Day: January 25, 2016

Our Trip to Arizona – Day Eight

From Tucson AZ, to Phoenix AZ.

By Simran Jayasinghe

TucsonToPhoenix
Tucson, AZ to Phoenix AZ on the I-10.

We woke up in Tucson and it was a bright sunny day.  Today we were heading to Phoenix, the last stop on our trip to Arizona.  Our mom and dad had booked a suite at the Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix as our tenth birthday present. This Resort is arranged like a mini village with streets and crossroads. The whole Resort is 27 acres.  When we checked in, the front desk gave us a map of the Resort to find our way!  The resort has hotel rooms, suites, as well as Casitas, or small houses.  In the middle of the resort is The River Ranch recreational area.  The River Ranch has a pool with a waterfall, a recreational pool with a volleyball net and a basketball hoop, a lazy river, a waterslide, a tad pool (a tiny pool), mini-golf, tennis courts, and basketball courts.  The Resort also has two restaurants, the Hole-In-The-Wall, and the Rico’s American Grill.  In addition to these two restaurants there is also the Slim Pickens cafe, which sells finger foods like nachos and chicken strips, and the Cactus Rock Creamery which sells ice cream.

We checked in and went to our rooms.  They were big!  Each suite had a living room with a couch with a sofa bed, and a separate bedroom with two queen beds.  Plenty of room for us to stretch out and enjoy the last five days of our trip.  After we moved all of our bags from the van to the suite, and had relaxed a little, we felt like going for a swim.  We had not been swimming during this whole trip, and we really missed swimming!  We had heard that the Tocasierra Spa, Salon, and Fitness Center had a lap pool, and were very excited about swimming there.  Unfortunately, the receptionist at the spa informed us that the lap pool was for adults only.  We were so frustrated, it’s not like we were going to play around, we are USA swimmers after all!  We eventually swam some laps in the recreational pool.

Don't burn my marshmallow!
Don’t burn my marshmallow! (image by the Jayasinghe family).

After the swim, we were hungry, hungry, hungry.  For dinner, we decided to go to the Hole-In-The-Wall Restaurant.  They had barbecue food.  It was delicious but we thought the portions were a little small for the price.  For desert, we got s’mores, and it came with a little pot with a fire in it so that you could toast your own marshmallows on the sticks and make our s’mores right at our table.

Our Trip To Arizona – Day Seven

By Simran Jayasinghe

We woke up in  Tucson. This was our second day in Tucson, and it was Christmas day! We got dressed and headed down for breakfast.  The breakfast at the Country Inn and Suites had scrambled eggs, sausages, french toast, cereal, yogurt, and a few other breakfast items.  The breakfast is complementary which was very nice.

Striking a pose! at the entrance to the Arizona-Sonora Dessert Museum
Striking a pose! (image by the Jayasinghe family).

After breakfast, we went to the Sonora Desert Museum just outside the city of Tucson, next to the Saguaro national forest. The Sonora Desert Museum is a outdoor museum. It was established in 1952 by William H. Carr. The Sonoran Desert Museum is 98 acres.  We went to see a show called “Live and (sort of) on the Loose!” This show talked about Gila monsters and rattlesnakes.  During the show we got to see a live Gila monster and a rattlesnake!  Both of them were trying to get off the table they were on.  I guess that’s where the “(sort of) on the loose” part comes from.  We learned a lot of interesting information about the two animals.

Next we headed off to the Raptor Free Flight show.  On our way there we stopped at, ‘The Cottonwood’, a small snack bar that has hot and cold drinks, and ice cream, where we each got a ice cream cone.  At the Raptor Free Flight show we watched different types of birds fly right above our heads!  We saw two types of birds, Barn Owls, and Harris’s Hawks. The birds are not tethered in any way. They were completely free flying between some trees.  We saw a group of seven Harris’s Hawks and one Barn Owl.  These two types belong to the class of birds known as raptors.

Leaning on the Saguaro cacti!
Leaning on the Saguaro cacti! (image by the Jayasinghe family).

After the Raptor Free Flight Show, we walked on some trails, and dug for some dinosaur bones. At the Sonoran Desert museum we saw a lot of Saguaro Cacti. We also saw some Prickly Pear Cacti. The Desert Museum is almost like a small zoo as well as a park with a lot of trails. They had exhibits showing Mexican Gray wolves, a mountain lion, a black bear, a bobcat, and some other animals. Because it was Christmas day, all the animals on exhibition had gotten Christmas presents in the morning! We saw the empty wrap the animals had torn apart.

We stopped at the gift shop and snack bar, and our grandparent bought us a chocolate croissant and hot chocolate.  After an exciting day at the museum we headed back to the hotel.  We were getting hungry, but could not find a place to eat dinner since it was Christmas day.  A lot of shops were closed! Finally we found Ghandi’s Indian Cuisine, probably the only restaurant open that day, and had scrumptious Indian food.

Click here to learn more about the Sonora desert museum.

 

My Best Birthday

My birthday cake. It was delicious (Image by the Jayasinghe Family).

by Svara Jayasinghe

My best birthday was when I turned five years old. My birthday is on February 13. The day before we got everything so it would be easier, but we didn’t make the food of course. The next day I was thinking I didn’t want get out of bed but then I jumped out of bed because I just remembered that it was my birthday! Then the next thing I knew is that I was pounding my sisters on their back saying:

“Wake up, wake up now! If you don’t, then I will pound you on the back some more.”

Hearing this my sisters rushed out of bed and said together:

“ Oh I forgot, today is your birthday!”

“Yes I know I” I said.

“SO LETS GET GOING!” we said in unison.

So the three of us went into our mother and father’s room and started waking them up. We had to give our parents a lot of encouragement to get up.  I was so filled up with energy I was like an energy rabbit, and almost jumping out of my skin, but luckily I didn’t pop or anything, I just kept going like an energy bunny. Soon after I had brushed my teeth I was jumping around for joy, while the rest of my family got ready and laughed at me. I had to get ready last because my dress was very hard to get on. So when I was getting into my dress I had to stop being the energy bunny otherwise I would rip the dress in two. But even after that I couldn’t be the energy bunny anymore because I had to walk around for a very long time in my dress, and I also had shoes that I had to be careful with. Soon we were downstairs were our grandparents were waiting. They had stayed the night before at our house because of my birthday.  One set of my grandparents came from Cerritos, CA and the other set flew in all the way from New Zealand!

Three princesses!
Three princesses! (Image by the Jayasinghe Family)

My Grandma and my sisters did my hair.  Then my parents, and all my grandparents got the food ready. Soon after that the chairs and the tables were delivered by the rental company, so we had to set all of that up in our backyard.  Then we decorated the front yard. We put up a white arch and under it, on the concrete, we put a long red velvet carpet.  We also put jewels and glitter on the ground. Decorating the front yard took a long time. Soon the cake arrived,  and I longed to look at the cake but I had to wait because a carriage with princesses inside came to our front yard!  The carriage was pulled by two beautiful white horses! This was very exciting.

A horse drawn carriage and a fairy godmother!
A horse drawn carriage and a fairy godmother! (Image by the Jayasinghe Family)

We put the popcorn stand and the cotton candy stands up too.  Soon after that all my friends started showing up to celebrate my birthday. First I went to face painting and I chose a design with a rose and leaves around it. My sister Kiran got the same design I did but my sister Simran chose a different one. After that I just followed Kiran and Simran around and also spent time with some of my friends. Then it was time for the games and  it was fun. There also was a fairy godmother and we went to her in the carriage, and she gave treasures. I went in the carriage first with my sisters so I got to experience it first, it was a nice but short ride. After everybody had gotten gathered together, we sang songs and the princesses read stories. Then it was time to eat and finally I could sit down. After everybody had ate, it was time for the cake! After everybody had sang Happy Birthday my dad cut slices of the cake. When I tasted it, the cake was delicious except there was way to much frosting. My sisters we complaining that it had too much frosting.

“ It isn’t my fault,” I said.

After everybody had eaten the cake it was getting dark, and my party was ending. Everybody left and we finally got to rest.

Hoot – A Book Review

hootBy Simran Jayasinghe

Hoot! Screech! Screech! That is what I think about when I think about the book Hoot. The book Hoot is written by Carl Hiassen. This book is about a boy called Roy Eberhardt and his adventures with his two friends, Mullet Fingers and Beatrice Leep.

It all starts when Roy sees a boy with no shoes, socks, backpack or books running down the sidewalk on a school day.  Roy decides to try and figure out who this mysterious boy is, and why he didn’t have shoes. Roy wants to give the boy some shoes he got as a birthday present with hopes that the boy will not run around barefoot. Roy also wants to know why the boy was running away from the school bus. Roy thinks that surely a normal kid would not run away from a school bus.

The first part of this book is about Roy getting used to living in Florida (Roy recently moved to Florida from Montana), Roy trying to find out who the running boy is, and how Roy gets bullied every day on the way to school. The second part of this book is about Roy, Mullet Fingers, and Beatrice trying to save a group of burrowing owls that have made their homes at a construction site. The construction crew is going to bull doze the owls’ burrows and habitat to build the shop, and Roy and his friends have an adventure trying to stop them.

Do the owls get buried? Find out by reading the book!

I really liked how Roy and his friends were adventurous and courageous.  The book was exciting and I had a great time reading it.