The Royal Palms

For Labor Day, my parents and I went to Phoenix for the weekend. We stayed at the Royal Palms Resort, which was this really big summer vacation home back in the 30's and 40's for this family from New York. In the 60's it was turned into a hotel and now its one of the nicest resorts in Phoenix. We also met up with our friends, Alex and Xiomara for dinner and desert, and did some shopping. Here are some of the pictures that I took of the resort.

This is the entrance to the main courtyard:

This is one of the Spanish-inspired towers in the main building:This is a small tile I found in one of the walls of the main courtyard. It depicts Don Quixote of La Mancha in his fight against the windmill "monsters".
This is us standing in front of the fountain in the main courtyard:
There were these little outdoor seating areas all over the place, tucked into shady corners, or near the many fountains. We found this one near the restaurant. It's actually build into the ground with a working fireplace and comfy pillows to sit on.

Doggie Play

This morning, we went to something called "Dog Play" which is where we, our neighbors, and a few friends get together with our dogs to hang out and talk. We do it once a month and this week, we went to Tito's. Tito is a Havanese that lives in a neighborhood called La Paloma, a gated community near my school. His parents hosted our little 'get together' since it was his birthday.

Last month, we were at Butzie's (a dog who lives two blocks away from us). She and Izzy are very good friends. Her parents, Barbie and John, are friends of the family and are fun to be around. One of the other human companions took a bunch of pictures and set them on a SmileBox slideshow. The pictures are absolutly adorable! All of the dogs are Butzie (a curly-haired Havanese), Tito (a straight-haired Havanese), Chico (a gray "old man" as we like to call him. He really has a face like an old man and he's very calm), Chili (a curly haired white dog), Chloe (a miniature female who is the smallest of the group,) Piper (Butzie's giant half-brother), and Oliver (a gray and white mutt that is the newest addtion to the group).

THIS is the link to the pictures from last month.

We will hopefully have more pictures later this week from the latest playdate.

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.