Thanksgiving Family

For Thanksgiving, three members of my family came out. My cousin, Jared, my aunt, Susie, and my grandma all flew out Tuesday afternoon and we picked them up at the Mesa airport. On Wednesday, we went to the Sonoran Desert Museum and spent much of the day there. Then, the next day we took them down on the U of A campus so they could see where I want to go to college and we also showed them my high school. We went to lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Pancho's, which recently switched owners and now is called La Botana. They have amazing grilled shrimp tacos. Another restaurant that we love is called HiFylutin, which is a Texan/cowboy food based restaurant. My favorite food there is a grilled sandwich with tomatoes, lettuce, feta cheese, and avocado. We also took them to the de Grazia gallery and the San Javier mission. The de Grazia gallery was built by an artist in the 20's-50's who used all recycled materials to create his own art. Here are some pictures from the week:

Doggie Play Date

Last weekend, our neighbors Barbie and John invited us to a get-together at their house. They live on the next street over and their dog, Butzie, is good friends with Izzy. So we walked over and several friends of theirs were also there with their dogs. There was Connie and Piper, who is Butzie's half-brother and who is a good three times as big as her. Butzie is a a little black and white dog (on the far left in the picture) and Piper is the one on the right, in the arms of the blond woman in the purple shirt. There was another little dog the same kind as Butzie, several little white dogs, a white and creme colored dog, Chino, who ran over the coverings on the pool (Barbie says that he likes to "walk on water"). Then there was Izzy, the oldest of the bunch by a good four years. We had a lot of fun getting to know everyone including Frank who used to work for the Globe and now helps to put together something called the Tucson Book Fair in March. It features all sorts of famous authors and poets. They've even had Barbara Kingsolver a few times from when she used to live in the area. We also got to see John's private office, where he teaches computer classes, usually dealing with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and other Adobe programs. We're so excited to know more people than just the kids I know through swim team and their families.

2009 State Meet Champions!

WE WON! This weekend we had the 2009 High School State Swim Meet and Catalina WON! For both the boys' and girls' teams! Its the tenth year in a row that the boys have won. The girls won eight years in a row, then we got second place last year. Now, we've won again. Our boys team actually won by over 200 points and the 400 freestyle relay was a second off the State Record. A few of our girls won their events, such as Brianna and Karima, who are both sprinters. Only a few of our kids didn't make it to the finals (the top 16 for each event) and two of those kids were a girl, Sarah, who is on our DD (Dominating Distance Team) and one of my closest friends, Nick. However, Sarah dropped a lot of time in her 500 freestyle and Nick now has a 24.4 in his 50 free. Thankfully, they both have next year to make it to finals since he is a junior and she is a freshman.

I got 14th for the 500 free and 14th I think for the 100 backstroke. After the meet was over, we followed our usual custom for the state meet and got into a huddle. The girls form a ring in the center with the guys around us. We all throw our arms over each others shoulders and rock back and forth, waiting for the announcer to tell us the results. It was girls' results first and when we found out that we won for our division, we were so excited. RJ, our coach, was so happy because the Arizona Daily Star (the state newspaper) said that our girls' team wouldn't even win at our Regional Meet. Well, we won Regionals and we also won at State! What also was awesome was that our rival, Sabino Canyon, got third in the division. CDO (Canyon del Oro), the next nearest high school to us, got second, which we were all surprised by because Sabino is the only team who got close to beating us in the dual meets.

So it was just an amazing weekend. We stayed at a Hyatt for two nights (Thursday and Friday), dressed up for Holloween night while we ate a pasta dinner, and I got to hang out with a bunch of my friends. I also got to meet new friends. Because of how our team is set up, the kids who practice with the high school team don't often interact with the kids who practice with their club team. This means that the high school kids and the club teams don't know each other very well. So this meet gave me a chance to meet a lot more of the swimmers and became even closer friend with the ones I already knew.