Thanksgiving Madness

Sunset over the Sonoran Desert



Beautiful Sonoran landscape



Silly boys pretending to poke the barell cactus


Ok, so we are back from our trip to Arizona! We had a great time. We stayed at Ben's twin sister's house in Gilbert. She has a 4 1/2 year old daughter who I think was in heaven with all these crazy boys to play with for a week. Josie, the 9 month old, tolerated our presence pretty well.
The drive out wasn't too bad, it's about 15 hours drive time. We left Friday night, drove about 3 hours and then stayed the night in a pretty yucky motel in the middle of nowhere, and then drove the rest of the way Saturday, arriving at Angee's house at about 9:30PM AZ time. Only one glitch on the way there when we got pulled over just outside of El Paso. The speed limit changed from 80 to 70, but silly us, we decided to stay with the flow of traffic, and subsequently got pulled over and got a nice little speeding ticket. Ben was very, very annoyed. But that's one of the hidden costs of road trips, and still far less expensive than 5 plane tickets. Plus Ben still hasn't gotten his TX driver's license, so this ticket will stay with his FL license and should therefore not result in any increased insurance rates. One time when procrastination really paid off!
Sunday we went to church with Angee's family, then met Reuben and Raegan's new little baby boy (Reuben is Ben's oldest brother), and then went over to Tracie's house to see her and her little kids. Not so little anymore actually! Tracie is Ben's older sister who also lives in Gilbert. She has 5 kids ranging from 15 down to 2. Her two year old is the most verbally precocious little 2 year old I've ever met. I think he speaks better than I do.
Monday Angee and I took the boys to this fun little train park where the kids rode on a little train and then took a ride on the Carousel. They also played in the playground and got incredibly dirty playing in some mud. Ahhh, boys...
Tuesday we went to the Sonoran Desert museum, which isn't exactly a museum. Kind of a cross between a desert botanical garden and a zoo. It is in the Sonoran national park outside of Tucson and it was incredibly beautiful. We got to see hawks, bobcats, a black bear, coatis, foxes, some other kinds of wild cats, a variety of snakes and lizards and spiders, a bunch of birds in the net-enclosed aviary, and assorted other desert animals. Poor Mosey wet his pants on the way over so he toured the whole place in a t-shirt and diaper since we had no change of clothes for him. Poor guy. The pictures above are from that outing.
Wednesday we hung out at Angee's house and the kids played outside and removed approximately 50% of the rocks from the rock border around her back lawn, placing them in huge piles on the back patio. I'm not sure why they did this, but it sure provided hours of fun for the kids. We went to Tracie's house in the afternoon where they met up with their Utah cousins and generally wreaked havoc on the Hancock household.
Thursday was Thanksgiving of course, which we spent doing the usual Thanksgiving thing-- eating absurd amounts of delicious food. And wreaking more havoc on Tracie's house. Tracie and her family JUST moved into their house 2 weeks ago. It's definitely broken in now. In the afternoon I took family pictures for everyone, including a big-group shot, and a grandkids-only shot, both of which were... interesting. At least they documented that everyone was there at the same place at the same time. I haven't opened those up yet, but I'm sure they turned out cute. After pictures we went to see the Bee Movie which was a fun outing although I don't think we'll be rushing out to buy that DVD when it comes out.
Friday all the cousins and their parents went to the Phoenix zoo. This is a nice little zoo which my kids enjoyed a lot. They got to go on a Camel ride with Ben. It was pretty funny to see all 3 boys and Ben crammed up on top of one Camel. But it was fun for them and I'm sure something they will remember. At least, I hope so, since I didn't bring my camera! (D'oh!)
Saturday we got up, hung out for a while at Tracie's, eating a delicious pancake breakfast, and then packed up our stuff and were on our way. We stopped at Grandpa and Grandma Hansen's house near Benson, and the boys got treated to a dune buggy ride and grandpa's famous mesquite smoked turkey. It was worth the detour just for the turkey.
Ben was feeling quite ill, he came down with a horrible sore throat and cough which he battled all week, and Saturday was the worst of it I think. He was anxious to get home ASAP and drove all the way to El Paso that night.
We stayed in a hotel, and then woke up to snow! We toured El Paso a little, driving down the highway that runs right along the border with Mexico. It was pretty surreal to see Super Target, Office Depot, Khols, and other typical American stores on one side of the highway, and dirt roads and tin shacks beyond the razor wire fences and border patrol trucks on the other side.
It was cold and snowy for quite a while out of El Paso. We let the boys get out and play in the snow for a while after much begging. Then it was the long, long drive across west Texas. The boys did remarkably well considering the long ride. A few moments of misbehavior, but altogether, they were incredibly good, listening to most of Harry Potter book 6, and watching Shrek 3 and Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone on the DVD player we borrowed.
The last adventure of our trip was when we were only about an hour away from home. Mosey had to go to the bathroom so we pulled over to the side of the road to let him relieve himself. Little did we know it had rained heavily the day before (must have been the same storm system that dumped snow across El Paso), and sure enough, we got stuck in the mud. Ben tried mightily to get us out for about 45 minutes, with no luck. I called the highway patrol and they came with a tow truck, but it was going to cost us $140 just to get pulled out of the mud. Luckily a teenage boy stopped to see if we needed help. He went and got his girlfriend's father who had a 4 wheel drive pickup and a tow rope, and he got us out of there in about 3 minutes, for free. Texans are so nice. So we made it home last night around 10:30, muddy and tired, but home!
Mister was VERY happy to see us. He caused us some stress during the week as he broke a hole in the fence and escaped a few times. But nice neighbors brought him back, and then Ben's friend Eddie came and got him and closed the dog door so he couldn't get back out. We had ward members come and feed our fish, and they let him outside once a day for the last few days.
Today the boys went to school and Ben and I took care of a bunch of errands and saw my doctor. I'm most likely going to be admitted back to the hospital tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday morning. We'll do another 5 day round of Solumedrol, plus some more MRI's and other tests to see what the heck is going on. I'm completely unable to walk now and I can feel the spinal effects moving up my spinal cord day by day. So we need to put a stop to this. I'm getting pretty adept at getting around in a wheelchair, and Ben is really building up his picking-wife-up-and-transferring-to-bed-car-bath-whatever-else-she-needs muscles. At the hospital I'll also have rehab people coming in to help me figure out a few things I am pretty much stumped about. Like how to pull my pants up when I need both arms to hold my body up. I'm sure there must be some method but gosh darned if I can figure it out. My ward is really stepping up to the plate. I've been home one day and I have had 6 different people stopping by or calling to find out how they can help. So I'm not worried about making arrangements for my boys over the next few days which is a HUGE stress lifted from our shoulders.
Anyway, that's all the news that fit to print over the last week or so. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Now we can all start playing Christmas music!!