Category Archives: Kids

Winding Down

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Well, we’re winding down.

Wednesday we took it fairly easy…went to the Museum of Northern Arizona, which had a neat exhibit on a kind of dinosaur which was previously unknown to have existed in North America; an MNU paleontologist found it in Utah, in a fossilized seabed. An odd place; they figure it must have floated some sixty to one-hundred miles out to sea. They call it a therinzosaur; they’d previously been known only in East Asia.

Yesterday we went to the Grand Canyon Caverns, which are about 90 miles west of Flagstaff on Route 66. I remember going there as a kid, and thinking it was neat, so off we went; yesterday I discovered the meaning of Route 66 Roadside Attraction. The tour guide’s patter, in particular, reminded me of Cheetos: dangerously cheesy. The boys liked it, and it was interesting to see it again, but I don’t think I’d go back.

Then we toddled off to Jerome, a mining town which was once the third largest city in Arizona, with more than 15,000 residents; it now has 500, and that’s an increase. They have some interesting museums. The boys were wiped by then (and so was I) so we didn’t walk around much. Instead, we went back to Flagstaff, had dinner, and went swimming.

Today we paid a brief visit to Walnut Canyon National Monument, and then headed south to Phoenix, where we are at present. We’re about to go out and get some ice cream; and later on, when it’s maybe a little cooler, we hope to play some miniature golf. Tomorrow, we might take in a museum or two, before heading off to the airport. We shall see.

The Grand Canyon

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We went to the Grand Canyon today. We went, we saw, my boys’ capacity for grandeur was exceeded, and eventually we left. I’ll possibly have more to say later, but for tonight I’m tired. We’re gonna take it easy tomorrow.

A Matter of Taste

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So today, as planned, we drove down through Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona. We visited Flagstaff about eight years ago, but we didn’t get to Sedona on that trip; so it had been almost twenty-two years since I last saw the Red Rocks. I’d forgotten how impressive they are, and how beautiful the area around Sedona is.

I’d planned on driving around Sedona a fair amount, revisiting the places Jane and I went back then: Airport Mesa, the Chapel of the Cross, Tlaquepaque, and so forth. As it worked out, we parked in the “Uptown” part of the Sedona, and never really got any further into town. We looked at the shops, and had some ice cream, and bought one “Red Dirt” shirt each (T-shirts literally dyed with the local red soil). I don’t know if it’s the shirts or the dying process, but they have a really neat soft feel to them, and they are more-or-less the color of the Red Rocks.

But we spent most of our time in Sedona not actually in Sedona: we took a Pink Jeep tour up Schnebly Hill Road, the old, mostly unpaved road that goes up the side of the canyon and which was the first road between Sedona and Flagstaff. The views along the way are simply stunning.

I asked my boys later whether they’d enjoyed the tour; yes, very much. What did they like? The scenery, or the bumpy ride? The bumpy ride. Well, it was fun.

After the tour, we headed out of town again; there’s a ton of roadwork being done in Sedona at the moment, and the traffic snarls, which we saw from the jeep, were horrendous. We decided to cut our losses, and had a picnic in a picnic area about a third of the way up Oak Creek Canyon instead. Interesting place: there were ants absolutely everywhere, except (for some unknown reason) on the picnic tables, and we spent a considerably length of time just watching them.

I dropped a peanut on the ground, just to see what would happen. The little black ants found it first, and definitely found it an object of interest; but before a real trail of them could be formed, the peanut was discovered by one of the much larger red ants…which commenced to drag it toward its nest. I was floored: the ant was much smaller than the peanut, but while we watched the ant moved it over a foot. Eventually another red ant showed up, and while I think they were from the same nest they didn’t work together all that well.

After dinner, back in Flagstaff, I noticed that there were some significant clear patches in the sky, so we headed to Lowell Observatory to let it get dark, and see if we could see some stars. We live in the L.A. Basin, and the light pollution is such that you can see maybe seven stars in the entire sky, if you’re lucky. My kids have no real idea what the Milky Way looks like.

We got to enjoy the Observatory’s visitor center, but by the time it got dark the cloud cover had increased again and there were no stars to be seen, darn it!

And so, back to the hotel, and so to bed.

Male Pattern Bonding

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I am approaching the end of another very busy day, our first full day here in Arizona. We are staying at the Embassy Suites, which has a nice complementary breakfast, so we started the day with that. The boys had bacon and Froot Loops (though not mixed together).

After that we went to the grocery store and visited the bookstore across the street; and then we went to mass. Flagstaff has three small Catholic churches, but they’ve evidently been combined into a single large parish named San Francisco de Asis; all Sunday masses are at the particular church called St. Pius X, and so we wended our way hither. At first glance, St. Pius X wasn’t much to look at, and I suspect the mass would have given hives to some of the liturgical purists around and about the Catholic blogosphere. Be that as it may, the sanctuary, though plain and boxlike, was clearly furnished with great love, and if the mass was of the “happy-clappy” variety it was also jammed. Both the sanctuary and the parish hall were completely full of people, and we were lucky to find a seat. Folks at the parish are involved in Knights of Columbus, Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, various Bible studies, and a variety of other activities. Oh, and the sermon (given by a deacon) was right on, dealing with the day’s readings in a clear, no-nonsense way.

This is a vibrant, living parish. And tomorrow at 6:30 PM they are breaking ground for the construction of a new (presumably larger) sanctuary. Woohoo!

After church we returned to the hotel and made a picnic lunch from the stuff we’d bought first thing in the morning, and headed northeast for Wupatki National Monument and Sunset Crater. Jane and I had visited both on our honeymoon quite a many years ago now; and the boys had seen them before on a previous vacation when David was three-and-a-half and James was in a stroller.

The weather was adequate today; it rained on us a bit, but nothing to worry about. To a certain extent, that was due to visit to Wupatki; according to Weather.com, Wupatki hasn’t gotten any rain lately despite lots of rain to the east, west, and south. One imagines that this is why the Indian ruins there have survived so long.

We didn’t play Munchkin tonight; instead, we had a long swim and an overly long dinner.

Tomorrow I think we’ll head down Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona, there not to take the art galleries too seriously, and possibly to ride in one of the famous Pink Jeeps. We’ll see.

“He’s so bossy!“

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So I was reading The Hobbit to my five-year-old daughter, and I got to the part where Bilbo is riddling with Gollum. Just before Bilbo asks Gollum that fateful question, “What have I got in my pocket?” Gollum hisses, “Ask us! Ask us!”

I got just that far, and then Anne offered her considered opinion of Gollum: “He’s so bossy!“.

Well, yes, I guess so; but I guess it takes a five-year-old girl to see that as Gollum’s dominant trait.

Mardi Gras

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Yesterday was Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday as we Anglicans call it, and consequently we feasted in proper Anglican fashion–but going out for pancakes. In years gone by that might have meant going to a church pancake supper, but that tradition has faded, at least at St. Luke’s; so we went to IHOP instead. And given that I’d not had either pancakes or hashbrowns in over a year, it was a feast indeed. Today, of course, I’m back on the wagon.

On the way to IHOP, I explained to our kids what Mardi Gras is all about, that it’s a time to feast before the penitential season of Lent. I explained that different people celebrated in different ways, and that in some places folks let their celebrations get out of hand and “behave very badly indeed.”

“What,” said my son James, “You mean like, they don’t say ‘please’?”

Mary, the Human Fly

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My youngest kid, Mary, is nearing two years of age, and she’s finally beginning to talk so that we can understand her. That’s a good thing.

When she’s stuck in the toy room, which is not infrequent as it’s a safe place for her to be, she tends to complain verbally. You’d think I’d be used to this. Nevertheless, I still find it a bit disconcerting to hear a high-pitched little voice wafting from the toy room saying, “Help me! He-e-e-e-elp me!”

Fancy Nancy, written by Jane O’Connor, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser

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Fancy Nancy is a picture book I picked up for my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter the other day. It’s illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. The cover illustration shows a little girl with poofed-up hair wearing a tiara and a hair ribbon, high-heeled shoes with lacy socks, a lacy dress with a long train (really, a bedsheet tucked into a ribbon), and cat’s-eye sunglasses. She’s carrying an umbrella and a large feather. Let me be perfectly clear–this is not a too-little girl dressed up to be sexy for a beauty contest; this is a little girl who has dressed up to be “fancy” by her own lights, using the materials at hand.

I took one look, and said, “Good grief, that’s Anne!”

It turns out that Nancy has a problem. She loves to be fancy: to dress in fancy clothes, with fancy accessories, to do fancy things, and to use fancy words. Her family, alas (a mother, a father, and a sister) are not fancy; in fact, they tend to the plain. It’s a distressing situation, and so she arranges to give her family lessons in being fancy, culminating in the entire family going out to dinner dressed as fancy as they can (by Nancy’s lights), calling each other “Darling” and extending their pinkies while eating their pizza. All eyes are upon them from the moment they enter the pizza parlor, and Nancy is sure that everything thinks they must be movie stars.

Allow me to describe the father’s fancy attire. He’s wearing one of his own pin-stripe suits, some kind of scarf tied around his neck sort like a cravat, and a top hat, and he’s carrying a cane. Well, really, the top hot is a prop from Nancy’s magic kit, meaning that it’s far too small, and the cane is the magician’s wand. He wears them with a certain flair and panache, and with oceans of good humor. (Good humor which I intend to lack, utterly lack, if push ever comes to shove. I am Not Fancy, and I intend to stay that way.)

Anne loves the book, not at all to my surprise. Jane captured her feelings about it, thus:

Well, you see, I really like it because it is lovely and so beautiful. It is my favorite book in the world. I have a chair like her and I do fancy just like her. I do it all the time. She makes her
family so beautiful.

The chair Anne mentions is one of those bent-wire chairs with a heart-shaped back and little round black seat, the kind that’s supposed to go with a vanity table. It used to be my mother-in-law’s, but somehow Anne inherited during Mom’s recent move. And indeed, Fancy Nancy has one just like it, except that Nancy’s is pink and Anne’s is brass. That only makes Nancy’s chair better, of course.

Having gotten Anne’s opinion, Jane went on to get David’s; he’s my eldest at going-on-nine. Here’s what he had to say:

It wasn’t really a good book for boys because mostly it is all about a girl. It is not very interesting but TOO fancy. She did not have any brothers so they wouldn’t have to dress up. I do not like to dress up. I would recommend this book for girls ONLY.

Do you detect a certain lack of enthusiasm? I have to admit, I’d agree with him completely, except that I now have a fancy daughter. Anne sometimes leaves Jane and I at a loss–Jane’s no more fancy than I am–but I’m really very sorry that my own mother didn’t live long enough to know Anne. I think they’d have understood each other.