Hot Weekend

Traci and I spent Friday evening together at the movies. It was a nice break for us to be together without the children. It was a great way to start the end of a long week.
The weekend was packed with excitement, record high temperatures, a birthday party, a hike in the desert and a health seminar. Saturday we split the family nearly in half, Savannah and Traci went to a Phoenix area hospital for a seminar on health while Shane, Sophia and I went to the Arizona mineral museum for the annual rock show, the first rock show either one of them has been to.
Sophie tried her hand at making jewelry at the mineral show. Shane spent his time learning about different minerals, sorting them and placing name placards near the apporpriate mineral. We panned for gold and inspected the exhibits. The museum gave examples of different minerals and ways they are mined and used in our daily lives.
We left the museum and went to Allison's birthday party. Allison is one of Sophie's friends from school. Shane was invited as well and he knew several of the other siblings as most of the guests were students from the school where Shane and Sophie attend. Shane disappeared into the fray while Sophie went inside to play in the toy room, an entire room full of toys. The temperature Saturday climbed to 102 degrees fahrenheit setting a record for October in Phoenix. Shane swam the entire afternoon. Sophie played inside. The party was fun. Each child had to make their own serving of ice cream using zip lock bags, ice cream mix, ice and salt, a little shaking and the ice cream was ready. Sophie found an ant who decided to bite her toe and she cried the pain away for a few minutes. After running around all day, ice cream, juice and cake the only difficulty I had at the party was severing our kids from the fun at the end of the day. Neither Shane nor Sophie wanted to leave.
We settled back home while Savannah and Traci updated us on their plans. Traci went out with Lisa and Erin for the evening while Savannah accepted an invitation to sleep over at her friend's home. Savannah and her friend had attended the seminar all day and wanted to spend the rest of the night together.
I put the kids to bed and watched a movie. Traci came home and we went to sleep. An hour into sleep my phone rang with Savannah on the other end requesting a ride back home, she wasn't feeling well. I picked her up and returned to sleep. An hour passed and Sophie woke up crying from the pain of her ant bite. I tended to her pain and she and I returned to sleep.
Earlier in the month I had made plans with a friend from work to go on a hike near the superstition mountains. He, his wife and I were going to hike the Angel basin trail to see some Indian ruins. I woke up early to get ready for the hike. My phone rang. It was my hiking partner. His wife had been up late and wanted to sleep in for the day and did not want to hike, he wasn't able to go. I was up early so I went out to a trail to hike. I couldn't make it back to the Angel Basin trail, the forest road was full of large rocks with deep ruts cut out in places, so I went out on the Picket Post trail. It was a good hike with some interesting views of mountains and buttes. I hiked for about four hours then returned home.
The rest of the day we lounged around the house. It was nice to relax and enjoy the air conditioning. Savannah recovered from her illness and we ended the day in the neighborhod park playing basketball.