i can't believe i'm still trying to finish writing about our trip

alright, the fast version: on saturday morning we drove up mt. lemmon with erik and isabelle. it was awesome! the view from the top was amazing. you could see the entire city of tucson surrounded by mountains. i think it was my favorite adventure of the whole trip.
then after lunch (burritos, mm....) we got ready for the wedding! the wedding was a blast. great food, bottomless margaritas, dancing, family... a wonderful time. not one thing to complain about.

unfortunately, we had to get up at 3:45 on sunday morning. our flight left tucson airport at 6 am, but it was ok. we were surprisingly awake. the girls did a fantastic job as usual, and the flights were uneventful. maggie insisted on wearing her pajamas and no shoes, and i didn't want to fight, so i let her. at first i felt like a bad mom, but then i noticed that EVERY OTHER kid under 3 was in pjs! and then i felt like everyone would think all the moms were doing this on purpose now (maybe they were, i probably missed some article in some parenting magazine about leaving your baby in PJs to fly so they're nice and comfy). so there you go, i went from being slightly embarrassed to feeling superior. haha!

whew! caught up!! now i just have to catch up on everything i missed writing about while i was writing about tucson. there was a LOT, too. first ever parent teacher conference, i got a job, the girls were sick, a doctor's appointment. well, let's go in chronological order. maggie got sick:

on monday, we let nina sleep in instead of waking her up bright (i mean, dark) and early for school. so we didn't end up getting there until 9:30 or 10:00. but, better a chipper late child than a dragging, cranky timely one, i thought. then i went home and did laundry. but not sheets! i had put fresh sheets on the beds just before we left, so i would have one less thing to do when we got home. poor choice, it turned out.

on tuesday morning, nina was off to school on time. shortly after she and nick left, maggie woke up. then she threw up, all over the bed. totally out of nowhere. well, not totally, she'd talked about having a tummy ache the day before at dinner, but i thought it was probably just left over travel tummy. the poor little girl continued to throw up hourly until noon, whereupon she slept for a few hours, and woke up feeling just fine!

i was glad she woke up feeling fine, because i had a parent-teacher conference with nina's teacher. that was wonderful! nina is a great student and very well behaved. all of the kindergarten screening was done over the first few weeks of school, and they determined that nina already knows everything they hope to teach in kindergarten. we knew this, but figured we'd see what the school thought about nina before telling them about her, and figure out a plan from there. she's actually beyond what they want kids doing by the end of K, which is reading and writing 20 or 50 (can't remember) sight words. she's reading all kinds of words, but her teacher is going to start separating nina from the rest of the class during reading time and working with her independently. so, that should be fun for nina. she's been learning to read for a really long time now (i remember her reading her first words before maggie was born, and reading 3-letter words easily at 3.5. by this summer, she was reading longer words and starting to fill in the common but odd short words like they and their). so, i wouldn't be surprised to hear she's reading on more of a first or second grade level, but as long as they're working with her at her level and she's enjoying herself, i'm happy.

ok, bedtime. the resolutions of maggie's illness and the lowdown on nina's checkup after the kids are asleep!

tucson, continued...

maggie woke up last night as i finished my post, and i fell asleep putting her back to bed, so that ended that. but now it's thursday night and both girls are asleep (and i have so much to catch up on!), and nick's off to guitar lessons, so it's catch-up time again.

ok then, friday: another wonderfully busy day. we went to the colossal caves in the morning. pictures again:

oops, they're on the other laptop. i'll add them later if i remember and if no one wakes up before i forget. so yeah, you'll never see them. haha! anyway, they're on facebook, so probably nothing new.

the cave was really, really neat. a group of...what was it, 18?... of us entered the entry chamber. it was small and dark. the guide talked about the cave for a few minutes while our eyes adjusted to the dark. maggie didn't last that long though, she wanted to get out almost immediately. her voice had that frantic edge it gets when she's really scared, so we didn't try to convince her to stay. mom, having seen caves before (seen one, seen 'em all!), volunteered to hang out outside with her. so then there were 16.

nina was already expressing her reservations, but we convinced her to press on a bit. she also thought the cave was pretty cool, and wasn't panicked, just a bit nervous. however, poor uncle lee hit his head, and already wasn't enjoying the cave experience that much, so he left. 15. then wyatt started really crying (he couldn't crawl or walk in the cave, so obviously he wanted nothing to do with it!!), and vanessa took him out. 13!

a little deeper in, nina had had enough. i took her out, and aunt maria volunteered to go with us. she said she didn't mind, the cave was starting to look all the same. which was true. so, down to 10. from our group, that just left nick, joseph, erik and isabelle, micah, and dad. fortunately, they took more pictures, so we got to see what we missed.

from there, we drove to a little food stand (they called it a "cafe" but it really wasn't a cafe by east coast standards). doesn't matter though, the burritos were excellent! we walked around the area a bit more (cacti, and a turtle).

finally, we drove back to the hotel and took the girls swimming and hot tubbing. they'd been waiting for that for weeks!

after our relaxing swim, we got dressed for the rehearsal dinner. everything was going fine until maggie freaked out. she cried and cried, and demanded i put her pajamas back on, and put mine on as well. i took her out to where everyone was having cocktails and appetizers, hoping that would calm her down. no such luck. she just kept crying and telling me to put on my pajamas. i took her back to the room but she didn't even want to nurse. finally, she said "don't leave me!!" and i realized what was going on. she thought nick and i were going out to the rehearsal dinner without her because i was wearing the same dress that i wore out with nick back in may. may!! that was why she wanted me to change into my pajamas. so i explained to her that we were all going out together, i wasn't going to leave her, and then she calmed down. man, that girl has a memory. she often talks about things like christmas that i wouldn't think a kid her age could remember.

once we got there, the rehearsal dinner was great. the food was amazing (mexican, even flan for dessert), and it was nice to have all the family in one place.

well then, i started this hours ago, maggie woke up and took a long time to fall back asleep. she was cuddling with me here in the family room for a bit when she saw a small cobweb up on the ceiling. she asked what it was and i told her. then she covered her eyes and asked to go in the other room. i thought she meant the lights were too bright in here or something, so i turned them off. but she kept her hands over her eyes and said "is it still there?" i didn't know what she was talking about at first, then she said, "the spider." the poor kid is so afraid of spiders! she didn't uncover her eyes until we were in the living room. aww!

thursday: sabino canyon

after checking out a little park near my cousin jen's house, and then chilling at her house for a bit and hitting up some in and out burger for lunch, we renedzvoued with vanessa, micah, and wyatt, and headed off to sabino canyon.

a picture is worth a thousand words they say, so here are some pictures:





(in this last picture, i'm reading barbie, a fashion fairy tale, to the girls. it's even worse than barbie: a mermaid tale. in the fashion fairy tale, barbie gets help from 3 flairies (they're like fairies, only they give things flair. really) named glimmer, shimmer, and shyne (ugh). the book is filled with gag-inducing platitutes like "magic happens when you believe in yourself!!")


sabino canyon is in the mountains that surround tuscon. they're really beautiful, the mountains. anyway, there's a shuttle that takes you 2 or 3 miles into the canyon, and it makes 9 stops. you can get on or off the shuttle anywhere along the road, so you can do a nice mix of hiking and driving. we drove to the turn around spot, and then hiked for maybe a half mile, to the next shuttle spot. i guess i can't really call it hiking since we were just walking on a paved road.

anyway, it was very beautiful. nina has so much energy and had no trouble keeping up, and maggie fell asleep on the shuttle ride in. she napped in my arms for maybe a half an hour total, and then enjoyed the walk with us. this was, fortunately, a day she agreed to wear shoes without any struggle. the rest of the week would not go so smoothly...

after our trip through the canyon we indulged in the complimentary cocktails and hors d'oevures at the hotel. the girls were exhausted so we decided to stay in instead of heading out to dinner. after a family dip in the hot tub, i crashed (it was like, 7:30, but i was exhausted!!). nick tells me that the girls went to bed soon after me.

alright, the beginning of tuscon back-blogging

our travels started on tuesday evening. we drove to erik and isabelle's even though our flight wasn't until 4 on wednesday. we wanted to spend a little extra time with isabelle and chester, and not have to spend all of wednesday in the plane and car.

the girls had a wonderful time with their dog-cousin, as always. a few pictures:



on wednesday morning i tried to take the girls to the playground in nearby sharon MA, but about 3 minutes into the drive there, maggie realized that she didn't have pony with her.



i tried to convince her that she didn't need pony, but that went nowhere. by the time we got back to erik's and found pony (i'd tucked her into the suitcase so that chester didn't get her), maggie needed to nurse to calm down, then promptly fell asleep. so much for the playground!

we got out in a timely fashion, and drove with isabelle to the airport. we got a DVD player for the car and the girls watched barbie: a mermaid tale (which is terrible. really, really horrific) for the third time. the flights were long but i don't remember anything, so i guess it couldn't have been that bad. the girls napped at the end, cousin joseph turned out to be on the second leg, and we arrived at the hotel at about 9:30 local time. we all konked out pretty quickly and slept fitfully until the bright and cheery hour of 6 am. actually i think we were up around 5:30 that first morning. jet lag!

in between endless loads of laundry

a quick update!

poor little maggie has been sick since yesterday morning, when she woke up at 7:30 and promptly threw up on the bed. good thing i'd just put clean sheets on the bed before we left for arizona. not! (haha, how come no one says that anymore?!). she threw up a few more times, then took a long nap and seemed much better. unfortunately, she started throwing up again at about 11 last night, and continued throughout the night. knock on wood, but so far 5 am was her last vomit. i'll update later, right now she's stirring.

arizona is beautiful

all's well, having a wonderful time. many photos to come!

the girls are having fun, even though they're stuck with their incompetent parents. this was nina, on my packing:

i only have 2 dresses? are you kidding me?

off to some caves!

halloween costumes

we are working furiously here to get everyone's halloween costumes ready (by "we" i of course mean "i"). nina is going to be snow white, which wasn't so much work this week because i sewed the dress back in august as you may remember. but i just got the red cape done this week (does anyone besides me even know that snow white wears a red cape? she does, in the scene where the hunter tries to kill her and she escapes into the woods). nina also really wants a red headband with a bow (that's my girl, an eye for the details!), so i'll make that next week. then she's done.

maggie's costume is starting to come together too. she's going to be ming-ming, from the wonder pets. ming-ming is a duckling, and we already have a yellow feathered caplet from anna. i got some green fabric to make her cape, and then she just needs ming-ming's pilot's hat with goggles. i found some goggles at mom's house, but i'm still not 100% sure how to do the pilot's hat. it has to be authentic enough for maggie to wear it. well, hopefull she'll wear the costume at all, but i think she will. we even have a duck bill for her to wear (it came with anna's feathered caplet), but maggie has repeatedly pointed out that ming-ming's bill is pink, not yellow, so i don't know if she'll wear it.

backup plan is that she can also be snow white if she so desires. in fact, since there are no fewer than 3--and up to 5, if we feel ambitious--separate halloween special events, the girls can wear multiple costumes.

nick refuses to dress up, as usual. i'll probably wear my witch's hat, as usual. maybe i'll mix it up and pretend to be the evil queen from snow white, dressed up as the old hag. all i'd need is a big stick for a staff, a poison apple, some powder in my hair, and lots of black. yeah, i think i could pull that off!