Saguaro National Park

View of the Rincon Mountains.

This is a very dead Saguaro...did you know they have wood in them?

Brian and Jenna with both a prickly pear cactus (front) and barrel cactus. You can never have too many cacti.

Jenna and I hangin' with the cacti.

Tombstone...The Town Too Tough to Die

Our friend, Jenna, was here visiting this weekend and what better welcome to Arizona than to head to the Wild, Wild West. We went down to Tombstone on Saturday, which was a blast. The whole town really is reminiscent of the the wild west and there were many...and I mean many...cowboys! This was the main street in Tombstone.

We went on the underground mine tour of the first silver mine found in Tombstone (so named b/c Ed Sheifflin, the guy who discovered the area, was told that he was only digging his own grave by heading west). It is truly unbelievable to see how the first miners worked....hammering away at rock with a chisel lit only occasionally by candlelight...they apparently blew out the candles once they had started a hole in the rock to save them.

I was super excited to visit the Bird Cage Theater. This is the only surviving original building in Tombstone and as you walk through you can still spot many-a-bullet hole in the walls, paintings, bar, etc from the days of Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, and other notorious cowboys. The theater is now set up as a museum, but many of the structures/objects remain in their original location within the bldg, such as the bar, piano in front of the stage, and poker table (where the longest poker game in history supposedly took place). It was cool to see the "bird cages" that overlooked the theater where men were quite entertained by the ladies of the theater...there were also essentially brothel rooms in the basement.

Uh-oh...they caught Brian and hung him...but he looks like he died happy with his big bottle of booze! This was taken in Big Nose Kate's Saloon. We had lunch here and later it was the location of a good old fashioned (and unstaged!) barfight complete with police and a guy who had his whole shirt torn off. We found it amusing that the police SUV's have the town phrase "The Town too Tough to Die" written on the side.

This was the reinactment that we went to of the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral between the Earps and Doc Holliday against the Clantons and some other family name that I can't remember.

We had a fantastic day. It's truly awesome to stand in locations and buildings that the people in history books have stood.

NFC Championship Game

Though the outcome was not what we had hoped, wished, and prayed for, Brian and I still had a great time at the game. These pics are in backward order...but above is an Eagle's drive that they actually scored on!

Flag over the field during the Star Spangled Banner...amazed at how huge it was!

Start of the game...it was awesome to be at a game filled with so much excitement.

Tailgating! We were in the general parking lot, which was filled with an abundance of Eagle's fans as you can see around us. We got there at around 9am and headed over to "The Great Lawn" around 11:30. I didn't post a pic here, but there is a huge lawn just outside the main entrance of the stadium where fans are able to set up tents, grills, etc for the ultimate in tailgating. There was even a stage with a band playing...a sea of red, but still quite the party and fun! One thing they are doing right is how lax they are with their tailgating rules...you can really relax and just have a good time and not worry about being hassled.

University of Phoenix Stadium...this is the best they could come up with? It looks like the mother-ship has landed.

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

We went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum yesterday. Saw some rattlesnakes, spiders, scorpions, javalina, birds, etc that are native to the desert...the coyotes were hiding though. There were also a few different plant gardens, so of course a cactus garden. We had seen the cactus above before knowing what it was and I said it looked liked a fuzzy, stuffed cactus...turns out it is a Teddy Bear Cactus!

View across the desert...just watch your step for those snakes!

This prickly pear had the biggest fronds (leaves...I don't really know what they are called...didn't learn that part during our visit) we have seen on one thus far. We really just wanted to know where we could find the Prickly Pear Margaritas!

Saguaro that looked like an upside-down umbrella.

Us in one of the shade ramadas.

New Year's Eve

We had a pretty lowkey New Year's...dinner at the Melting Pot, always so good, followed by opening our Christmas gifts to each other in our very lovely Extended Stay room. We had a week in between leaving "Starrview at Starrpass...if you live here we will rob you" and moving into the bungalow house (pics coming!) and got to stay at another Extended Stay. Needless to say, they are not great, but at least we felt safe and could get a good night's sleep!

Yummy chocolate covered marshmallow!

ICE at Gaylord Palms

This entire exhibit was made of Ice and was awesome...luckily they provide you with parkas sincde it is about 9deg inside compared to the 80deg outside! This was Brian being one of the penguins, his fave!

Sitting with the Ice Santa.

Emmy and Mikey playing in the Ice Gingerbread House.

Ice bridge...where did Mikey go? He spent the majority of his time here pretending to be Randy from Christmas Story..."help, I can't put my arms down"...

Mom and Dick getting ready to enter ICE...Mom was already freezing. No pics here, but they also had Ice Slides to go down which were fun, but not fast enough!

Christmas in Florida III

Dick learning to Wii, Wii, Wii...he got really into the boxin!

Linda and I in our Christmas jammies!

Bailey had a very Merry Christmas too!

Brian and his new clothes.

Emily and her new American Girl doll, Ally.

Christmas in Florida II

Fireman Michael to the rescue!

Emily opening presents.

Christmas Eve...checking to make sure the chimney was open for Santa!

Looking for Santa's sleigh...and it really did go by!

Christmas in Florida

What a good looking family!

Christmas Eve getting ready to head out to church.

Mikey learning to ride a 2-wheeler!! Uncle Brian offered to take off the training wheels, Aunt Lori helped him get padded up and helmeted (safety first for all my PT friends!), and he was off! He did awesome with the exception of some steering difficulties...then he started having a little too much fun "crashing" into the grass!

Visiting Santa at Sea World.

Grandaddy getting some lovin'!

Delinquent Blogger

Sadly enough...we still haven't done much in Tucson worthy of pics. All that shopping and then to FL and when we came back we had to spend a weekend moving. The apartment we were in got broken into twice :( The police and ourselves are 100% certain it is someone with key access (from the complex office...mgmt, maintenance) b/c there was no forced entry and the obviously had time to look around and take select items. The 1st time it was only Brian's iPod...so we had the locks changed. But they still had key access b/c they came back again and stole my jewelry...a lot of costume stuff, but a few very sentimental pieces so that truly sucks! And this ladies is why I wear my rings to work everyday despite the wear and tear on them. Now I'm basically at the point where I know that whoever took our stuff will get what is coming to them in one way or another...and I guess I just get to start collecting new jewelry! (Brian is very aware of this plan:) So this is why there has been nothing fun to post...other than a fantastic Christmas which is coming right up!