Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Sweet spots

Our pace has slowed down a little bit, but we continue to have a great time in Arizona.  We went back to our favorite Phoenix candy shoppe from last year, Smeeks.  They had yarn bombed a tree outside!
It's too bad the flash ruined this - it says "A sweet little place for sweet little folks."  The girls each got to pick four things (because they are four years old) from the store - we were there for a good 40 minutes with them swapping, re-thinking, evaluating their choices until they got to four, but they did a great job.
 One of Christina's picks, in honor of her father's old favorite candy bar. (And even though she's turning 35 in one day, she did not pick 35 things - restraint, a quality gained with age!).
 
Then we headed out to a little place our friends had clued us in to, America's Taco.  There the girls fell in love with horchata, and Christina fell in love with a pork quesadilla with grilled pineapple (YUM!).
Cutie pie, waiting for a quesadilla.
After this we went to the Science center again, at the girls' request.  They loved so much about that spot - we wish we had something so science focused in Montana!  On the drive home the girls each got to choose one candy to eat, and they picked ring pops.  Or tried to - here is poor Clara, having fallen asleep eating hers!

The next day we took them back to the art museum, and had a special lunch with Nana Rose!  It was fancy and fun.
They had kids packs that each girl got to sign out, and it led them to do different things in the museum.  Here, Clara asked Christina to take  a picture of her with her pencil behind her ear - she was being an investigator looking for all her clues!
There was a children's exhibit based on a school in Mexico that taught children how to represent the world around them by learning a series of shapes/patterns to draw.  Clara and Elena had fun at the easels trying this out:

Then they got to try the skills out on some pottery!
Investigating where the people went in this sculpture:
Back in the room that is dark except for hundreds of strings of lights, this was the favorite exhibit the girls remember from last year and the one they asked for as soon as we walked in the door.  It was fun to be obliterated in a field of fireflies again, and this time instead of taking a straight shot we used the lights to light paint a field of hearts.

The most fun part of the discovery packs was the girls playing "teacher" to Steve and Christina - here they are teaching Steve something about shapes in paintings.
In the gift shop Elena relived baby-hood by completely enjoying this tag book.
And no visit would be complete without seeing the big dinosaur in the cage out front!
We stopped by Nana Rose's office and she showed us some pictures of the girls that she has had up there that she shows everyone who walks in - it was so funny to see these!
They are even featured on her mouse pad!
They greeted everyone, got cookies, and then we headed back to "the Arizona House" to lay low.  Busy, busy, busy - we're stocking up on all the things we miss while we're in Montana, and hoarding memories to get us through the rest of this long winter!

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