A Visit from the Squires

Mom and dad came to visit for 5 days last week. We really enjoyed having them come! It was great to have some extra time to spend with mom and dad, especially in the nice 70 degree weather. Here are some of the fun things we did.

Thursday I took mom and dad on a hike in Sabino Canyon on the Rattlesnake Trail.


We didn't see any rattlesnakes on our hike, but dad did find a geocache without using a GPS.


A picture of us on the last part of our hike.


Friday Dad and Charles played 18 holes of golf and loved every minute of it.

Mom and I went to the Botanical Gardens and stopped in at the butterfly exhibit for a few minutes. These beautiful blue butterflies were amazing and also our favorite at the exhibit.


This is the other side of the blue butterfly wings.


Mom had this hitchhiker butterfly on her for awhile.


We spent Friday evening at Kitt Peak National Observatory for the Nightly Observing Program. This program is amazing! First we ate dinner while watching a video about the history of astronomy. Then we went outside and watched the sun set over the desert.


After the sun went down, we saw the earth's shadow and learned some other interesting things about seasons and our planet.



When it was dark enough, we looked at stars through binoculars, then divided into groups to see amazing things through the telescopes. Here are all the "Splendors of the Universe" that we saw through the telescope: Castor (a multiple star in the constellation Gemini), M46 (an open star cluster containing over 500 stars, lies at a distance of 5,400 lightyears), M42 (The Great Orion Nebula), M51 (The Whirlpool Galaxy, lies at a distance of 38 million lightyears), NGC 2438 (a glowing bubble of gas that was cast off by a single star that has died) and Saturn. It was a very fun and inspiring evening at Kitt Peak!

Saturday morning we went to the Gordon Hirabayashi Honor Camp site on Mt. Lemmon. This was one of the Japanese American internment camps during World War II. All of the buildings have been removed, but some foundations and stairs remain.



This is the only picture of all of us, taken at the Honor Camp.


Saturday afternoon dad and Charles played another 18 holes of golf and loved every minute of it. Mom and I saw the movie "Tangled". It was a very fun weekend. Thanks for coming to visit us, mom and dad!