of the line complaining that his feet hurt.

New Driver

In my last post I mentioned that Kenrick is driving. Doesn't seem possible, I know, but it's true.

Learner's permit and good to go!

Mother's Day in Missouri

Missouri, not misery.

For Mother's Day weekend this year we packed the chillen's into the van and set off for the big city of St Louis to take in the sights. Well, one sight in particular. It had been a few years since we'd been to the Missouri Botanical Garden and thought it would be a nice time to see it (them?) again.

Kenrick drove. Most of the way - he's still a little shaky in traffic, so he got us within spittin' distance before giving up the wheel.

The entrance. If you squint you can see Paxton leaning against the second floor rail just above the entrance doors.

Naturally, the first thing we did was go to the cafe for lunch. The garden salad is highly recommended. The name of the cafe reminded me of my sister. The little girl in the picture also reminds me of my sister.

The gardens include plants from lots of different habitats, including some nice cacti from the arid southwest. Better get used to the pokey plants kids!

The yellow swirlies are glass sculptures from a 2006 Chihuly installation. Mom, do your remember seeing these when you were here with us?

Can't go to a botanical garden without taking a picture of a rose or two.

Andrea in the jungle.

The kids and I walk the planks in the Japanese garden.

It was a nice day, but hot enough that a little spray from the fountain felt good. Anya and Anthony try to get just wet enough.

I guess since this is a Mother's Day post, I should include a Mother's Day picture. Paxton says it for all of us.