A weekend in the wild, wild west

This past weekend we headed east for a long weekend in Tucson. We visited our friends the Gludts, who always find super cool ways to entertain us.

And this weekend was no exception. Upon arrival, we were greeted with this adorable face, who I will pretend was really happy to see us both (OK, fine, Mark’s really his favorite).

We enjoyed a wonderful Shabbat meal, and then when the dog and boys proved too squirrely and the weather too nice to stay indoors, we drove to the local dog park. Penny the dog ran wild with a massive Great Dane, and the boys soared endlessly on the swings. It looked like so much fun, Kelley and I even gave it a go. There’s nothing better than swinging as high as you can on a fabulous sunny day.

We went home briefly for dinner, and then on to our next adventure—buying new baby chicks! Kelley and Rob already have three full-grown hens, but they aren’t laying enough eggs, and truthfully, Kelley’s turned into a bit of a crazy chicken lady. She just wanted more chickens, and who am I to deny her?

I was amazed to learn you can buy a live chicken for the price of a couple dozen eggs. Nine bucks later, we left the store cradling two soft, fuzzy chicks that are seriously the cutest things God has ever put on this earth. (Kelley said her son was actually the cutest thing on earth, but as I pet the little fuzzy peeping chicks, I disagreed.)

The boys were thrilled to play with the baby chicks. Mark taught us all the chicken facts he learned at the farm, like how to hold the chicks, and how their peeping, which I thought was so sweet, was actually a sign they were stressed out. (He’s a smart kid!) He would’ve played with them all night long if I hadn’t convinced him to go to the best gelateria this side of Italy.

That’s right, what’s a trip to Tucson without going to Frost? My fellow Frost-aficionados, the Bermans, will agree not much. Mark and I got our favorite from our last trip, sea-salted caramel. Mark also tried the amaretto, while I paired mine with roasted almond. My mouth is watering again just thinking about it!

Sunday morning, Rob made us a fantastic breakfast with fresh eggs while Kelley was at work. Then he passed us to Kelley, who took us to the world-famous gem show. Apparently, it’s the largest gem show in the WORLD, and it officially starts off the gem-show season. (Rob’s mom enlightened me—she proved a fount of knowledge about the gem show.)

We strolled through the rows and rows of gems and stones, stopping to touch the smoothest and shiniest ones. We found some super cool cup sets made of stone, and some beautiful bowls that weighed about 15 pounds each. There were also lots of fossils, including a 25-million-year-old shark’s tooth selling for only ten bucks. I doubted its age, since ten bucks seemed pretty cheap for something that old, but maybe I’m just cynical.

Sunday night was a bit more challenging. Kelley and Rob had to go to work dinner and I’d volunteered to watch Romi. He likes us (and by us, I mean Mark) and we’d spent the whole weekend playing. I played up the fact that he, Mark and I were gonna play and have fun, and he'd laugh and go right along with me.

Until…his parents actually left. And then, he melted down. And became upset. And anyone who knows Romi knows exactly what that entails—barf-o-rama. That’s right, this adorable little toddler can actually make himself barf on command when he's upset, and he did just that. So instead of playing babysitter, I played maid, cleaning up after the human vomiting machine. After the fourth time, he was kind enough to bypass the floor and barf directly into the trashcan, which was actually kind of funny.

I figured if I could get him out of the house, he might calm down. So I strapped him in the car seat, covered him with an apron in case he upchucked again, and headed to the ice cream store. That’s right, a second trip to Frost, and let me tell you, this picture says it all.


If you can’t be happy at Frost, you are hopeless. The ice cream did the trick, and Romi returned to his happy, funny, non-projectile vomiting little self again.

On Monday, Kelley took us on another adventure. This one was a secret, and she steadfastly refused to tell us what we were doing. At one point, I swiped an email out of her hands, but it was so encoded, I still had no idea what we were doing, even after I read it.

Kelley drove us to a funny, retro little toy store, and proclaimed we were there to go “letterboxing.” It’s kind of like a scavenger hunt, where you use clues in the email to look for a little box. The box in this store actually had three boxes, each pointing to the next.

Anyone who knows me knows I love a good game, and I love a competitive challenge even more. I read over the first clue, which pointed us south in the store, toward the cozy, cuddly creatures—the cute ones, not the ugly ones.

“Stuffed animals!” I shouted.

“South is toward the back of the store,” Kelley said, so we ran back there.

We found a mob of cutesy stuffed animals, and searched all around. But since we were newbies, we weren’t quite sure exactly what we were looking for. Until I gave it another shot, and saw something sticking out behind the creatures. It turned out to be this:

We whooped and yelled, and the clerk finally realized what we were up to. “Ahhh, letterboxers!” she said affectionately.

The box held a rubber stamp. We smushed it into the ink pad Kelley’d brought, and stamped our tiny book. You’re supposed to stamp the book in the box as well, but we didn’t have our own stamp.

The box also held a clue to the next box: “It’s where a pirate eats his TV dinner.” Mark and I took off, stopping when we came to a display of pirates on a TV tray. We searched everywhere, but found nothing. Until Kelley popped on the ground, and pulled a magnetic box from the bottom of the metal tray. We whooped it up again.

The clue in that box said to look for the bacon in the Kelvinator.

“A Kelvinator is a fridge,” I said, though I have no idea how I knew that. Sure enough, when Mark opened the fridge in the middle of the store, there was a pseudo can of bacon with the last stamp inside.

It was so much fun. Kelley explained that her sister-in-law had taught her about letterboxing, and said her family does it around their town, or whenever they go on vacation. She said they’d been to some really great places they never would’ve seen otherwise.

After a short lunch, we took our second clue, and headed to a small but colorful plaza over by the zoo. It was a cancer survivor park, filled with inspirational messages about beating cancer. It was awesome.

We followed the clues past the statues, but not until Kelley and Mark stopped to hold hands and pretend they were running along with them.

Mark found the rubber stamp in another magnetic box stuck beneath a park bench.

We spent a few reflective moments in the park. It was time for us to head back to the airport, but we didn’t want to leave our fun mini-vacation or the Gludts yet. We could’ve sat in the sunshine forever, but our plane called, and we had to answer. We hugged and said goodbye, sad to end another wonderful weekend.

Until next time…I can’t wait to see the Gludts again soon, but more importantly, I can’t wait to see how our little chicks have grown. :-)