I don’t know how often the boys went
to Arizona to visit Roland’s sister, Jean before I joined the family. I know Biff had lived with her for a while –
perhaps a couple of years. He had
returned to live with Roland shortly before I met them all.
I remember driving to Tucson with
Roland to pick the boys up three times after summer was over. The first time we had gone all the way to
Tucson to get them. The second time we
met them in Panquitch, Utah, believing it was a half-way point. The third time was further down south at Glen
Canyon Dam.
We toured the facility
before we parted ways and made observations on how much both Tony and Randy had
grown.
Biff asked, “What about me? Haven’t I grown?” His hair was like a small
“Sideshow Bob” afro. He was taller due
to his hair. But once he got it cut,
he’d be back to his same size. He had also asked Roland if I was pregnant. I was, but did not know it at the time.
I have been to Tucson five times to
visit Roland’s family. The first time was
before we were married when we had gone to get the boys so that they could
start school. All three of them would be
starting junior high. I really don’t remember many details except that the boys
wanted me to move faster when I was behind the wheel. But that was on the return. I was pretty wiped out during our first
visit.
The second time was when Jenna was
three. Roland and I took his mother to
Old Tucson shortly after we arrived. We
allowed Jenna to stay home and get to know her cousins. I don’t know how many pictures I took of Old
Tucson. And one who has internet can
look up photos or may be familiar with scenes from many westerns or Little
House on the Prarie. I will not put all
the photos I took in this post, but will create another post of some of the
ones that I took (or were taken of me)
When we came home from Old Tucson,
we found Jenna painting Kristen’s nails.
I think we spent two or three days and Jenna had
a blast getting to know her cousins – so much that she and John decided that
she just stay and live with him. They
decided that if they dressed Jenna in John’s clothes that we would mistake her
for him and wouldn’t take her with us.
Of course we knew it was her. They were both disappointed that they hadn’t
fooled us and so she hid in his room.
She would not budge not even to say good-bye to Roland and me – or his
mom who we were taking with us. I did
finally manage to trick her into either saying good-bye to a beloved stuffed
animal that we had taken with us, or to retrieve her so that it too could live
in Arizona. When she got out to the car,
I seat-belted her in and she cried for a good portion of the ride.
When we stopped across the Utah
border, I asked if she would like for us to buy a cactus for her (as she had been
hinting for one the entire time we were in Arizona). But she saw something else that she wanted
more than the cactus. We ended up buying
a stick horse which she named “Pinky” (the same name as the small bear we had
brought with us) I think she ended up giving that same name to four of her
toys.
Two years later we returned for
Uncle Mike’s funeral. It was in January
and the weather felt nice compared to Salt Lake – though those who lived in
Arizona thought it was cold. It appears
I took a lot of pictures of the family though we were not there for long. We left right after the funeral.
The following year we spent some time with the family at San Xavier. As we walked through there were several statues of different saints. Roland told Jenna that if she was good her Aunt Linda would tell her the names of each of the saints represented at which point Linda slugged Roland and he laughed.
We also went to Old Tucson as a
family. I think there were eight adults
and three children who went. We all ended up riding the carousel and had
stopped off for pizza on the way back to Jean’s house. Jenna and I wanted pineapple on our pizza but
Aunt Linda wouldn’t hear of it. So
Roland purchased two more pizzas so that Jenna and I could have our
pineapple. Guess whose pizzas were first
to be eaten?
The pictures indicate that we had
Tony with us. As I recall, Biff could
not get the time off work and Randy must have been on his mission. I took more pictures of the family and our
activities. I am grateful to have the
photographic memories.
My last visit to Tucson was in
2012. That time we had Randy and Biff
with us. We had gone there for mom’s
birthday (see this post)