speech sectionals

After a long day of competing, Liam and Nathan earned fourth place in duo at sectionals today. These boys are going to STATE!

We are so proud! It's quite an accomplishment for freshmen, especially since they didn't start competing in this event until past the halfway mark of the season. It's been a whirlwind first year of speech for Liam, and I'm pretty sure this great success will only encourage him to go even further over the next three years.

happiest gift

After Gramps died in September, my mom asked us all if there was anything we wanted from the house. I asked for a book that I made for Gramps for his 80th birthday with stories and memories from all his kids and grandkids. He treasured that book, and it made me so happy to be able to put it together for him. I couldn't think of anything I would value more than that book.

Luckily for me, someone else was doing the thinking, because I got a text from my uncle Matt saying that he thought I should have the typewriter. Honestly, I had kind of forgotten Gramps still had it, but I'm so so thankful that Matt reminded me. The typewriter is (probably) from the late 1940s or early 1950s. Gramps and his dad used it at Jeffirs Motor Company, and my mom can remember using it to help him type up invoices. I'm sure Gram must have used it too; she kept the books for the dealership. It's a beautiful machine, and it represents both my history and my chosen career, and I am so lucky to have it.

Gramps brought the typewriter home with him when he sold the car dealership in the late 1970s, and there it stayed for the next 40 or so years. At some point, it stopped working, but still he kept it. I remember seeing it on the desk in his den and admiring it, but I don't remember actually using it when I was younger.

For my birthday, Mike found a man in Ann Arbor who specializes in repairing and refurbishing typewriters. It's a dying art, and we were lucky to find someone relatively close. In November, Mike and Henry made the drive up to drop it off. It turns out that among other problems, when the guy opened it up, he discovered that mice had been happily living in the typewriter for some time (ugh!). But he was able to restore it and clean everything up and find a new ribbon, so today Mike and Henry went back to Ann Arbor to pick it up and bring it back for me.

Friends, this might be the best gift I've ever gotten. I'm not super into the acquiring of things (I'd rather have time/experiences/memories) but this is a thing that will be special to me forever. Every time I look at it (which is often, because it lives just outside my office in the front entry to the house) I think of Gramps, Gram, Grandpa Jeff, and Mom. I think of years stretching out behind and in front of us. I think of the love and care that went into bringing it back to life. And I think how precious it is that I can be a caretaker for all those memories, which is the best gift of all.

max at thirteen

As of today, we have TWO teenagers in the house. The hormones! The drama! The attitude!

To be fair, the only one we really have a problem with is the last one, so I think we're getting off pretty lightly so far. (Yes, I realize we are barely into the teenage years, but you all know I'm a wide-eyed optimist. Or something.)

At 13, our Max is confident and loyal. He's so good with kids (with the notable exception of Henry) -- he's patient and attentive, and he genuinely loves spending time with them, especially his younger cousins. We think he would make a great pediatrician or teacher, though I'm not sure those areas are really where his interest is anymore. He's mostly helpful, loves cuddling with the dogs, and hates getting up early in the morning. He likes visiting new places, but he's perfectly happy hanging out at home or spending time with his friends.

That's what he's doing tonight, in fact: having a slumber party with four of his closest friends. We had originally planned to take his birthday trip this weekend, but Max wanted to make sure he was home on the actual day so he could see his friends and family, which is incredibly sweet. The boys are spending the night playing video games, watching movies, eating frozen pizzas, and just generally having a good time together. I'm sure they'll sleep late in the morning and then start playing games all over again. A 13-year-old's dream day.

So here's to Max, our irrepressible, charming, sneaky, funny, sweet newly minted teenager. We love you, and we can't wait to see what the next year brings!

joshua tree national park

After our visit to Saguaro yesterday, we got back in the car and headed west ... a long way west. We crossed the border into California (yay, my first time in California!) and kept right on going for a while. Conveniently (or, you know, by design), we had to pass the southern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park on the way to our hotel. It was still light outside, so we decided to go in and explore the southern section a little bit.

We had just enough time to head to Cottonwood Spring and follow the trail in a little ways. The fan palms were lush and amazing, and we saw a few flowers starting to bloom, though it's still pretty early for that. We saw a few birds, notably a gorgeous hummingbird, during our exploration.

After Cottonwood Spring, we headed north for a while and admired the low desert, the mountains in the distance, and all the different types of cactuses along the way. We were treated to some amazing colors on the horizon as the sun went down, then we drove out of the park and headed to our hotel in the dark

This morning, we were up before the sun (again) and drove around to the northern part of the park where the iconic Joshua trees live. I had this idea that I really wanted to take sunrise pictures with the trees in them, and I'm more than pleased with how they turned out, even if we got very very chilly in the process.

Max had fun climbing some rocks, then we headed for Keys View, which offered a stunning view of the park from above. We tried to use my camera to take "selfies" by holding down the shutter to just take pictures continuously (I haven't used the timer function, and I didn't have the instruction manual with me, so I thought that would be a decent workaround) with ok results.

Next up was a hike to Barker Dam, which was built around 1900 to hold water for grazing cattle. And once again, the park service proved to be a liar. One-mile round-trip my big bootie! We were out there for HOURS, wandering in the desert. Even Mike and Max got tired. On the plus side, the reservoir was beautiful, and so quiet. For a while, I sat on a rock and thought, this is what absolute silence sounds like. Kind of like the auditory equivalent of when you go to Mammoth Cave and they turn the lights off so you can experience absolute darkness. I'm not sure I've ever been in a place where there were so few ambient noises before. It was kind of amazing.

Also on the plus side, we finally saw some birds! Most of them were too quick for us to get pictures of, but there were a pair of verdins in a bush, and I spent like 15 minutes edging closer to them one step at a time to see if I could get a really good picture. We also managed to get a picture of a loggerhead shrike up in a Joshua tree.

After Barker Dam, we made a quick stop at Skull Rock, which is just what it sounds like. We decided to head for the Oasis of Mara, and along the way, we saw the most glorious thing: a rainbow over the Joshua trees. It was actually a double rainbow, but I'm not sure that translated really well to the pictures.

At the Oasis of Mara, we finally hit the bird-watching jackpot. We saw robins, Costa's hummingbirds, northern mockingbirds, a swainson's hawk, a gilded flicker, a phainopepla (don't ask me to pronounce that; it's the one that looks like a bigger titmouse/smaller cardinal), ravens, and a cactus wren. What a bounty for our grand finale!

The Oasis of Mara was our last stop in the park, and after that we got lunch and headed back to Phoenix (thankfully, only a three-hour drive ... the shortest driving day of this whole trip). It's been a grand adventure, and we've enjoyed seeing all the parks, even if we have entirely missed seeing the cities in the daylight, except for a brief glimpse of Phoenix this afternoon. Maybe someday we'll get to explore the urban environment some more, but in the meantime, this has been a great trip!

saguaro national park

Trust us to go to the desert and have it pour rain all day!

Today's park adventure took us to the outskirts of Tucson in the early early morning. We saw the sun come up behind us as we drove through the mountains, and it was spectacular. Luckily, there was a little pull-off area so we could stop and take some pictures.

As the sky lightened, we got closer and closer to the western section of Saguaro National Park. (We would love to have gone to the eastern section too, but there was just no time this trip. Yeah, that's right, I said this trip — the park is definitely on my repeat visit wish list, and I also wouldn't mind seeing Tucson during the daytime.)

It was too early for any of the park offices to be open, so we started with an early morning stroll on the Desert Discovery Nature Trail. We saw plenty of rabbits, and a few birds, and we heard coyotes howling in the distance, but that was the extent of the wildlife. Mostly we were there for the cactuses — and boy were there a lot of cactuses! Hedgehog, barrel, cholla, prickly pear, and, of course, saguaro, standing sentry in the cool morning.

After that, we headed to the visitor center, which was still not open, but we ran into a friendly maintenance man who pointed us in the direction of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which was about to open, so we decided to make that our next stop. It was raining lightly, but we weren't too worried because we figured it would blow over pretty quickly. Except the joke was on us, because even after an hour of exploring all the indoor exhibits at the museum and having a lengthy discussion with one of the docents about cactus skeletons (side note: Cactus skeletons are wood! This was a revelation to me; I always assumed cactuses just had some thick green jelly stuff inside them.), it was still raining, even harder than before. It was pouring, even. Which was really neat because we learned that each saguaro can hold onto 200 gallons of water if there's a good downpour ... but not so neat because we were all soaking wet and cold and hungry.

Luckily for us, one of the museum docents helpfully directed us to a cafe that wasn't too far away, and we went in and feasted. Max had breakfast tacos, and I got mesquite pancakes with agave honey (made from cactuses). (Mike just had his usual eggs and toast, in case you were wondering.) By the time we finished breakfast and headed back into the park, the visitor center was open, so we did some exploring inside, and once the rain let up to just a steady drizzle, we took the Cactus Garden Trail from the visitor center and did some more exploring. Mike saw a gila woodpecker on top of a saguaro, which is something I very much wanted to see, but it was gone before I got there with the camera. Darn quick birds!

We finished our visit with the 9-mile Bajada Loop Drive, along which we saw plenty of cactuses, but also a big mule deer. The rain had picked up again by this time, so there wasn't a whole lot more we could see, so we bid a fond farewell to Saguaro ... at least for now.