Red Rocks

OK, now where was I... ahyes, relearning the lovely ways of Blogger and that when you add pictures, they all come up at the TOP of the blog, making you drag each one down, through everything you've already posted, until you reach the space where you want to put it. Ooooooover and ooooooover... draaaaagging, because it would just be WAY too logical for pictures to pop up at the bottom of the blog, where the most recent writing is, and where you'd want to put in photos to GO with said writing... but nooooooooooo... *inhaaale* OK, done ranting.

When we last left the lovely ladies of my nuclear family, we were at the end of two days of awe and togetherness. Just the perfect amount of time to love being together without yet reaching the wanting to strangle each other phase. We hopped back in our awesome rental car and started south, this time taking a little detour into Sedona, one of the most beautiful places in the US.

My sister snapped that pic of the sign in a split second, as we were zooming past it, going on the opposite direction. She rocks...

The last time I had been to Sedona, (20 years ago! yikes!) my friends and I had spent the day crawling all over the "vortexes". This is Bell Rock and it was my favorite.

I was SO EXCITED as we got there because I had looked up knitting stores in Sedona and kept seeing the Red Rock Knit Shop so it was a plan - lunch and then to the knitting store. We sat down to eat and realized how famished we were. "Good call!" Blood sugar levels back up, we set out with our trusty map and slowly made our way through town, (like the rest of Arizona, there's road construction eeeeeverywhere.) I joked, as we pulled up, "heh... watch, it'll be closed."

DUDE!

I was sooooooooooooo bummed. So were the kids. They were looking forward to new yarn to roll around in. There was a sign on the door that said they had to close at 3:30 for a family emergency. I sent out good vibes that everyone was ok and looked at the time..... it was 4:00. *sigh*

Luckily, for my mom, there was a quilting store across the street so....

Harumph... but we were glad Mom got her fix!

So, Sedona was a bust for yarn but I silently held out hope for Scottsdale. My cousins were cool... they'd take me to a knitting store.... right? Well, the cousins did turn out to be cool and once we got the Ladies on their way to the airport, (I stayed a little longer,) we went hunting.

First, we went here and the less said about it the better. Just forget you're having to look at it. I'm keeping it small for a reason. Lots of very bright nylon. Moving on.

But then we had the joy of finding Arizona Knitting & Needlepoint and our sanity was saved!

Iiiiiiiiiiiiisn't it preeeeeeeeeeeeeetty?

They had the exact needle I needed to continue Mariah, (my circular wasn't long enough to join the yoke,) and I almost spent a ton on yarn, too, but Snickerdoodle kept me in check. She's so good to have along in an awesome yarn store. Hoofie wanted me to buy it all. Bad Hoofie...

And then, before you knew it, we were at the airport and on our way home!

I already miss my Mom and Sister, although it's really good to be back and back in my family of friends. I forget sometimes how lucky I am to have them, as well as my relatives. I won't forget again for a while...