The Great Dignity Loss of Christmas '08

Chihuly: The nature of Glass

On Friday morning, we all went to the Arizona Desert Botanical Gardens to see an incredible exhibit of Chihuly glass.

At the entrance to the gardens:


Paul told me it took 5 fork lifts to get all the glass into its exhibits.




Believe it or not, there are some amazing desert plants to look at to; not just glass artwork:












And here are my favorites:

TANKS and the 'Giving feast

On Thursday, we had lots of plans! We were to meet everyone at the aquarium at the ungodly early hour of... 10 am. We still did not all make it. But Chris and I knew it would be a little hectic organizing 40 people for a tour, so we decided that I would just call Chris and Jeff when everyone got there, so they could do work and not wait around while people were still arriving. I think that worked out great. And of course, there were three puppies with us and some horses across the street to keep us all occupied!

Chris and Jeff led us all on a huge tour of the three buildings that will make up the new World Wildlife Aquarium. They talked about all the fish in the exhibits (about 40-50% are in place) and all the planned additions along with some amazingly interesting information about all of it. Paul and I had visited in July and the aquarium had come a long way since then!

Here are some photos:

Waiting for all the clans to arrive:






Lining up to go into the Aquarium


Next on the day's agenda was to turn everyone lose in the zoo! Chris and Jeff had plenty of work to complete before they got to come home for Thanksgiving dinner. Although I would have loved to stay and say hi to the tigers and the giraffes, I went with my folks and Paul back to the house to get ready. (You can see my pictures from my zoo visit this summer here.)

Chris had ordered lots of Boston Market food (we tried to guesstimate how much the sides would feed and order based on her Thanksgiving last year, but we accidentally ordered enough food for 50-75 nineteen year old army boys, rather than the 40 regular bloks we had, oh well! Lots of leftovers- which I am currently eating as I type this).



some more photos can be found at the Evite invitation page.