Love actually!

Aaahh......21 years ago today! More lines and wrinkles on the faces, redistribution of hair follicles and adipose tissue, and a greater appreciation of who we both are. I love being married and the rollercoaster ride that it is......
How did we choose to celebrate the day? Doing what we both love....

Paul and Louise flew off to Denver yesterday after 10 days here, and I sent Nigel with them!!!! They have just had 24 inches of snow, so I packed him off with his skis, and I am Loving a little respite from the busyness of the last few weeks.
My, how we have matured!!!

Boxing Day

As if we hadn't eaten enough on Christmas Day!! Nigel and Paul have now perfected the 'baby back rib technique'- though cannot quite see why they are called babies!
We invited all of TOM and houseguests over (29!!), heated up the pool, and drank margaritas and beer in the sun again..........it is quite tough here in the winter!!

Jolly Christmas!

The kids made a fabulous gingerbread house which, if left to me, would have been very different! As all the pieces in the box were smashed, I would have put ice cream on it and eaten it as a mess!! but Paul.......stuck all the bits together with icing, reinforced it with sticks of licquorice, used wattle and daub, and held it all up with marshmallow towers, which (had I not been making bread sauce and mince pies from scratch) could have been very intimidating! It whiled away the whole afternoon on Christmas Eve and kept everyone entertained for hours- and the enjoyment continued as they ate it for dessert today.....



This morning Nigel put two 10 lb turkeys on the rotisserie (under the watchful eye of Jonathan and Lizzie) and delighted me with an empty oven for all the veg and trimmings. As it was 72F (21C) we had our smoked salmon and champagne outside by the pool.........
Gorgeous..!!

A night of fun and frivolity.....

We went out on Saturday night to a fantastic concert organised by Alice Cooper for his charity, the Solid Rock foundation, which is aiming to build a major teen centre including a rock music school.
The whole evening began with prayer, Stehen Stills (Crosby, Stills and Nash) and Don Feldman (Eagles), who are getting together next year, treated us to their debut with an extended set-( which included Hotel California), Jonathan Cain (Journey) played a grand piano with just a choir for backing, Ace Young (American Idol winner), Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades Band, dancers, comedians etc all gave us a gala evening. As each artist came on, others became their backing singers so it was all like a huge family party. We kept pinching ourselves as we couldn't quite believe we were seeing all that phenomenal talent in one room. We had an interval at 10.30pm when they gave out Christmas pudding, Alice Cooper didn't make it on stage until 12.45 am, and the whole evening ended at 1.30 am with every musician miked up, snow falling on stage, and Santa leading the singing of Jingle Bells!!
All for £25!! That's what I call value for money........

The town dump.

The Town Dump is a wonderful bric-a-brac store which sells everything from rusty geckos and buffalo to a 10ft tall plastic blue leg (covered in flowers). And from a life size model of Elvis, to a stuffed bear wearing a muzzle and a tutu. A frog playing a double bass, a bowl of plastic body parts, samurai swords, an oversized cockroach riding a bicycle, and a plethora of totem poles......a great place to take people in need of a laugh!
It turned out that my wonderful Easter cactus is now a Christmas cactus, covered in Poinsettias!

Desert in December!

We went out towards Cave Creek on Saturday for a gentle stroll around the desert. Things always take a lot longer with Paul, as he is always either looking for bugs and animals or taking endless photographs! We managed to time our visit to coincide with a lecture on venomous desert creatures- and got to listen to the Park Ranger describing the tarantula hawk wasp (which Paul had spotted in our garden that very morning). Apparently its sting reaches 999 on a pain scale of 1 to 1000!! Obviously one to avoid annoying....
(Note the T shirts and shorts and glorious December weather!)

Getting ready

We had already decorated the outside of the house before we went to England (after all, Christmas starts here at the end of November!)but this year we got coaxed into getting a real tree as our famous fake one bit the dust last year after 12 years of faithful service!! So we had fun on Tuesday getting the house ready for festivities. The kids all have their own little trees with lights, and they have put them in the playroom along with lots of musical things which have been banned from mummy's earshot!!
Paul and Louise Richards are spending Christmas with us, and the kids are hoping to have a major 20day sleepover. Spirits are already running high, school is out in 2 days, and Daniel's birthday is also looming, so we are bouncing off walls at the moment, and desperately trying to stem the flow of e-numbers!!
This is proving difficult, as school insists on party after party. Emily has already had a Hannukah party and a winter holiday party, and on Monday she gets an ice cream tasting party (they get to do a blind trial of pumpkin, peppermint and eggnog....)
If we are still all alive after the weekend (there are threats which suggest we won't be!) I will post photos of the finished decorations!!

Goodbyes.

We stayed with Keith and Dawn, and said goodbye to them and to their house, as they are in the middle of packing up and moving on. They are going to work for OM and spend the first few months of the year on board the bookship taking Christian literature to the Phillipines and Taiwan. Then, as a family, they are moving on to Carlisle for the next forseeable future....
You can keep up to date with them by clicking on 'the other Mallons'.

Great British weather.

Nigel and I just spent a very short, frantic week in UK (courtesy of the fantastic babysitting grandparents). We were mainly based in Sheffield but did drive up to Anne and Angus in Guisborough, and got dragged up a hill....



The view from the top was great, but the wind was the sort that made your ears hurt!!



We climbed down and had English bacon and black pudding on a bun with a pint of beer- and suddenly the pain disappeared!
We rather enjoyed the grey and drizzly weather, and a bizarre highlight was having a hot bath listening to the wind howling outside and the rain lashing against the window !!

Thanksgiving

We have just had a fabulous few days away over Thanksgiving with Paddy and Mary.
We went down to the South East corner of the state- to Sierra Vista. The landscape was absolutely stunning, and on Thanksgiving Day we took a hike round the Chiricahua (cheery cow er!!) National Park, where we walked between huge rock formations in a large canyon. Very energetic and lovely, and a change from stuffing our faces on pie!!
In the evening we found a restaurant which was open and had a great time at the table giving thanks for each person. The kids came up with some really creative things!!

Tombstone

The next day we got up before dawn and waited for tickets for the Kartchner Caverns (well, to be fair it was Nigel and Paddy who did the deed!!). And they were phenomenal caves (but unable to take photos so you will have to believe me!)
In the afternoon we drove over to Tombstone which is an authentic Western town where Wyatt Earp had his famous 27seconds of excitement in the OK Corral! We also got to see a hanging!!

Garden Canyon

And then on to another canyon for another walk!!
A fabulous array of Autumn leaves (don't see many among the cacti........)

Gorgeous

Nigel had fun taking new portraits of the kids......

Booooorrrrring......

Daniel is doing a meteorological report for a school project and needs to check the weather at the same time each morning, write a sentence about it, and draw a picture to depict the daily activity and changes.
It reads like this:

1.Today feels hot already.
2.Today there are no clouds and the sky is blue.
3.Today there is no wind and no clouds.
4.Today it is hot..........

We have to do 20 days of this- I am sure the teacher will die of boredom reading them all.
Today was actually 91F/ 32C !!
The weather channel comments that it is unseasonably hot.
My comment is that I am bored of the weather project, and bored of the incessant heat!!
C'mon, this is supposed to be Autumn now, surely.......

More costumes

Daniel wanted to be a policeman, and went onto the streets complete with whistle, walkie talkie, notepad and gun, and proceeded to direct traffic, and children alike...



And Emily made quite a pretty pirate



until the make-up was applied!!

Halloween

As I am on a roll with photos of Tara.......here is another of her as an old lady!




Nigel got up to his face painting tricks again, and the kids went trick or treating last night....
Halloween here is sooooo different to in the UK. It is more like a carnival. The atmosphere is amazing as everyone brings deckchairs out onto their driveways, groups of neighbours congregate around braziers drinking wine, and eating together. The kids all dress up- (but very few masks or macabre outfits), and head off round the neighbourhood with some of the adults, leaving others behind to hand out candy and toys to the hoardes of children passing by. A lot of the houses are decorated on the outside, which adds to the fun- orange and black fairy lights, pumpkins, cobwebs, bats etc, and we even found some grottos to peer into (strobe lights and skeletons!). Some of our neighbours covered a trailer with hay bales, fairy lights, and balloons, and the whole cul de sac piled on board and rode round the estate throwing candy at the strolling kids!
We saw butterflies, Spiderman, princesses, fish, pirates, Minnie Mouse, and even Spongebob!! It was great fun for our children, and they loved the whole thing.



Emily's school trip last week was to a pumpkin patch, where she got to choose one to bring home and carve- it had pride of place outside last night, with a huge toothy grin! I like the idea here of Halloween being like a harvest festival, full of rejoicing and laughter (not an egg or bag of flour in sight!), and leading into Thanksgiving at the end of the month.
It is perplexing, having come here with 'well-founded' negative views of Halloween, and from a church which provided an alternative to the macabre darkness, to see such incredible community building in one evening, and confusing for us all to see an inflatable Winnie the Pooh vampire outside the church coffee shop!!

The ever changing hair.....

Tara and Emily dressed up for 70's day!
The school has a great spirit, and each week there is some sort of theme- odd socks, back to front day, crazy hair day etc. The class with the most participants wins points towards a smoothie party. And the individuals within the class can get their own points too- by collecting character cards (given by the teacher to anyone exhibiting one of the 7 traits). The individuals with the most points get to go to an ice cream social with the principal!! (who is such a cool guy- a motivating factor!)




Tara loved having her hair braided in Mexico, and kept them in for as long as possible. Last time we went she only had the top done, and had been longing for the full head for a while. It was a real battle to get her to let me remove them...



However, when we took them out, she was absolutely thrilled with the amazingly glamorous result- and is now begging me to take braiding lessons , so she can look like this more than once a year!!

Coming of age.....

Emily has finally reached the age where Nigel can impart his glorious knowledge to her, and walk her through the fine details of his legendary Saturday breakfast!!
He is training them thoroughly, in the hope that one day he will be treated whilst in bed!!
We even cracked open a tiny tin of Heinz beans to celebrate her new sausage sizzling skills......

Or.........Wish You Were Here?

We have just had a few days away in Mexico again- it is becoming a favourite place to go....
Aside from the fact it is a relatively cheap trip, the journey is easy, the weather perfect, and the beach wonderfully quiet, we are enjoying the familiarity that returning to the same place brings. We don't have to explore when we arrive, or wonder what we will need to take, or stress over navigating, and so we relax much more quickly each time we go.
We love the beach at sunrise, when the rockpools are visible, and when the shallow water is perfect for skimboarding, but it is also beautiful at sunset when the ocean is warm and the rippled sand is cool, and we love waking from our siesta and hitting the swim-up bar when the margaritas are half price, and sitting in our deckchairs whilst the kids bury our feet, and buying junk from the hawkers, and getting our hair braided, and having breakfast on the balcony, and sleeping with the patio door open listening to the ocean.......... OK, we love it all!!
Well, there is one thing we don't like.........coming home..!!

'Wish you were here?'

Well, you will have to use your imagination, as this pic of our friends was the only photo allowed before the camera got confiscated!!!
Pink Floyd was the very first band I saw in concert(almost 30 years ago!!), and their music was a big part of my teen years, so I jumped at the chance to see Roger Waters (the voice...) at the Cricket Pavillion. The setting is absolutely amazing- an outdoor ampitheatre with seating for 12000, and then 'lawn seating' for a further 8000. Lawn seating involves bringing a deckchair or blanket, and settling down on the grass, with a chilled beer from the 'liquid lounge', watching the sunset, and then listening to fabulous music......did I forget to say it was 25C?
The first half was all the 'oldies but goodies'- lots from Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. The second half was the entire performance of Dark Side of the Moon.
I Loved it, but I was amazed to realise how little I understood of their music at the time!!!
I knew they had a slightly political edge- but that was putting it mildly!! He had just written a new song about Tony and George(as in Blair and Bush), and there were lots of anti war images and comments. The Animals tour which I saw all those years ago had a flying pig (aww how cute.....)- this time, the pig was covered in political graffiti, with a huge 'IMPEACH BUSH NOW' all over its rear end!!
But it was rather surreal as they let it go and it floated off towards the stars, with a big 'free at last' written on its belly!!