Christmas 2021

On December 1st, we wanted to go to the zoo with Leo.  We got to the zoo right at 9, when it usually opens, but today it was closed.  We found out later that for the month of December, they aren't opening until 11am!  So, we tried to think of something else we could do and since the Sunken Gardens are right there by the zoo anyway, that's where we decided to go.  We hadn't walked around the Sunken Gardens in ages and today made us wonder why we don't come here more often.  It really is a beautiful place.

Walking around in the Sunken Gardens took about an hour.  I didn't know it yet, but all the going up and down on all those steps in the Sunken Gardens was going to really really affect my left knee later on.

After we left the Sunken Gardens, we decided to go to the Botanical Gardens.

Here's Leo learning to make the snowflakes that I always make.

Christmas Day

We were lucky to have Fernando and family in town.  Their original plan was to be in Sweden for Christmas but with the virus cases getting worse, they decided to postpone their trip until the summer.

 

Latest Happenings

November Happenings

Scotty loved this old skull that was close to our Airbnb.

The Airbnb had this piano in there.  What a great sound it had!  Way back when I was in college a kind friend taught me how to play Moonlight Sonata entirely by heart.  I knew how to play it for a couple of years but slowly I forgot most of it.  While staying at this Airbnb, I used Youtube to try to learn how to play a little more of what I had forgotten.  It sounded so good on this piano.

Scotty really does love to go Geo Caching.  Here he is at a cache called Zip Line.  He is bringing the container down.  While we were in Tucson, we did at LEAST 12 caches.

Scotty with his dog Spot.  

Eva and Leo with the guinea pigs, Zigz and YoYo.

How I loved picking this boy up from school everyday!

 October Happenings.

Fernando went with us to the creek that was behind our old house.  It was a good day to be out there.

Annual trek to a neighborhood - FAR from our house - to see their amazing Halloween decorations.

This is one of Leo's favorite places in the zoo.  Although he has to awkwardly hang over the railing, he loves feeding the turtles.

Up close with kangaroos

In the butterfly house.  A butterfly landed on me!

At a friend's birthday party.  Putting away the loot from a pinata that was just busted.

Up close with flamingos.  

Visiting a pumpkin patch

Too busy lately

 We've been going to the creek that was in the back of our old house.  Very interesting back there, as it was when we lived there.  It's nice to be going back there again, and nice that it's just a short drive from where we now live.

On this day, we went back to the creek after a very heavy rain.

We had found a snake the day before trapped in netting.  We took it home, Guillermo cut the netting off of it, and in the picture below, they are about to release the snake.  It was a Water Snake.  If we hadn't found that snake, it would have drowned because the entire creek bed was under water that night and the snake had no way to get itself out of the netting.

The more netting that came off, the wilder and more aggressive the snake became.  Several times it looked like that snake was about to escape that box, but Guillermo's talent kept that snake in that box somehow.

Guillermo managed to get that snake in this little insect carrier.  That was a feat in itself!  It's going home with us.

Trying to get as much netting off as he could.  Guillermo soon realized that to get it off entirely, we would need to take it home and use scissors.

Doing school work at the zoo.  Drawing and writing about his tortoise adventure.

Back in the creek by El Verde Road.

Walking to the creek.  Walking to the creek usually involves catching lots of grasshoppers.

Feeding the ducks at Denman Estate Park

In his favorite place at the zoo - the Amphibian House

Visiting the zoo

Scrappy

 Rebeca let us know today that they had to put Scrappy down this morning.  I'm sure it's a sad household right now - they have had Scrappy for many many years.  

Scrappy was a good dog, although he would drive me nuts sometimes.  Always under foot when I'd be fixing something to eat in the kitchen.  I really thought that one day I'd do him in accidentally because SO many times I would almost step on him - not knowing he was right there.

Scrappy was a loyal dog and after all is said and done, we will miss him also.

3rd Shot

 Guillermo and I got our third Covid-19 vaccine today at CVS.  

I was going to go for an antibody test this coming Tuesday, just to see if I had any protection left from our first two shots, but I guess that needs to be cancelled now since I just got a booster shot.  The reason I was going to do that test was because Guillermo got an antibody test several weeks ago and that proved he had no antibodies at all, even though he had gotten both Pfizer shots.  Turns out that one of his pulmonary fibrosis meds kills off antibodies.  So all this time, he had not been protected like we thought he had been.  So, I just wanted to go in and see what an antibody test showed for me.  It being free, why not?  Anyway, now that I've gotten the third shot, I guess I'll wait till November or December to get one of those antibody tests.

Scotty and his dog Spot

The very first weekend we were in Tucson, we stayed one night at Loews Ventana Canyon.  It rained the entire weekend.  But we have stayed at Loews many times, so we got to see it in a different way this time.  Despite the rain, we loved our stay there.

Guillermo standing on the balcony of our hotel room.

We walked to the trailhead of the Ventana Canyon Trail, but the trail was closed due to swollen streams.

Lots of water by the golf course

We took Scotty to the Zoo, as we do every single time we visit.

We've taken a picture of him on this rock every single year.

We did a lot of geocaching with Scotty on this trip.  That snake was a cache and Scotty was the one who found it first.  He was so proud of himself!

We went to the International Wildlife Museum with Charlie

Lunch outside at Toto's after visiting the museum

Day trip to Mount Lemmon.  We had lunch up there and found one cache.

Really neat container of a cache hidden on a street close to Rebeca's house.