Going to Winnipeg

I'm flying out to Winnipeg this morning to visit Wendy and Mum for a few days. Not sure I'll be able to blog from there so just wanted to let everyone know why I'm not blogging for a few days.

For those of you who don't know, Winnipeg is in the flat prairies on a river that floods every spring.  It's miserably cold in the winter and ridiculously hot in the summer - no one's version of a fun place to go for a holiday.  But when people you love live there, you suck it up and go visit them. 

Hopefully I'll find the beauty of the city on this trip and will post some lovely pictures when I get home.  Check out this video (an old Fountain Tire commercial) for the correct attitude on "going to Winnipeg".

Going to Winnipeg

As you can see, not everyone's idea of a fun vacation stop. I'll enjoy myself anyway.

Hockey Night in Canada

Well, not quite.  It was a bright sunny hot morning.  I went to watch 6-year old grandson Max's first hockey practice of the season.  I must say I was impressed at how much his skating has improved since I last watched him early last season.  And he looked like he was having fun.  Hockey will fill his family's weekends from now till March or April when the season ends.  He'll have practices every Saturday morning and games on Sunday.

Hockey is Canada's favorite sport - actually Lacrosse is our official sport but you never hear anything about it.  Hockey leads the way - in a country with so much winter it's only right that a winter sport is so popular.

Anyway, back to Max.  Here he is in action.

Look at the smile on that little face.

You'll have to excuse the quality of the pictures.  They were taken through the protective plexiglass surrounding the rink.  The boys wear their own personal jerseys and numbers in practice.  After this practice session they were given their official team jerseys and numbers.  Max chose to be  lucky number 13!  I'm sure it'll be good luck for him. After all, his Papa wore lucky #13 when he played softball and his team made it to the regional finals.

Just as a sidenote, Max's first hockey practice fell on the day of record breaking heat for this date here in Edmonton.  It was 32C - hot and sunny.  A good day to spend at an ice rink.



Layouts and Cupcakes

Sometimes I hit a wall when it comes to thinking about things to blog about.  When that happens, I just stay quiet and wait for something worth boring entertaining you with.  Such has been the case the past couple of days.  Hopefully some of you are still with me.

Yesterday, for the first time in several weeks, my friend Mickey and I had a whole day and into the night to spend together scrapbooking.  Of course when we do that, we take several breaks - lunch, snack, dinner, shopping, etc. - but mostly we work on our scrapbooking.  I worked diligently for hours on my layouts and completed three.  As Lloyd would say, Mickey won 7-3.  But it isn't a competition.  I'm a slow scrapper and Mickey is faster.  I think I might have ADD ;)

Here's what I accomplished yesterday.

Lloyd and I and our posterity

The girls in the bottom right are daughters of four of my children. It needs
another 'fun' on it doesn't it.  I'll go take care of that shortly.

This one uses pictures of my sister and me when we were younger

For our mid-afternoon break Mickey and I went to a cupcake shop we had never been to before.  Cupcakes are very popular here and it seems that a lot of cupcake shops have popped up in the past few years.  This new one, called Fuss (as in come see what all the fuss is about) was home to the most delicious cupcakes we had tried yet.  They were just about all gone before I thought to take a picture of them...these are the ones that we took home.

The green one is  called The Full Monty and is chocolate with mint icing.
The yellow one is called Lemon Aid - vanilla cake with lemon icing.
Aren't my little 1970s owls cute.  Daughter Jenny gave them to
me to add to my resurrected owl collection.

Another view of the cupcakes.  The little bouquet on the plate is garlic
chives from Emily's garden, complete with the sweetest smelling
blossom ever.  The chives were delicious chopped up in a
chicken sandwich.



I think it's a pretty safe bet that Mickey and I will be visiting Fuss again.  I had a chocolate Coconut Fuss cupcake with cream cheese icing and fresh coconut, as well as a caramel cake one with pear buttercream icing - delicious.  Mickey had Scarlette O'Hara (red velvet cake with cream cheese icing and the decadent Bliss (chocolate cake/chocolate icing/chocolate ganache).   We won't stop until we've tried JungleFever, Cloud 9, Purple Haze, Raz and the City, The Diva, The Don, and the rest of their treasures.  It might take us awhile, but we'll do it. More incentive for us to have weekly scrapbooking days. 

Now, go on out and get yourself a sinful treat.  Have a lovely weekend.

Pat

Adventures in Flying

How many times can you travel by air without having an 'incident'?  I asked myself that question having just booked two more trips by air between now and December.

I usually don't worry too much about the safety of flying - the worse part for me is actually getting up into the air without having the plane shake all apart, but once that's accomplished, I'm fine.

Our last trip, from Mesa, AZ to Great Falls, MT had a few moments that might have shattered the nerves of a first-time flyer.  It was a bit nerve-wracking for me. 

First of all, we arrived at the airport late - not our fault, but a separate story for another time.  The line up at the check in was looong.  Lloyd heard someone up front say something about the flight for Great Falls boarding already.  We were told to come to the front of the line to check in right away and hurry to Security.  Thank heavens for small airports and short security lines that are part and parcel of budget airlines.  We went through security as fast as we could and Lloyd took off running to the boarding gate - I followed behind as quickly as my arthritic knees would allow me to move.  We got to the gate just in time to board before they gave our seats away to standby passengers.  Our nephew Mark trailed in behind everyone else and took the window seat beside us.

We had no sooner got settled and strapped in when the flight attendant walked down the aisle asking who it was who found the "broken piece of the plane".  That got everyone's attention!  It turned out the people in the row directly in front of us were the finders.  They were quickly removed to the front of the plane while a maintenance man checked out their row and a few others and finally determined that it was some type of vent cover that had become unattached from it's place.  That's good. Something like that wouldn't cause the plane to malfunction or crash, we hoped. 

A minute later we noticed a fine white mist (gas! we guessed) coming out of all the vents above all the windows on the plane.  It seemed for a few minutes that we were all going to be gassed as we sat there. Then the flight attendant, alerted by the fearful faces staring at her, announced that while the maintenance paperwork was being completed, a cool mist would be vented into the cabin.  This was harmless and would stop as soon as we were airborne.  We were beginning to wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have missed our flight in the first place.

Finally we were up, up and away.  Then the pilot comes over the intercom with his welcome to Allegiant Air message and says we'll be landing in Niagara Falls in just over 2 hours.  Now, as much as I enjoy Niagara Falls, that's nowhere near where we were trying to get.  At this rate, it would take us 6 hours to get home.  Eventually he realizes his mistake and gets on the intercom again to correct himself, saying that instead of Niagara Falls, he decided to take us to Great Falls instead. Thank goodness!

Now the lovely, good, relaxing part of this whole experience is this.  For some reason the people who were in the row ahead of Mark, Lloyd and me, having been evacuated during the maintenance portion of the flight, never came back to their seats.  So I asked the flight attendant if I could sit there.  Sure. So I sat in the middle seat, put the arm rests up and spread out my snacks on one flight table and my iPad on another and made the flight home in peace and comfort.

So it's never all bad, and I'm off on another flight adventure next week, this time to Winnipeg to visit my mother and sister.

Pat

Once Upon A Time...Long, Long Ago...

I've spent the past three days immersed in the past - my past.  My sister, Wendy, is working on a project and needs pictures.  I've become the unofficial keeper of the pictorial history of our family so she naturally turned to me.  I have hundreds, even thousands, of pictures - all of Mum's photo albums were given to me when she went into long term care.  So when Wendy asked me to make her  disk of pictures and bring it to her in Winnipeg at the end of the month, I got started.  Most of the pictures are treasures only to our family but some have interesting stories attached to them.  I'll share a few of those here.  If nothing else it's fun to see the fashions that real people wore back in the early days of the 20th century.



Grandad was a hunter and trapper when he wasn't working at the Cariboo gold mine in Nova Scotia. He returned from one of his hunting trips, so we were told, with this baby moose.  Noone ever said what happened to its mother.  Grandad decided to keep it and nourish it back to health.  He notified the Dept. of Lands and Forests, or some such thing, and had permission to do so as long as he released it when the time was right.  The moose became quite a pet and attracted visitors from the neighboring village and as far away as Halifax.  This all happened in the late 1920s.  Mum was just a child at the time but when writing her life story many years later she included the story of this moose.  Aside from the moose though, just look at the clothes the young ladies are wearing - definitely 1920s garb, especially the headwear.  One of the girls from Halifax was Grandad's sister.  The woman at the moose's head is his wife, my Grandmother. Mum would have been 7 or 8 at the time.

These little girls are about one and a half and two and a half.  The little one sitting on the trike is me, with Wendy standing on the back.  This has become a family classic.  I have a similar picture of my two oldest daughters on a trike when they're 3 and 4, and one of them has a picture of her two daughters in the same pose. 

Mum and Dad's wedding portrait in the church doorway, Halifax, NS.  I still have the slip Mum hand sewed to wear under the dress - it was too small for either me or Wendy to wear.  The dress was her sister-in-laws so she have it back to her.  They had a nice wedding but Mum was always embarassed that she forgot to invite the Minister and his wife to the reception.  This was August 10, 1946.

That contraption Wendy is in was called a BabeeTenda.  It was a fold-up table with a section in the middle that could be converted to a seat where the baby was put for safe keeping and playing.  I remember seeing this around even after I had outgrown it.  This picture must have been taken around the time I was born.  Wendy and are are 8 days short of a year apart.  It always bugged her that for eight days of the year I insisted I was the same age as her.  I was Pat the Brat, remember.

This picture was taken not long after we got Ken.  He was 9 months old when we adopted him and Wendy and I took an immediate motherly interest in him. Notice the hair bows and ringlets in our hair? We have lots of pictures of the two of us back then and we always had ringlets and hair bows...and wore dresses.  Mum used to say my ringlets lasted for about 5 minutes while Wendy's stayed good all day.

This is Mum in 1944 or 45 when she was working at the Ministry of War Transport in Halifax during the Second World War.  She didn't meet Dad till the war was over and he came home from overseas with her brothers and cousins who were in the same battallion as he was.  He knew that his buddies had seven sisters and used to threaten to marry one of them when he got home.  We're all glad he did!

This picture, taken in 1950 is the earliest color picture we have.  It had become dark and yellow with age but with the magic of computer editing, I was able to give it a truer color. You'll notcethe hair bow again, although Wendy's has been replaced by two perfect curls!

Dad, just after the war, 1945 or 46.  I always thought he looked like Fred Astaire, although he hated dancing.  Whenever I watch an old Fred Astaire movie I think of Dad.

Wendy and I with Dad's mother (we called her Nanny) around 1953 or 54.  We used to travel to Nova Scotia every summer to visit her.  She loved her grandchildren and always had a bowl of scotch mints on her piano for us.  She had what we called 'sugar diabetes' and I was always so impressed that she was able to give herself needles.  She died of a heart attack when I was 10.  I was named after her, Millicent.  Mum wasn't too fond of that name so I was always called by my middle name, Pat.  I have learned to love the name though, mostly because it belonged to someone who meant a great deal to me when I was very young.  (see the bows and ringlets again).

Back before PETA when women were allowed, and encouraged, to wear fur, Mum bought herself this lovely fur coat...she said it was muskrat...I didn't like the sound of that, but the fur was lovely and soft and long.  I remember her telling us how mad she was that she didn't wait another week before buying it as it went on sale then. Nevertheless, she wore that coat for years.  I remember seeing it (and putting it on) when I was a teenager.  I don't know whatever happened to it.  I'm the baby she's holding so this would be the winter of 1948.

Moving forward, this is our family in 1965 - the year Wendy graduated from high school.  Of course, I followed the next year.  I loved those outfits we were wearing.  Although you can't see them, we had straight skirts of the same tartan that the sweaters were trimmed with.  Mine was Prince Edward Island tartan - browns, yellow, green - and Wendy's was New Brunswick tartan - red yellow blue. 

Well, I think that's enough for now.  I still have a stack of pictures to scan so will get back to it.  Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.

Pat

What a Relief!

I feel so much better now.  I'm such a wimp about going to the dentist.  A year and a half ago I missed an appointment for a regular cleaning...a grandbaby was born and I had to wanted to go to Lethbridge to meet her and deliberately totally forgot about the appointment. 

Hannah Rose - March 2010

So when I got home I booked another one for two months later.  When it came time for that appointment another grandbaby arrived unexpectdly six weeks early so I was called upon to babysit the baby's siblings while the parents were at the hospital.  Who could blame me for missing that appointment???

Tate - May 2010

Again I rescheduled for two months down the road.  Again...wait for it...another grandbaby was born and once again I stayed home to look after the baby's siblings. 

Quinn - July 2010

Did I mention that 2010 was a very busy year for babies in our family and a very neglected dental care year for me?  It was!

When the dentist didn't call me back to book my annual check-up in August I figured he must have written me off.  Fine with me.  I had some issues with his care, or lack thereof, earlier when I had a root canal - another story altogether.  So I told myself I'd find another dentist - actually I planned to go to the one he sent me to who really helped me with the root canal.

But because I'm a huge procrastinator, combined with the fact that I really don't like going to the dentist, I never made the appointment.  Then in steps Lloyd.  He's in High Level.  He has a toothache because he never went and had the temporary filling on a broken tooth replaced with a permanent one over a year ago.  Do you see a pattern here?  I wonder if our grown up children ever go to the dentist?  I must check. Maybe it's hereditary.

Anyway,  Lloyd called and asked me to make an appointment for him with the dentist I had planned on going to myself.  So I called and made an appointment for Lloyd and while I was on the phone, I made one for myself too.  I figured it was safe because none of my daughters or daughters-in-law are pregnant right now.

Today was the day.  I was dreading it because....I was feeling guilty....I was sure some dread disease had lodged itself in my mouth due to my neglect...I figured I'd have to have lots of work done, etc.  Was I surprised!  It was a great experience.  The hygenist was wonderful, funny, and gentle.  The dentist was the same.  I got my teeth cleaned, was given a gift bag with mouth wash, toothpaste, special rubber gum cleaners, floss, toothbrush, etc.  It was like going to a kid's birthday party.  And my insurance covered all but $16.00 of the treatment.  I'll go back for a follow-up in three months without a care in the world.

I remember (though some of you younger ones won't) when Mum started taking us to the dentist when we were 4 or 5 (way back in the 1950s) the dentist would give us a can of tooth powder as we were leaving.  Have you ever used this stuff?  It was actually quite fun to use.  You would sprinkle a bit of the powder in the palm of your hand, wet your toothbrush, rub the brush into the powder on your hand and make a paste right there in your hand, and transfer it to your teeth with your toothbrush, and then scrub.  Kids just don't have fun like that anymore.

And that was my fun for today.

Pat

Hoodoos and Coulees

A few years ago Lloyd and I accompanied our daughter, Jenny, her husband and four sons to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta, not far from where we'll be retiring in Lethbridge.  I came across the pictures I took at that time when I was searching through my stack of pictures this morning and thought you might be interested in seeing the hoodoo cliffs that we climbed and explored.

The hoodoos are made of sandstone and get their defiitive shape from the erosion of wind and water.

Our first stop was at this really cool live tree that is somehow growing sideways.  It makes a perfect place for the boys to sit and eat their lunch.

Sam, Jonah, Nate and Micah

Resting beside and on top of one of the hoodoos

The beginning of the trail

Time for a rest and water break - it's a long steep climb and although she hadn't yet told us,
Jenny was pregnant with son #5.

Sam and Nate on top of a hoodoo across from the photographer who
was on a higher one. That's the Milk River in the middle of the picture

Jonah andNate tucked into a wind-formed cave

Jonah sitting on top of the world

Sam, hanging onto the mushroom-like top of the hoodoo.

Sam and Jonah running, carefully, along the top edge of the cliff

Following the leader down the trail

Bye for now.

It's a beautiful place to spend a day.  Next time we go we'll explore other parts of the park and see the pictographs that the park is named for.  Just a word of advice though if you're planning to go with a very active 2-year old - DON'T!  We were constantly pulling this little guy

Micah

back from the edge. He just ran and climbed like he was born to it and did not want to be restrained in any way.  To my knowledge, his parents have never taken him back there.

Pat

What's On My Mind?

I've seen this done before on other blogs so thought I'd do it today since I don't have much to blog about.

Outside My Window

It's a quiet Sunday morning.

The air is cool and fresh coming in through the open window

in front of me. It smells fresh and clean.

The sky is soft blue with fluffy white clouds.

It promises to be a pleasant cool day.

I hear traffic in the distance, reminding me that I'm not alone.

I also hear one of my neighbours playing the piano,

it sounds so mystical in the distance.

I Am Wearing

Blue jeans and t-shirt and bare feet

I Am Remembering

This day 15 years ago, in the wee hours of the morning

after many hours of labor

I became a grandmother and my

oldest daughter became a mother.

I was in the delivery room with her and her husband

while four other daughters waited in the waiting room.

I will never, ever forget the feelings I had at that time -

the fear that Jenny might not be able to push that big baby out -

the weariness of a long labor,

and the intense joy of finally holding my first grandson and

hearing his name for the first time -

Jonah MacKenzie Quist.

Tears come easily as I remember that morning.

And, too, I am remembering how his fifth birthday

was marred by the terrorist events unfolding

in New York and elsewhere and how we watched

television for hours in horror and grief.

I Am Reading

I've been catching up on the Eve Dallas murder

mysteries by J. D. Robb (Norah Roberts).

I finished reading Immortal in Death yesterday

and will start another one today.

Before that I read The Help.

I always have a book to read.  I've loved reading

forever, following the example set by my Dad.

I Am Hoping

That the rest of September brings cool pleasant

days - a respite from the heat of the past week, and

breathing space before the cold and snow of our long winter.

On My Mind

My mother.  I've just booked a flight to Winnipeg for

the last week in September.  I'll be staying with my sister there and visiting

Mum in the care facility she now lives in. 

She is 90 years old, with a healthy body and a mind

destroyed by Alzheimer's. It's been well over a

year since she's known me - even longer since she's

forgotten Dad.  I can't imagine a life with no memories.

It's so sad.  Four other of Mum's siblings have had this

horrible disease.  We think, we hope, it has environmental

roots for them, not genetic. 

Her parents lived to their mid 90s with no diminished mental capacity.

From the Kitchen

When I go downstairs for breakfast I'm going to have

two pieces of toast with fresh peach jam

that my daughter, Amy, made.  It's delicious.

I bought a bunch of beets yesterday that I'll cook up and

eat with butter for my supper, along with

a piece of salmon and corn on the cob.

I don't fuss with meals and baking when Lloyd's not

home, but I wanted to have something tasty and

fresh today.

Around the House

My scrapbook room is in a bit of disarray since working

in it the other day.  No, I'm not going to organize it today.

I'm going to spend several hours working on layouts

using pictures from our family reunion in August.

I suppose I could spend some time in this office too,

filing the stack of papers currently sitting on top of the filing

cabinet, and loading programs onto the new computer that replaces

the one that died.

Plans For The Week

I really don't have any.

Lloyd will be coming home on Tuesday,  that's always

good.  He's a fun guy to hang out with.

I also have to pot my outdoor geraniums and

bring them inside before the frost gets them.  I'm

a terrible gardener but I don't like to deliberately let

plants die.

One Of My Favorite Things

Blogging.  It's therapeutic. It expands my horizons.

It allows me to meet and share with and learn from many people from around

the world that I would never have the opportunity to do otherwise.

It provides me a forum to share my life and ideas. 

It gives my children a window into my life now that they're

grown up and not as involved in my daily comings and goings.

I'm not a particularly good writer, but I like the practice

blogging gives me.

I'm quiet, shy, and not good at small talk, but I like the way

blogging allows me to come out of myself and share

in a non-threatening environment.

And I learn from reading of the experiences of

my bloggy friends.

Thank you for that.

Pat 



Summer's Fading Fast

I've been fading as fast as summer this week.  It's taking me longer than usual to get back ito gear after our Arizona holiday. 

It's been unusually hot here in Edmonton this week - 32C yesterday.  I think that translates to somewhere in the 80sF.    Not so bad if you have AC but up here very few homes have AC because it's only useful for two weeks of the year.  But boy do we have great super-duper furnaces, which run for 9 months of the year!

Mickey and I got together for scrapbooking yesterday and by 2:00 my brain was fried.  I couldn't put a picture on a piece of paper to save my life.  I did manage to get a couple of layouts done of my granddaughter, Quinn's, first birthday party though.

So Mickey went home and I had a nap. Bad idea.  The one-hour sleep revitalized me enough to make sleep impossible until after 2 am.  So I sat up doing exciting things like paying bills on-line and searching for apps for my iPad.  Blogging at that time of night was out of the question - it would have been even more incoherent and rambling than it is now.

The nail polish on my toes, which I keep nicely painted during the summer because I've been living in sandals, is all chipped and cracked now but I don't care any more because after today it'll be shoes and socks weather and nobody will see my toes anymore.  The polish will fade and disappear like the summer.

And speaking of nails, just before we left Arizona I had a manicure - the first since my daughter, Sara's, wedding in 2002.  The manicurist said I have 'pretty nails'.  They were unusually long for me as I tend to give them a good tooth trimming every day or so and hadn't been doing that for a couple of weeks.  So she filed them nicely and put some pretty polish on them.  It made me feel pretty and feminine - for a few days - then one chipped and I had to peel the polish off.  Then once I started on one, I kept going.  The polish is almost all gone now and today I'll finish it off, trim the nails down to a manageable length and get back to normal.  It's been hard to type with my longer fingernails anyway so I'm back to being practical.

Enough rambling.  I'm going to go downstairs now and do something with my day.  It's just past lunch time now and I still haven't had breakfast since I slept in till after nine - unheard of for me.

 I'm looking forward to Autumn.  The fresh cool crisp air is so invigorating - I love it.  After being faded out by the summer heat, there's nothing better than cool fall days.  And it's such a beautiful, if short, season here.

Edmonton - Fall 2010

What Lloyd Does

We're home from our Arizona travels and as we speak (or write, or read) Lloyd is making his 8-hour drive north to High Level, where he works.  Quite a commute, eh!

Ever since we've been married (except for a ten year stretch when we lived in Nova Scotia) Lloyd has worked with and for the First Nations of Canada (Indians), first with the federal government and then for the Bands (tribes) themselves.  Currently he is an Executive working with the North Peace Tribal Council, which is an association that provides professional services to the Dene, Beaver and Cree tribes located in Northwestern Alberta.   It's a challenging job and a rewarding one, and one he enjoys very much.  

A few weeks ago the Tribal Council hosted a cultural camp up north for the youth.  The  chiefs of the various tribes participated, as well as senior people from the Tribal Council, including Lloyd.  Although his cultural roots are based in Great Britian for the most part,  Lloyd was invited to speak to the youth on the importance of remembering and preserving their culture and traditions.  Lloyd described his own heritage and background and how it is important to him and encouraged the youth to value theirs as well.

Lloyd, delivering his address.

Chief Henry.  The headdress is worn only for ceremonial events now.

Lloyd, far right, with the Chiefs and representatives of the five bands that make up the Tribal Council

It was interesting to learn that the Dene 'Tha  are closely related to the Navajo of Arizona, thousands of miles away.  They share the same root language, stories and histories.  It seems that the Dene' Tha (which means 'the people') broke off from the Navajo (who call themselves Dine - the people) thousands of years ago - one group going north and the other going south.  Lloyd has met with the leaders of the Navajo a few times and  arranged several retreats, bringing the northern Dene 'Tha down to Phoenix to meet with their 'brothers', the Navajo, having seminars and gatherings that have been beneficial to both groups and which have helped to broaden their understanding of their history. 

History is fascinating and it's been an interesting experience having Lloyd work so close to the descendants Canada's original inhabitants.  As much as he has enjoyed his work, we're looking forward to his retirement in the next year or so.  We have places to go, people to see, and things to do before we become too old and decrepit to enjoy ourselves any more.

Pat

Downtown Phoenix

Today Lloyd and I did what he has been wanting to do ever since we started coming down here to the Valley of the Sun almost three years ago - we drove to Phoenix and explored some of it's historic and beautiful downtown.  We found that Saturday morning is a perfect time for exploring downtown.  There was no traffic, very few people, and we were able to stop and take pictures wherever we wanted to.

Just ignore the Wells Fargo building rising above the old Maricopa County Court House.

The new Phoenix City Hall

Old Phoenix City Hall

Luhr's Tower

This Abbey is on the corner of 3rd and Munroe is built on the site of the original one dating from the mid 1800s.

The First Presbyterian Church dating from 1869.  As I was taking pictures outside, the caretaker came out and invited us to come into the Sacristy and look around. Isn't the sky beautiful.

This stained glass window isn't on a outside wall, there's five feet of space behind it but the lighting makes it stand out beautifully.

These two windows remind me of Frank Lloyd Wright's work.  His home and museum are not far from here in Phoenix.

The side of the high rise has a mural painted on it.

The overpasses and bridge abutments have lovely colorful artwork worked into them.

Chase Field - home of the Arizona Diamondbacks Baseball team

Part of Arizona State University

St. Mary's Basilica.  I love how the old churches have the look of adobe rather than stone and brick - very bright and clean looking.

US Airways Center - home of the Phoenix Suns NBA team

Phoenix Convention Center, spanning either side of the street - a very busy place in the winter as northerners come to conventions in the sunny south.

I forget what this building is, but it's quite beautiful.

And down the road from Phoenix we came to a lovely large oasis in Tempe.  This beautiful area has boats for rent, water parks and picnic areas for special events and is a welcome respite from the dryness of the desert.  I believe it's part of the Tempe reservoir - my Arizona readers can correct me on that.

Then home again.  When I was in the pool l noticed the sun shining off this huge spider web strung between two Queen Palms in the back yard.  I don't know what kind of spider made it but it looks quite messy compared to other smaller ones I'm used to seeing.

And that rounds out today's adventure.  We only have one more full day here before heading home on an early morning flight on Monday.

Hope your long weekend is a good one.

Pat