rain, rain go away!

The youngest Smith graduated from high school last week. Gilbert High has played "home" to all 7 siblings. For the last 18 years there has been at least one of us roaming Tiger Hall, but on Thursday the legacy came to an end. Sam and I chose to support Natalli by attending her graduation ceremony. This usually involves extremely uncomfortable heat, and sun in your eyes (since there are never any seats left on the shady "home" side of the stadium). This year Someone thought it would be funny to throw an Arizona blizzard at the 800+ graduates and all their supporters in the stands. We sat for 3 hours in pouring rain, and not hot summer rain. This was bonafide freezing, wind blown rain. Never in all my years as an Arizonan have I witnessed rain fall for more than 10 minutes, max. I'm almost positive this night set a new world record (I'll have to look it up in next years Guinness). Despite the down pour, the genius in charge opted to let the 12 speakers, and 4 musical numbers perform as planned. This was no doubt the same guy who chose to use speakers from what looked like his home stereo, instead of the conveniently located stadium loud speakers. We didn't hear anything all night. A few grads walked off the field before the diplomas were handed out, luckily Natalli had an umbrella to shiver under. Another world record was set that night, they read through the grad's names faster than ever before. What usually takes 2 hours of the program, was done in a whopping 30 min! We joined the remaining crowd and rushed the field immediately after the last grad's name was read, give or take a few, we couldn't make out the mumbling. Everyone ignored the Principal's plea to "please return to [our] seats for the remainder of the program". The crowd decided it was over right then, and we couldn't have agreed more!
This was our view

mexican mother's day

Last weekend the Smith family crossed the border for our annual Mexico trip. We were excited to have Sam's brother and his family join us this year. After surviving the ride down, with no A/C and one seat short, we were ready for a weekend of fun and food at the beach. Once we crossed the border my mother was kind enough to "translate" every spanish sign she saw into english for us. My favorite was the llanteria which, according to mom, means "galloping horses". Hmmm and all this time I thought it was just a tire shop. One of the rules in Mexico is that you have to get up when the sun does, maybe because the instant it rises your tent becomes unbearably oven like. Even if you can stand the oven, the screaming/talking of children can for some reason penetrate the sound proof tents. It's ok though, because you have to get up early in order to find sea creatures in the tide pools. This year the creatures consisted mainly of hermit crabs. I did capture a bright orange starfish that was thoroughly mauled by children all weekend. You can imagine our excitement at the tide pools one morning when my mother screamed "I found some sort of glittery jelly fish, and it's ALIVE!" Here is a picture of the miraculous discovery. Shhh, we won't tell her it's really a fishing lure.

We welcomed a new treat to the beach this year, mangoes on a stick! Despite being allergic I ate at least one a day, resulting in a very itchy rash on my face. Don't worry it's almost cleared up now. Thousands of burritos, tacos and popsicles later we still weren't satisfied. The one thing necessary to complete a Mexico adventure is a trip to the "dirt mall" (which is now paved and lovely) to get some fresh CHURROS!



Mother's day fell on the Sunday we left for home, the sibs gave our mother a clever card and a gift cert. to her favorite place, Gecko Grill. She eats there once a week at least. Sam surprised me weeks earlier with a new video camera. Most of you know what this means...