Guillermo's new friend

I didn't know that while I was gone, Guillermo started up a daily ritual with the dog next door!  He told me that every evening, when he would do the dishes, he would do his loud whistle and the next thing he knew, that little dog would climb up the tree and then sit on a branch and watch Guillermo through the window.  The little dog is a Jack Russell Terrier named Jackie and she must be a little over a year old.  The neighbors got her when she was a puppy.  She always has greeted us through the fence and has been climbing the tree for quite a while.  It was amusing when she first started to climb the tree.  She'd get herself way up high and then we'd watch as she struggled to learn how to get herself back down the steep trunk.
Anyway, somehow or another, Guillermo learned that whistling at the sink (even with the windows closed) was something that Jackie could hear and respond to and she'd appear up on the branch every time.  Here are a few pictures of this precious dog, who we call Jiggy, or Jigafur, or even sometimes Jackie.

How we see Jiggy as we're standing at the sink, looking through window and screen.  She's right there in the middle.

Putting the camera above the screen gives a slightly clearer look.

Then I walked outside to get a picture without any glass or screen.

There she is.  Such a silly Jigafur.

But every evening now, when we wash dishes, Guillermo does his whistle and Jiggy climbs the tree.  It is so funny!

Back home

The drive back home was long - and straight!!!  Silver City to El Paso where we stopped at Rudy's to get gas and some lunch.  What a perfect place to stop.  We could get gas and some good food at the same time.  Oh, that brisket was absolutely delicious!  This Rudy's even had breakfast tacos!!  Something you just can not get in Tucson.

We traded off driving again every two hours or so, which makes that long drive doable and bearable.  We got in to San Antonio around 7:30, stopped at Luby's for supper and then were home by about 8:15!

Missing Rebeca, Jason and Baby Boy!

Leaving

It is so hard to believe we leave today and head back to San Antonio.  I have been here with Rebeca, Jason and Scotty for a total of 42 days.  Guillermo was here for a total of 20 days.  We are going to miss being here and being able to see little Scotty so much.  It has been a true joy to be able to watch him all these days and see the subtle changes taking place with him.  Since we arrived back at the beginning of June, many changes have taken place.  The latest change came today when we lowered the mattress in Scotty's crib.

I took this video on the 19th, the day before leaving.  I always loved watching Rebeca and Scotty together on this changing table.  Especially in the mornings, when they would go through their morning ritual.  Scotty would always just lie there so peacefully and happily watch Rebeca while she took care of him and got him ready for the day.  This video, though, was taken during the day.

Rebeca took these pictures of us right before we left on the morning of the 20th.

In this picture, a car must have been going by which ALWAYS caught Scotty's attention!

Then we said our goodbyes and were off!  As we drove out of Tucson, we passed that little cactus on Bear Canyon that Rebeca looks at each time she passes on her way to and from work.  We saw the guy at the corner of River and Bear Canyon who is out there every single day, most of those days in glaring sun, selling newspapers.  We headed north with our planned stop for the night in Silver City, New Mexico.  Our drive this day took us through:  Oracle, Globe, White River, Hon Dah. 

At Hon Dah, we turned and headed into the White Mountains.  It was kind of hard to believe we were in Arizona!

The Big Lake area is really pretty and we hear there is excellent fishing in this lake.

After spending a little bit of time at Big Lake, we took a good dirt road over to Alpine.  

We stopped at an area called Blue Vista that had such a beautiful view.

At the Blue Vista stop, we saw a road that said "One Way" and we were tempted to take it, but had no idea how long the road was.  When we drove off, the other end of the road was just around that bend in the distance.  Oh well, I guess that road would have given us a chance to see more of the Blue vista.

From Alpine, we got on Hwy 191, which is a National Scenic Road.  This road WAS very pretty but it is very tiring.  It is a series of hairpin turns for over an hour - going downhill!  I happened to be driving this section, which turned out to not be a good idea since I hadn't slept well the night before and was tired.  After a while on 191, I couldn't take it anymore (the intense turning, the steep sides, the worry about burning the brakes, the FOCUS that was needed) and we found a place to pull over so that Guillermo could continue the drive.  By that time, I think we had already been on that road an hour or close to it and thought it HAS to be almost over.  But no, Guillermo had a LOT of driving time also with those hairpin turns.  Along this road we saw wild turkeys with their young!  By the time we got the camera out, the turkeys had pretty much gotten out of view, but you can see at least one behind those branches.

Then we rounded a corner and just like that, we were out of the pines.  That was weird.  Then shortly after that, we reach the Morenci Mine, which was such a depressing section of this highway.  The mine operation itself is quite impressive and it is MASSIVE.  It was unbelievable how big it was.  

At first we were taking pictures through the fence, and then we noticed to the side little squares in the fence through which pictures could be taken.

It's hard to tell from the pictures how big this mine really is.

We did see Big Horn Sheep while driving through this mine area.

Since we were kind of tired, we decided to see if there was a place in Morenci to stay the night, but we saw nothing along the highway, so we headed to the next town Clifton.  There was only one place in Clifton along the highway and it looked sketchy so we felt we had no choice but to go on to Silver City.

I felt a little despair as the highway we were going to take to Silver City seemed to be heading towards some mountains.  It was already getting late, we had already done pretty rigorous mountain driving and we weren't thrilled at all with the idea of driving in the dark.  But we had no choice but to keep going forward.  And sure enough, the road did head into some "high hills" but they weren't mountains.  Still the going was slow as we wound our way through those hills.  On the other side of the hills we were in New Mexico and the road from Mule Creek to Hwy 180 was absolutely beautiful, especially with the way the sun was lighting the expanse of grass meadows.  We got to 180, the sun was going down but we had light for all but the last 10 minutes of the drive.  We got to Silver City in the dark, got turned around only once and eventually found the area where hotels were.  After checking in, (it's now after 9pm) we tried to find a decent place to eat but it being so late on a Sunday meant not much choice.  So we ended up getting lousy sandwiches at Burger King.  But our hotel room was nice and comfy and we had a good rest of the night.

Excursions with the boy

Since it's been so long since this day actually happened, I forgot what all happened.  But from these pictures, anyway, it looks like we took Scotty to Ace Hardware and to the grocery store on July 16th!

Here we are leaving Ace Hardware.  Where it seemed all the store employees were just oohing and aahing over little Scotty!

Then after Ace Hardware it was on to Safeway grocery store where we got Scotty his first balloon from us.  He was fascinated with it!

From the pictures of July 17th

Abuelito doing the "animal sounds" with Scotty.

Playing with his balloon outside

We kept thinking he was going to pop it!

In the picture below Scotty is pushing the pink button and he turned the aquarium on.  But the biggest surprise of the day was when we sat him up in front of the aquarium a little later.  He placed both hands on top of the aquarium and his feet must have been placed in the perfect position because he actually PULLED HIMSELF TO A STANDING POSITION right in front of me!  I was stunned!  We sat him again in front of the aquarium because Guillermo wanted to see him do it, and Scotty DID place both hands on the aquarium again but this time his hands slipped off as he tried to stand and he did a soft landing against one of the rails.  It is time to lower his mattress!

On July 18th, we started feeling like maybe we should take pictures, since we'll be leaving soon.  So, here's how THOSE came out.

Playing in his little "crawl around car"

He's been opening up the door to the car more.

And moving himself up closer to the steering wheel where he moves it back and forth like he's driving.  He also turns the key on and off and pulls up and down on the "accelerator", which is what he's doing in the photo below.

 It's getting harder to keep him in the car!

Nice rainy day today

The bad part about "saving the date" for a blog post, is when all I put is a title and then too many days pass before I go back and update that page, well, by then I've forgotten what actually happened on that day!!!!  This day was possibly when we had some nice rains in the morning and then some nice rains again in the evening.

So, anyway, here are pictures from July 14th.

We took Scotty to Costco with us this morning.

He loves playing with his little piano.

And can easily get off his play mat now.

We took these pictures to show the size of the Saguaro in the front yard, and the size of Scotty.

Here Guillermo is telling him to be careful of the cactus.

Scotty after his bath this evening

Pictures from the nice rainy day - July 15th

Here's Scotty on his floor mat, and you can see my attempt to wall off the mat so that his ball, etc. wouldn't go far when he would fling or throw things.  He seemed so proud of himself when he would make something leave his hand and land somewhere else.  He especially loved throwing those colorful rings and the cloth blocks.

On this day, it rained in the morning, and again in the evening.  In the morning, we drove to a Second-Hand store to buy Scotty a used pac n play and from there we went to Target to buy a few things. In the evening, Guillermo and I set off with Scotty for a little walk around 6pm.  We saw rain in the distance and felt a few drops here and there.  We had walked about one house down when we thought we better turn around because more drops were falling. By the time we made it to the front porch, it was coming down hard.  Here are the two boys watching the rain from the porch.

Well, the cactus is interesting, too.

This is what we saw while sitting on those chairs on the porch.  

Scotty especially loved watching the rain fall right there by the porch's edge.