Rodeo Break visit to Grandpa in California

To "celebrate" the end of my chemo treatments we took a road trip to CA during Rodeo Break (end of Feb) to visit Ammon's grandpa. We love going there. As soon as we arrived, Connor got out of the car and said "it smells like California!...it smells like grandpa's house!...it smells like grandpa's grass!" I think he's right- California has a distinct smell. It smells like the ocean and palm trees and grass (which we lack in AZ) and we love it!

We headed down to the beach early one morning. Ammon ran along the boardwalk, Connor went in the ocean and Amelia and I just watched from a blanket.

Connor was irritated that I didn't bring his swim trunks (I didn't think he'd want to get in the freezing water in February) so I suggested he go in his jammies and we'd wash them after. He definitely took me up on that suggestion and was soaked from head to toe! I'm sure he was quite cold. The water was frigid evidenced by the die-hard surfers all wearing their wet suits (all the black dots in the water are surfers in the picture above this one).

After we returned from the beach, we were told by Ron, grandpa's helper, that one of us had left the back door open and while we were gone, a squirrel had run into the house! Ron spent about an hour trying to chase the thing back out! He didn't appreciate that very much. It wasn't all bad, we all had a good laugh talking about it and I'm sure it also got his heart pumping. Besides, it's fun to have a little adventure in your life. ;)

Connor enjoyed making Angry Birds out of great-grandpa's legos.

Great-grandpa Maughan wanted to get a picture with each kid to put in their copy of his life history "A Glorious Struggle".

I love this picture

Kissing through the glass. Grandpa has an enormous front window that begs to be...kissed.

Connor's turn

Oh no, mommy caught me kissing boys!

A favorite father-child interaction is to play "tick-tock". Each kid loves to take their turn. Check out their videos below.

I love grandpa. I think of him like my own.

Grandpa likes to spoil us by taking us out to eat when we visit.

We love you grandpa!! We're so glad we were able to come see you!

Cooling off in the Utah mountains

All I've posted to my blog lately has been about my "depressing" health issues. I decided it's about time to catch up on blogging the pictures we have from the summer and since. We as a family have really had a lot of fun over the past few months despite the struggles...

Ammon and I were looking forward to our a week-long Anniversary trip away from the kids. I think we got about a day into it when we started to miss the kids and told ourselves we'd better plan a day to have them over to share the great digs we had. Ammon's 2 youngest sisters were able to join us as well. We had so much fun!

Outside the sauna where the temperature read 112F. Having just come from that exact degree in Tucson, we decided to give that option an emphatic "thumbs down". (I like how my face changes from picture to picture but Ammons' stays the same.)

Momma and baby poolside

Enjoying the kiddie end of the pool

L'il princess escapes from the pool again

Most of us as seen through the legs of the kiddie slide that Connor was too afraid to use

Flying high with daddy

Fascinated by the remote control.

"This really must be vacation...I never get to touch the one we have at home."

The girls taking a break from playing raquetball to mug for the camera.

Sweet chicas.

Big brother challenges the winner.

Drive home from Mexico: Days diez y once

Post 10 of 10 of our trip to Mexico. I would advice scrolling down to Day 1 and reading up to get the whole story.

We had just 2 days to get home (and 3 days to get down) so we were a little worried. We therefore determined to leave early (we got out at 5:30am) and that we would take every paid road possible to cut off time. The first stretch that took us 9 hours to get down (from Mazatlan to PV) took 4 hours. An amazing difference! It cost us almost $20 for that stretch but it was sooooo worth it! We weren't frazzled at the end of the day and we arrived with some daylight!!

The rest of the drive home was fairly uneventful. The only thing that really caught our eye was this pick-up truck bed full of men (there were at least 6). This was a common site in Mexico. We even saw whole families in truck beds sometimes. I guess they know what it means to carpool!

Some other sites of note seen while driving in Mexico:

Saw a mom, dad and baby riding on a motorcycle, no one wearing a helmet.

Plenty of crazy driving styles. For instance, you get in the right lane to turn left. How the roads are designed is to have the main road in the middle separated by a median. Along each side of traffic is a frontage road of sorts that people cut in and out of to get around traffic. That is the lane you must get in to turn left. Odd but once I understood it, it made sense.

People pass everywhere. Didn't matter if there was a double line or signs saying you shouldn't, they did. Sometimes passing very long lines of traffic. I read in the guidebook that if you see that happening in the approaching lane of traffic and the passer hasn't gotten back into their lane, that they expect you to pull over until they pass. Kinda crazy and very dangerous.

Another thing- roads are very narrow. There is no shoulder anywhere so the semis and buses just hang out in the middle of the lane until someone wants to pass. Then they'll signal you by putting on their left turn signal to let you know it's clear to pass them. That actually helped, especially around the windy roads.

For a long time, I couldn't see the wisdom in having no shoulder until we came to stopped traffic on the highway one day. We couldn't see what was wrong so just assumed there was an accident ahead. There was only one lane and a right turn lane. We waited in the one lane but started noticing people trying to pass in the right turn lane. Then they started to pass in the dirt shoulder past that. And then they created a 4th lane out of a slope. I couldn't believe it! After we had waited politely, not moving, for half an hour, we decided to see how it was possible these people were getting through. We drove down to that "slope" lane which then led us down this rutted out muddy frontage road of sorts. We didn't think there was anyway we'd get through but we just kept following the big buses in front of us. Finally we emerged and got back into the single lane. Waited some more and then saw the reason for the hold-up: a one lane bridge. No accident, no road constuction. It was just people being so impatient and trying to cut each other off that you couldn't move. So crazy!

Needless to say, I did a lot of white knuckle driving.

...We finally arrived home at 2pm on Sunday afternoon. I was so happy and amazed to be getting home so soon. Taking the paid roads made ALL the difference. We would highly recommend that route. It was worth the $80 in tolls, hands down.

Some accolades: Ammon did a great job reserving the 3 extra hotels we used along the drive there and back. He also printed out maps of those areas as well as the temple destinations. Good job planning dear!! Also, we wouldn't have made it if we didn't have his Spanish speaking skills to get us out of a few scrapes.

All in all, it was a great trip. We'd recommend it to anyone in the mood for A LOT of adventure. :)

Swim & Service- PV, Mexico: Day Numero Nueve

This being our last day in PV, we decided to go swim in the hotels' pool in the morning. They have 2 enormous pools with a river connecting them. There were beautiful bridges, lush vegetation complete with wildlife.

My man on a bridge over the river. Connor is below in the water infront of me.

As I was swimming across the pool, I came face to face with this iguana just laying under a lounge chair. I was a little creeped out at first. I called Ammon over to take a picture of it quick because I thought it would be scared off but it wasn't. A few minutes later, I saw an elderly couple go over and pet it! It didn't even move. Another man then came up and fed it! Wow, it must be really used to having people around.

Connor by the iguana.

Beautiful waterfall from this cool rock structure.

Enjoying ourselves by the waterfall.

Connor boy having a great time getting all wet.

This is the beautiful view of the bay and downtown we had from our balcony.

Me getting groceries for our drive home.

When we were at Church the previous Sunday, we noticed that the outer walls had grafitti on them! We were so appauled that we decided we would come back later in the week to remove it. We bought grafitti remover from Home Depot (another new addition since the last time we were in PV). We found out that one of the wards was meeting for a ward activity Friday night so we went early to see if anyone wanted to help us (you should have a little vested interest in your Church, right?). The elders and a few other youth helped Ammon out.

The remover worked really well except it left some green in the grout lines of the tile. At least it was better than the grafitti.

Ruins- PV to Guadalajara, Mexico: Day Numero Ocho

So on this day we headed to Guadalajara to see this 2nd largest city in Mexico (Mexico City is largest) and to go to the temple. This looked to be a distance of about 1 1/2 hours (same distance on the map for us to go to the temple at home). Well, since we knew we were in Mexico we decided to double the time we expected to drive up to 3 hours. And since it was in a jungleous mountaineous region where they are also doing lots of construction, it took us 5 hours, one way. Yeah.

These are some cool black rocks we saw along our drive.
We found some ruins!! Our guide book only showed them further south and east of where we were so when I saw the sign to a pyramid archaeological sight, we knew we had to stop. It only cost us $3.50 to go on an official archaeological site called Ixtlan or Los Toriles by the locals.Connor heading up some steps.
Sadly, not much but the foundations remain. Much of this site was destroyed during the Spanish Invasion and was heavily looted thereafter.

Still, we were able to see over a dozen ruins of buildings. Most of them were rectangular and arranged in courtyards.

We did find one round structure, which was identified as a Temple to Quetzacotal! For those of you that know anything about this figure in history, you know that Quetzacotal was the "flying feathery serpent" or "the bearded white god" often believed to represent Jesus Christ. Pretty cool.

Entering the temple stand.
The boys poking their heads out of the cross structures.

On top of the exterior round wall of the temple.

Doing my Sound of Music pose. "The hills are alive with the sound of music."

Connor came over to join me. We're doing some funky teapot/Egyptian stance.

Still on the temple structure.

Heading down the temple stairs. You can see how big they were.

Connor in one of the window areas on the exterior of the temple wall.

Me overlooking the ruins. These are really nestled in a beautiful setting. Green rolling hills everywhere.

We finally arrived in Guadalajara with just enough time to tour the downtown square. Here is a lovely Church, grandstand and fountain setting.

Shot of us on the grandstand.

Connor laughing and pointing at the naked boy statues behind him.

Still by those nudes.

Neat courtyard. This is where the painting is that you'll see below.

You can't see it very clearly but behind us is a bronze eagle statue with a snake wrapped around it.

This was a random painting we saw. It was a composite of several pictures. Does anyone recognize the upper left-hand corner pictures? They are LDS pictures- one of the angels at the Second Coming (by Del Parsons?) and the other of Christ pulling up a child (a Greg Olsen?). Pretty shocking to see this here.

A really beautiful arch and fountain.

One tired little boy. Not even the fountain could capture his attention.

If you look all the way through the arch, you can see the Church at the end. Cool

Finally at the Guadalajara temple. I did a session- all in Spanish! Thankfully the temple president and matron were American and helped me out.

Ammon and Connor waited outside for me. Ammon commented to another patron as they were leaving that he was waiting for his wife to which the person said that I sat 3 seats down from them. Ammon asked how they knew it was his wife and they said "oh come on!" Yeah, I was the only non-Mexican in the session.

We left at 8pm right after the session. We took as many toll roads as we had changed money for (about $20 worth) which we thought would be plenty but that only took us about 100 miles. So, sadly we had to take the windy free roads the rest of the way in the dark getting back to our hotel at 1am.