I drove all night on Friday night to hang out with my sister for the first of many holidays in the upcoming weeks. It took me all night because I left later to avoid traffic (and catch up on stuff). I ended up sleeping on the road twice, but get a load of this... there are more than 120 miles of open desert inbetween LA and PHX, four rest stops and a smattering of towns. The rest stops are the only oasis for bathrooms and breaks in the middle of the wasteland... and three out of the four of them were CLOSED! Can I dare say it... WTF?
I ended up sleeping outside of a gas station at the General Paton museum, and at the only open rest stop. It is really darn cold in the middle of the desert at night, and I was sorely missing my zero degree sleeping bag. The floor of my car also does wonders for sound sleep. I finally drove past (yes, as in past) my sister's house at 7am. I turned around, drove back, and called her to wake her up.
Her day off and she got to sleep in an hour later than normal, whoot. First order of business- showing me my new toy:
Okay, okay, It's Jeff's bike. But would they really have gotten a third bike in the exact model I wanted just for the two of them to ride? Yea, they won't ever talk me out of calling it my bike. It doesn't matter to me where it lives, it is still mine. Whoot!!!! Biking with the sibs, totally stoked!
After the shock wore off (who am I kidding, it won't wear off for months)- I decided I was starving and wanted another nap. We cooked breakfast and skipped the nap for Starbucks and running around. We got drinks for the dinner party and found some fun finds (a $20 skirt at White House | Black market- score!).
We got deep tissue massages and BOTH managed to fall asleep on the table. Amazing. I don't know how you can sleep through a deep tissue massage, but we did. It was awesome.
After a relaxing session, we ran home to change and cook dinner. Yumm-o, Chris got a chicken and made her famous mac and cheese (I tried to make it for lunch today, and it SOOOOOO wasn't the same.) I made some eyeball tomato soup and salad. After some fun decorating, we were ready to drink, be merry, and jump up a hundred times to feed trick-or-treaters.
At 6:30 we turned off the pourch lights, prayed no one egged the house, and ran off to the... AZ state f-a-i-r!
We of course needed to hit the LARGEST ferris wheel first (I say this becaise there were three ferris wheels; I am not sure why, but there you go). This is a view from the top:
We beelined for the funnel cake stand outside of the ferris wheel, because really, what is a fair without the funnel cake?
My main goal of the evening was to eat as many fried foods as I could find. I am from Texas and I have never had a deep fried Twinkie (this still applies today). But at least now I have had a deep fried oreo, snickers bar, and cheesecake.
This is me trying out the snickers (feel sympathy for my arteries yet?)
And these are the inards of the fried grossness:
Oreos
Snickers
Cheesecake
It was all so gross that five of us passed on finishing all the fried -ness. We opted to play games instead. Darts (see the donkey in my arms above? Jeff got that for Chris for me), BB guns (no one won), ring toss (does anyone ever win?), water squirt races (strategy allows someone in your group to always win), and free throw basketball...
Look, ma! All those years of b-ball practice paid off!!! I probably haven't made a free throw shot in a decade, and on my second try, I got it in. Now I have an uber basketball with paw prints on it. (Woton doesn't like it so much, check out upcoming posts).
Some other weird gun/ball game:
And the MERRY-go-ROUND!
What is a fair without a John Deer and a Turkey Leg?
