Turkey Time in T-Town Two Thousand Twenty Three

By -

 Our somewhat recently established tradition of meeting Jake, Joanne and Nate in Tucson to convene and celebrate with our mom and dad for turkey happened again! Yay! Since mom and dad don't travel anymore, we try to take them on a mini-adventure while we're there (they are just as happy to stay home though) and give us a little more cousin time. This venture we went to a family friendly casino in Camp Verde, Cliffs Castle Casino. Our first night there we went fancy for some cave dining.


Joanne gets politely whipped at thumb war.

 

Part of the reason for heading out of Tucson was for some quality discing. The place we went was just magnificently beautiful. And everyone played!!! Jake has played before and it was great to take him along and get Nate hopefully slightly interested in the sport.



Alice crushing!
On our way back from the casino, we revisited one of our favorite Tucson haunts, the Ostrich farm, Rooster Cogburn. This place is pretty magical and was worth bringing the kids in when they were slightly older.

Alice pets with the G-Donuts taking it in...

The boys came in a different car with Jake and Joanne, so these are very Alice-focused...
Goat feeding machine up to the "Penthouse"!
And then everyone's favorite attraction, goat kissing! Hold a piece of feed in your mouth and let the fun begin.

So much PDGA.
And then the boys arrive for smooches!


The ostriches are actually the scariest part of the farm!

 

They have our favorite ray tank, the most friendly sweeties and water is not too cold.
Back to the casino pool for another round of destroy uncle Jake.
Building a jackalope in the hotel...
Ah, buffet breakfast. The one basic food group (calories).
Back at Mom and Dad's house, the kids try on Jake and I's old Halloween costumes to decide which are coming home with us.

Dragon makes the cut! Get ready to see more of this guy next October.
No G-Donut trip is complete without a rock competition.

A wonderful pre-feast at mom and dad's before the big Turkey the following day.
We celebrated Jake's birthday and made a very festive funfetti cake.
And family photos out with the pigs.

Sadly, but predictably, I have no photos of actual Thanksgiving at Uncle Steve's house with Aunt Sue and our top cousins Jenny and Jackie (and Jackie's fiance, Brian). But it was just lovely, and will be a new tradition to our other new traditions. Jackie and Brian did the bird and dressing and we took on our dish of choice to bring including mom's corn casserole, Joanne's amazing from scratch green bean casserole, Matt's homemade rolls, and my always a drama pie (last year I forgot the sugar, this year I forgot the pie, in the oven I mean.). The pie recovered and we did as well from our joyous engorging. Happy we get to all find each other, if only once a year, in the sunny Tucson. Love you all!

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kindergarten graduation!

By -
Image
 Ah, the pomp and circumstance of a Kindergarten graduation.  The wonderful Principle Korth at the podium... The event began with the graduates singing a song to their teacher: And then the main event! Then we adjourned to the playground for cake and popsicles.  Alice with one of her closer friend, Chloe. And her AMAZING teacher who we will miss so much, Ms. Heintzelman! It has been a really good year! Alice has bloomed in reading and math and particularly in her interest and understanding of sociology and science. She even made a few friends! I can say I learned more from than even Brock's first year of public school. I began volunteering on Friday mornings in December after her school received 100 new refugee students from Venezuela (her school went from 200 to 300 in a day!). I did not want to volunteer in the classroom, but instead wanted to help out with admin, but that was not where humans were needed, so I ended up in the neighborhood third grade class. This was way outside
Read more

Camping Disc Golf 2017

By -
Image
Uh. When the going gets rough, the rough roughs it! And off we head to Michigan for our annual camping and disc golfing extravaganza. We are last minute campers and it worked to our advantage this year. As everything else was booked, we ended up at a little "secret" campsite we know of in western MI called Timberview. The nice old man that runs it got sick of loud campers, so he pulled all listings off of the internet. It's not on google maps. We were lucky enough to drive by one year and just stop in. And now that we have a kid, he set us up in the nicest secluded campsite, of which we took two pictures (we're bad at this sometimes.) There was wonderful hiking, an assortment of mushrooms to discover, and a giant hill of majestic old-growth pines that Brock aptly named "pine tree heaven." It's also quite refreshing to be in a site where you are actually allowed to gather your own firewood, and it's low-traffic enough that there is plenty. We s
Read more

"If", by Sir Rudyard Kipling

By -
Image
 Brock was given the assignment of memorizing the poem "If", by Sir Rudyard Kipling. It is a wonderful poem, here was his submission to his teacher. They were also called on at random times through out the year to recite various verses impromptu in class. So deep.
Read more