Thanksgiving (and tid-bits of other holidays)

My family went to Arizona this year so that we could all be together with my oldest sister Karin's family for Thanksgiving. For the past few years our family goes to where my sister lives for thanksgiving break, we use to go to South Pasadena and now we go to Arizona. We all look forward to the warm weather vacation and the great family time. We have our Thanksgiving dinner at a hotel buffet, so yummy and no clean up. This year we had our holiday meal at a hilton with the greatest view.  We all stuffed ourselves with all my favorite foods, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, butternut squash soup, lobster bisque, insalate caprese, pesto pasta salads, figs, fruit, and delectable desserts. The buffet was decorated so beautiful with ice and candy sculptures. It was so great to take our time eating and enjoying everyone's company... after, we went and lounged on the chic patio next to a fire overlooking the view.

(the "twins" my hubby and my brother-in-law)

The weather was nice and cool as it had rained pretty heavily the day before, leaving everything fresh with beautiful clouds floating across the sky. We all stayed at our favorite hotel in Scottsdale next to the Borgatta shopping center. After thanksgiving dinner we all took it easy and then split up for the traditional thanksgiving day movie. The kids went to Bolt and the rest of the adults went to Twilight. The next day Karin, Kate, and I braved the crowds for some black friday shopping. Fashion Square was all a bustle with holiday madness, a jazz band welcomed you at the entrance with catchy christmas tunes. I was totally intrigued by the unusual glitz of Electric Couture, which also had its own DJ spinning it up. The other nights we ate at tasty restaurants like Houstans and Cheesecake Factory. 

One night we went to stroll around the Dessert Botanical Garden to view a Chahuly glass sculpture installation there. We were lucky that we went the first night that they had decorated for their annual christmas lumiare lighting. The lighted pathways and twinkle lights in the trees really added to the beauty of the night.

Throughout the night I kept seeing people trying to take pictures of the scenes but were unsatisfied with their results. Most of them were using flash and the teacher/photographer in me was bursting at the seams with the desire to teach them all how to do time exposures to accurately expose their shots, I helped a few but had to bite my tongue a lot. But I found complete joy as I found a willing student in my nephew Andrew. He listened intently as I showed him how to set the camera for longer shutter speeds, set the shutter to go off on a timer (for clearer shots, less motion blur), and then create makeshift tripods using our surroundings. Once I showed him he just went to town  taking the most amazing photographs. I was beaming with pride, I really think he has a great eye for composition and the patience for calculating exposure. We have a photographer in the making. After pushing to get no blur and appropriate lighting we then taught him how to let loose and light paint with the existing light.  He loved the abstract look of the lines of colored light. We then had to combine all that we learned in a shutter drag portrait of us both. Cute Andrew.

(My two students)

Reece and I recognized a lot of the sculptures from when we saw the installations in the New York botanical garden a few years ago. It was interesting to see how differently the pieces were displayed due to the dramatic differences between the topographies of the two gardens. I thought that i would put together a comparison. My favorite were the boats full of glass. In NY they were floating peacefully in lilly ponds, in AZ they looked like they had been beached in dried riverbeds wedged between rocks.  

The next night we had "Second Halloween", another opportunity for the kids to dress up and get candy. The hotel we stay at everybody is in their own little casita, so we all decorated our doors and the kids were able to walk around and trick-or-treat at all the halloween doors. Reece and I were the only adults to pack our costumes but it was fun to be included in all the costume shots. Check out my sister's shots.

The final activity was held at my casita where I served orange hot chocolate and Karin brought a cookie decorating activity.  

It was an incredibly fun weekend. A wonderful respite from my many responsibilities spent basking in the love of my sweet sweet family.