Home At Last

In my last post, I had a picture of our living room Christmas tree, but seriously, this is a great Christmas tree--basking in a 70 degree Arizona day and surrounded by orange trees. And we live in MN because...???

No, no, no. I love my home and am glad to be back after spending our New Year's vacation in Arizona. The beautiful tree in the picture is on the grounds of the Arizona Biltmore Resort where we stayed for part of our trip. Besides pines, poinsettias, and orange trees, the gardens around the Garden Sprites were a welcome break from MN snow banks. The Wright-inspired Spa and Resort is like taking a step back in time. I loved reading about their history and checking out all the photos of the old celebrities and past presidents who had visited the place.

Since many of our vacations tend to revolve around sporting events, you just know we spent New Year's Eve at the Insight Bowl where the Gophers were defeated by Kansas, but a loss is much easier to take in such a lovely location. (Besides, I'm not a UMN grad, so I was just there for the sunshine! Sorry guys.) From the game, we headed over for the Tempe block party where we shared the ringing in of 2009 with 100,000 other people while we watched fireworks and listened to Styx. (Oh boy!) It's hard to say how many miles we had walked by the time we got to bed by 2:00 the next morning. I'm too old for that kind of day.

After exploring Phoenix, we set out for Flagstaff. Having never been to Arizona--outside of the airport that is--I couldn't get over the variety of landscape and climate. As we drove in to higher elevations, we came into winter again and laughed at the excited tourists who just had to drive to the shoulder of the freeway to get out and play in the snow.

The next morning we were off to the Grand Canyon. The views along the way are gorgeous and the canyon itself is quite a sight. We did have to wonder what the park must be like during the peak season when the crowds were considerable in the middle of winter.

On our trip back to Phoenix, we wound through the road leading to Sedona. I think this was my favorite spot in the whole trip. The town itself is pretty touristy, but the drive to get there is fantastic. There were a few campgrounds and resorts along that road that would be fun to visit if we ever get back.

By this time, we were ready to start heading home, but the good people at US Air wanted us to stay a little longer. Our late Saturday flight was canceled due to a mechanical problem, and we were unable to book another flight until Monday morning. We made the best of it and spent some more time looking around Phoenix and even got to a movie. (A movie we all loved, by the way--"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.")

It's good to be home--even with the snow and cold temperatures. Life isn't quite back to "normal" since we have our college kid with us for another couple of weeks, but we'll enjoy that while we can.

Thanks to flight times, car trips, and my tendency to wake up long before the guys are ready to get going on our vacations, I finished three more Mitred Mittens while we were gone. As I was packing for this trip, I wasn't sure what to take along for a project until I found the leftover skeins of yarn from St. Brigid. I threw those in my bag with some dpns and my copy of the pattern and they turned out to be just the thing to take. The pattern is so easy to remember that I could easily pick them up on the fly and be able to knit and enjoy the scenery at the same time. After I get caught up around here, I'll finish up that fourth mitten before I get back to my Rambling Rows cardigan. While I'm knitting, I can reminisce about oranges and Christmas trees.