Arizona Trip - Part Three

     Day three was a Saturday and the plan for the day was to head to our cousin Norrie's home in Arizona City which as you can see by the map below was a little more than 1 hour away from Copa's home in Phoenix. You can see where cousin Stella lives in the top left corner in Surprise. They are very lucky to all live so close to each other. 

    Lucy was again our designated driver and it was so nice getting to spend so much time with her. Once we girl cousins grew up and started getting married and having kids we stopped having time to really get together, seeing each other only at wedding, funerals and family reunions. Now as we've gotten older, our kids are off on their own, we have all grown so close and I'm so happy that has happened. Below is a picture of my mom's parents and her siblings, minus Uncle Tino who was missing from this picture and Aunt Eliza who had passed away several years earlier.

L-R: My mom Tomasa, sisters Casimira, Leonor, Herminia, Maria, brother Jesus (brother Tino was missing), sisters Elena, Nicolasa and their mother and father celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary, Tomasa and Eustino.

    Back to the plan for the day. Norrie had offered to take us to the Tucson Museum of Art and after the museum we were coming back to her home to have dinner with more cousins.

    The Tucson Museum of Art was amazing! Aside from seeing all my beautiful family members, this was my favorite thing to have done in Arizona. What made it even more special is that Norrie had not told us that our Aunt Ninfa was coming with us. Aunt Ninfa is the widow of our Uncle Jesus. In the photo above he is the tall man with the black hair in the middle. 

At the Museum: L-R Me, Aunt Ninfa, my sister Lisa, our cousins Norrie and Lucy

    Aunt Ninfa is an amazing, loving, generous, funny, beautiful woman and big part of many of my childhood memories. She was the first person to ever make me a grilled cheese sandwich and served it with dill pickles...I still eat it that way to this very day. I was so happy that we were going to share this day with her.

Tia Ninfa surrounded by amazing artwork. She is a very devout Catholic and any image of the Virgen Mary is special to her.

    We no sooner got there and started walking around when we got in trouble! There are no signs anywhere that you CANNOT TOUCH THE ARTWORK! I won't name names, but a few of us (not me) touched the artwork. Security quickly came and asked us not to. Some of us forgot and continued to do so...that's when a security guard had to start following us. Once she saw that we had learned our lesson she quit following us. At the time I was mortified, I'm a rule follower, but now I can laugh about it.

Aunt Ninfa was very interested in these. I wish I had taken a picture of the sign that said what these are and who the artist was but they appeared to be very old and I'm assuming they are beaded leg coverings for Kachina Dancers. They looked as though they are made from some type of animal hide and beading, they were amazing. 

    There was a lot of Arizona type art and I will do a separate post with photos of the artwork that I took; in this post I mainly want to post photos of Tia Ninfa and the cousins enjoying the museum.

Tia Ninfa standing in front of another religious piece of artwork. She really loved this one.

Me and Tia Ninfa. I love this lady so much! I really need to remember to take my purse off when I take photos!

My sister Lisa with our Aunt Ninfa. Both so photogenic, loving the look on Tia Ninfa's face in this one. 

Lisa taking a picture of me while I took a picture of her. The artwork is canes that have been painted and bent. My favorite thing about this photo is Cousins Lucy and Norrie and Aunt Ninfa behind the wall laughing at us crazy California girls!

Cousin Lucy and my sister Lisa posing in front of photo of Lucille Ball cooking. This was a special piece of artwork for Lucy because of the name and for Lisa because she adored Lucille Ball and the I Love Lucy Show. 

Photo of me taken by Lisa in front of the canes. You can see the canes much better in her photo.

Photo taken by Lisa, L-R: Cousin Norrie, Aunt Ninfa, Me and Cousin Lucy

Is she beautiful or what! Tia Ninfa on the ride home, tired but happy!

    After we had seen all that we wanted to see at the museum, Norrie took us to a little cafe next door to the museum called Cafe a La Cart. She had planned for us to have lunch there before heading back to her house. What a great idea! We loved it, so cute!

    We all decided to have the Chilled Artisan Tomato Soup and Salad. Aunt Ninfa said she just wanted a bowl of soup so I told Lisa who was placing our order, that Aunt Ninfa could have my soup and I just wanted the salad. Lisa didn't feel that was enough food, so she order the Chilaquiles for the table. 

Chilaquiles

    When Aunt Ninfa saw the Chilaquiles she said "I want that!" So we told her she had ordered the soup and tried to put the soup in front of her and she said "No, I want that!" We all thought that was hilarious and she could have the world if we could give it to her, so we let her have the Chilaquiles and I have never seen anyone enjoy food as much as she did. It was a joy to watch her eat, she cleaned her plate!

    We had a wonderful drive home, it was so nice for me to have someone else drive. Once we got to Norrie's house we helped her get things ready. I was put in charge of making the Sangria! I had never made a Sangria but I found a simple recipe online and I made the best darn Sangria ever, in my humble opinion!

Sangria - wine with fruit. The cookies pictured were purchase at the little Cafe in Tucson and we had leftovers so we cut them in quarters so everyone could enjoy them. 

    I wish I had taken pictures of the food that Norrie and our cousin Michael had made for us. I know there was Mexican rice and beans and three different types of Enchiladas. The typical red enchilada, a green enchilada with chicken and what they called an Enchilada Sonorense which is a stacked enchilada with layers of meat and cheese, it was delicious with home made tortillas. Michael and Norrie make quite the team!

Enchilada Sonorense - https://www.maricruzavalos.com/flat-enchiladas-sonorenses/

A few people came and went before we remembered to take a photos. But I'm glad we got this one. L-R: My sister Lisa, Lucy, Me, Cousin Tito holding a bottle, Norrie, Cousin Michael in the yellow shirt, Cousin Tino the Honorable because he's a Judge and seated is Norrie's husband Lacho and her grandbaby who was just amazed by my beauty and only had eyes for me! 

    We finally headed back to Copa's house, Copa and her daughter Daniella were at the dinner, but they had left prior to the picture. We were tired but happy and so full of delicious food. It was bittersweet to say good-bye to the ones that stayed behind in Arizona City and Eloy. We love you guys!

    The next day Lucy, our every faithful and beautiful driver took us back to the airport where we caught our flight and Lisa didn't even need alcohol for the flight home. I'm so grateful we were able to make this trip! Thank you Arizona Family!

Arizona Trip - Part Two

    Day Two in Arizona

    Lisa and I are both very early risers, we were awake by 6am but just stayed in bed until we started hearing noises and we knew our cousin was up and about. After coffee she told us the plan for our day.

    Our cousin Lydia aka Copa is going through Chemotherapy currently and it really drains her and she needs help to do several of the daily things that the rest of us take for granted. She needed to go back to her daughters house so we had the morning off. Copa let us have use of her car so we drove around Phoenix and hit a couple of stores and then realized we couldn't fit anything in our tiny carry-on so there was no use buying anything or shopping any further. But it was a fun morning and we knew that around 2pm we were meeting back up with Copa and Lucy and heading to Surprise, Arizona where our cousin, Stella lives with her daughter Jessica and granddaughter Roni. 

    Stella is the daughter of my mom's sister Elena. She moved several years ago from San Diego to Surprise and we had not had a chance to see her new home yet, so we were excited to go there. Lucy was once again our chauffeur and she did a great job. We did have one moment that a guy ran a red light and she had to slam on the brakes...and I thought California drivers were bad!!! We headed out around 4pm just barely missing rush hour as it was a Friday, but we still hit quite a bit of traffic.

    Stella's new home is so pretty! I loved her kitchen and I wish I had taken pictures but I was too busy looking at everything. She had planned a simple meal because of course it's very hot to be cooking extravagantly. So we had pizza and salad and margaritas, life doesn't get better than that right? She had some yummy desserts, but I'm trying to cut out sugar and don't even remember what all she had. OH! She also made her super delicious Salsa which we had with Chips. I have never had a better Salsa. I need to remember to ask her for the recipe.

    Afterwards we sat around reminiscing about our childhoods and waiting for it to get cooler outside so we could take a nice picture of us all together. It was fun to catch up and to share stories we remembered of our childhood. Stella is older than the rest of us so she has much better memories, plus she is the family historian and keeper of the records. She loves genealogy and is constantly on ancestry.com finding out more information about our family history. 

Back row left to right, Me, Cousin Stella and Lisa. Front row Lucy and Copa. 

    We could have talked all night, but we new we had the trip back to Phoenix, which was about 45 minutes to an hour away. The traffic was much better on the way home. We had a great time on our second day and Lucy, Lisa, Copa and I continued sharing stories until it was time to hit the hay and see what adventures awaited us the next day!

My Arizona Trip and whatever else comes to mind. (part one)

    When last I left you guys, I gave you a brief update letting you know my sister Lisa and I were flying off that morning to visit our Arizona family. We were leaving the cool, blissful weather of 105 in Bakersfield CA  for the blistering desert that is Phoenix AZ which was 109 when we landed! Many have asked us, "Why would you travel to someplace hotter?" Well...when it's over 100, it's all the same thing...uncomfortable! So one place is as good as another and we were off on an adventure!

Before and After, With makeup before and without after! You can tell we had a great time!

    We got to the airport and Lisa who is a worrier by nature anyway was super nervous. She was just talking and talking and jumping from one topic to another and not making much sense. Thank goodness for airport bars, we each had a beer with some chips to settle our nerves. Strictly for medicinal purposes!

Just one beer for the road, or should I say the sky?

Can't let Lisa drink alone, can I?

    The boarding and take off went off without a hitch and soon we were in the air. Lisa took the window seat and I had a great description of what she was seeing. We landed at Phoenix and the landing was a little rough, I think we were right over the tires and Lisa yelled out "Oh shit!" We had a family with 2 girls and 1 boy sitting next to us and their eyes got as round as saucers. 

    We had a hard time navigating the Phoenix Airport...that place is huge. But we finally figured out how to get out of there and our cousin Lucy was there to pick us up and take us to her niece Daniella's house where they hosted a dinner for us. On the driver there, Lucy almost killed us once when she accidentally turned into a one-way street, but she corrected herself at the last minute. I'm only putting that in here because I want to make sure that we all remember so we can kid each other when we're all in the same nursing home! In the photo is Lisa, Lucy and me in red...a few days later. Lucy is the daughter of my moms sister Herminia. Lucy has two sisters, Lydia aka Copa and Herminia aka Minnie. 

    After dinner we were taken to Lydia aka Copa's house. She  had generously invited us to stay in her home in a beautiful guest room where we had everything we could need, even non-slip socks! We were greeted by this sweet boy named Rocky. I fell in love with him the last time we were in Copa's house and I think he remembered me. Just look at those big caramel colored eyes! Who's a good boy?

Rocky

    That's the end of our first day in Phoenix, Lisa's first flight. It was time to rest and prepare for the next couple of days. 

Weekly Wrap Up - Week of February 11th

     I mentioned in my last post that I would be a bit late posting this because I was heading to a family reunion on Feb 16th and not returning until Feb 19th. I was right as today is Wednesday already. But I'm not late posting because of the reunion, but because on the way back from the reunion I got sick!

Sunset in Arizona - nothing more beautiful!

    I am pretty sure it is just allergies. I tested negative for Covid and I haven't had a fever or anything. We had planned to drive back on Feb 19th, President's Day but the weather forecast was for a big storm heading in over the Tehachapi's late Sunday into Monday...just when we would be on the road. 

    If you remember, back in August 2023, Lisa and I had taken a trip to Arizona and on the way back home we became trapped in Mojave because of Hurricane Hillary that struck California and brought down the Tehachapi mountain closing the road while we were just a mere 2 hours away from home! You can read and see pictures about that HERE. 

Some elders catching up. I be these ladies have known each other for more than 70 years! My own mom is the one in the bright red shirt on the right. 

    So we decided the best thing would be to leave on Sunday to beat the storm and have all day Monday off to rest and recuperate! 

Mom and her Clan, Mom and Roselyn first row, me Baby J and Lisa second row, Lisa's son Sean holding his son Sean, Sean's wife Rocio in the last row.

    Sunday morning we checked out of the beautiful Blue Water Resort & Casino in Parker Arizona and we headed to the goodbye breakfast in the park, then we headed to pickup mom as she was staying with her niece Mary Lou.

    We headed out and I was feeling just fine, but before we even got to Needles, California I could feel my throat hurting and scratchiness in my ears, which I was sure was an allergy. Lisa happened to have Allegra with her since she always has allergies, so I took one and it did help.

More of our elders. My mom on the far right is the last living member of the her family. She is now the matriarch of our family, in the middle is her Niece Mary Lou, daughter of mom's sister Eliza and then our beautiful, sweet Tia Ninfa, she was the wife of our now deceased Uncle Jesus who was mom's oldest brother.

    I didn't think I was going to make it, but I'm a soldier! I've always said that about myself and I pride myself on my strength and determination! I got us home safe and sound and then I collapsed! I was exhausted when I got home, barely made it to my bed. 

Just say CHEESE! Lisa and I in our shirts that Lisa created. We had a t-shirt contest, we didn't win but I thought ours were the prettiest any way. See the group photo of the whole family below and you will see that we really stood out!

    Luckily as I said earlier, I had Monday off for President's Day...thank you Mr. Presidents! I was able to sleep the whole day and that was good because I woke up feeling worse, my whole right ear filled with fluid and I couldn't hear out of it. 

    Today is Wednesday and my ear is feeling better, still a bit of fluid. I put in a whole day of work yesterday and though I was a bit groggy and not at 100%, I am a soldier and I was at work! Today I have quite a bit of cough as well, but I can feel that I am on the mend. Last night Lisa called me and she's got the "allergies" now. She sounded awful!

Mom standing out as always! We were just starting the games out with a Tug of War game between the kids and everyone wanted mom to play. She's always ready to comply and everyone love watching her, everyone was out there with their cell phones filming her. Sister Lisa with her back to us is a lot like mom, always the center of attention. I'm more like my dad, just stand in the background and laugh at them! 

Drone shot - Group photo. See that little cluster in red? That's mom and her kids, a few grandkids and her three great grandkids. Our brother Fred was missing as well as my kids and one of Lisa's sons and one of Jaime's daughters. We are small but mighty!

    Well, that's all I have for now as it's 7:28 am and I need to log-in for work at 7:30am. We had a great time and I am so proud to be a member of this family. A family filled with love and compassion, unity and pride!

    I'll leave you with these last photos that say it all!

Hurricane Hilary, Road Trip and 60th Birthday Party Celebration - Part Two

     This is Part 2 of our crazy trip to Arizona, for part 1 click HERE.

    We had a great nights sleep since both Lisa and I were exhausted! We had planned to spend the day shopping and getting ready for the big party that evening, however our cousin Lydia aka Copa has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer and just that week on Wednesday she had her first round of Chemo and she wasn't feeling the greatest. Have you ever seen a more beautiful and positive person getting her first chemo treatment? She's a true warrior!

    So we sat with her and just got caught up on everything she had been going through and how our jobs were going and how family was doing and we had a very nice time just being with her.

    Then our cousins in Eloy, Arizona called and said they were all gathered together at our cousin Norrie's house and where were we?? So we put ourselves together and headed to Eloy. Eloy is the city of our ancestors. That is where most of our parents met. Copa told us that we would come back to her house before the party so we didn't take our party clothes or gifts with us...we should have!

    We had so much fun at Norrie's house! They were cooking the food for the party. They had asked Copa what she wanted for her birthday dinner and she had such a crazy idea for a menu, very different from the usual Chile Colorado or Deep Pit BBQ that we usually have at family events. Copa wanted Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, Green Salad, Macaroni and Cheese, Rolls and Cake! Norrie rounded up all the cousins that live locally and some were making meatloaf, some potatoes, etc., and they had it covered!

    We finally realized that we had been having so much fun we had missed our opportunity to head back to Phoenix to get dolled up for the party, so we decided to go to a local store that I love called Bealls Outlet. I always go to the one in Parker, Arizona when we head that way, but luckily there was one close by in Casa Grande. Lisa, Copa and I all went praying that we would find something suitable for the party and we did!

    Then we returned to Norrie's house where our niece Sarena did Copa's make up! Sarena is such an angel, she's an RN and just the sweetest, most loving, giving person in the world! Here she is working her magic! Oh yeah, check out Copa's tiara, she's a true queen!

    Love these next shots, you can tell she's very happy with the end results. It took some convincing too as she's not a makeup person, never wears it. I think she's going to be shopping for some makeup in the future! I love the last photo, beautiful ladies. I am so blessed to have such amazing women in my life!

    The rest of this post will be photos that I took at the party with some commentary on who and what.

From left to right - My sister Lisa, our Cousin Copa and me.

    

Copa and the loves of her life, her beautiful daughter Daniella aka Copita and her wonderful son Mark aka Markie. 

L-R: Me, our Aunt Ninfa, Copa and Lisa 

L-R: My brother Federico, my sister Lisa, me and my brother Jaime.

L-R: Brother Federico, Sister Lisa, Cousin Copa, Me and Brother Jaime

 Cousin Copa also wanted all the July and August family and friends to be included in the celebration, so she requested this cake.

Everyone had a wonderful time, there was a raffle with great prizes, we played games, had great food. There was a beautiful desert table filled with candy and popcorn and rice krispie treats and cake pops and almost anything you can imagine!

The party ended around 9:30 and then we drove back to Copa's house in Phoenix as we were all exhausted. We also had heard that there was a Hurricane getting ready to hit California and that where we live was right in the path of it so we wanted to get a good nights sleep so we could get up super early and head home.

Get ready for part three...

Hurricane Hilary, Road Trip and 60th Birthday Party Celebration

    On Friday, August 18th my sister Lisa and I  headed to Phoenix, Arizona to celebrate the 60th birthday party for our cousin Lydia aka Copa. It was going to be a quick trip, up on Friday arriving in Phoenix around 3pm, then Saturday evening the party, then we would head back on Sunday and back to work on Monday. The route that we chose is displayed below and would take 7 hours and 7 minutes. Remember that, 7 hours and 7 minutes! 

    Right away we should have known it was probably a good idea to just cancel and go back to bed! We planned to leave at 4:30 am as we were dropping off her new dog at the groomers house who was going to take care of her for us. I have to share this picture of her dog named Fancy K or Fancy for short. She's so cute and just the sweetest little girl! She's a rescue from the dog shelter and I'm so happy she has a forever home with my sister.

    When Lisa came to pick me up she said that she we needed to stop and put air in the front passenger side tire. But while putting the air in, Lisa noticed that there was a nail or bolt in the tire. Great! We decided we would go ahead and go drop off Fancy at the groomers, then come back to her house and wait until 8am when the tire shops would open up. This would put us way behind, but better safe than sorry.

    On the way to the groomers, we kept an eye on the tire gauge and noticed that it was holding air. After dropping off Fancy we decided to go ahead and proceed to the next leg of our trip so we headed to Tehachapi which was 40 miles away. We got there successfully and stopped to buy some snacks and other items we needed at Walmart, then we picked up coffee and cream cheese Danish at Starbucks and decided to go ahead to the next leg of our trip from Tehachapi to Lancaster and see if we could find a tire shop open there. That was another 45 miles. 

    Lancaster is a beautiful desert city with SO MANY STORES!! I told Lisa definitely we needed to make a day trip with our mom and bring her shopping someday. Lisa who dislikes shopping was not as enthused as I was. As it was still early and the tire shops were still closed, we decided to live life on the wild side and head to the next big city, Indio. 

    I lost track now of where we stopped to eat, but it was somewhere along the way and it was around noonish and we stopped at WaBa Grill. We enjoyed a good, light and healthy lunch of Spicy Asian Salad and I had a side of dumplings or as we call them in our family potstickers. Lisa had a side of some kind of taco which we shared.

    As our tire pressure was still doing well, we decided to just head on down the highway and get to Phoenix and worry about getting the tire fixed or replaced there. We made the mistake of taking a phone call from our mom who was checking to see how we were doing and Lisa mentioned the tire and mom immediately became worried and told us we had to stop NOW and get that taken care of. We didn't want her worried so when we arrived in Indio, we started calling some tire shops. Almost all of them told us it would be between a two to four hour wait and we were already behind schedule big time!

    But the spirits of our ancestors were with us and they wanted us to get to Phoenix safely and I called a company by the name of America's Tire Co at 81124 CA-111, Indio CA. I give you the address because Jeff there is the best guy in the world and if you ever need a tire company in Indio, you need to go there! That's not Jeff in the picture, just FYI.

    We called Jeff and explained our situation and he said, if you come in right now I will get you in an out right away, so we did and he did! We were there less than 30 minutes and he didn't charge us anything to patch the tire, Lisa gave him money and told him to buy himself some lunch with it and he was so appreciative. Good people still do exist!    

    We called our mom and let her know that our tire was fixed and that really set her mind at ease. From there we drove straight through to Blythe where we gassed up. The traffic was a bit heavy in places, but not too bad. We made it to Phoenix by 6pm. More than 12 hours for what should have been a 7 hour trip! But we got there safely, that's what's important! 

***See Part two next***