Last week I took sort of a last minute trip to visit my family in Tucson. Originally my sister and her family were planning coming to visit us in Baltimore since they haven’t been out in four years, but she could never find decent plane tickets home during my niece’s fall break week so that didn’t work out. Since she didn’t wind up using her copious airline miles on those plane tickets she asked if I was interested in flying out to Arizona to visit them instead while my uncle and aunt were down visiting from Spokane for the Washington State v. Arizona football game. I hadn’t seen them since my uncle officiated my wedding seven years ago so I rearranged things so I could make it out there.

Unlike when I’m out there during holidays or the summer, now that both my nieces are in school I didn’t actually get to see a whole lot of them or my sister who was at work. I flew out Wednesday night and pretty much they were all in bed by the time my parents dropped me off at their house. Thursday I did get to hang out with my 3 year old niece since she only goes to preschool Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That night my sister had a bunch of friends over for dinner to celebrate my dad’s birthday which had been on Wednesday.

Friday I mostly hung out and played cards with my parents and aunt and uncle during the day. Then Friday night the adults all went out for dinner in downtown Tucson at some place called Proper Restaurant. It was a rather uneven meal. I don’t think anyone plans to go back there.

Saturday my parents and my sister’s family meet at Starbucks every Saturday morning for breakfast, so we did that. My dad requested I bake him a cheesecake so after breakfast I tackled that with some help from my 3 year old niece. I also bought her some cookies to frost since I knew she wasn’t going to understand the concept of a cheesecake. After that we met up with my sister and my 7 year old niece for lunch and a trip to the mall. It was at that point that my 3 year old niece started to lose it a little insisting that she was too tired to walk and being really whiny. We just figured she was being a typical three year old. Then my sister and I both felt really bad when we got home and figured out that she had a 103 degree fever. I could tell she was really not feeling well when we decorated her cookies after that and she didn’t even want to eat any of the frosting. Poor kid.

Sunday the 7 year old and I wound up going out for breakfast by ourselves since the 3 year old was still sick and we didn’t have time to coordinate meeting up with my parents since we needed to get out of the house before the 3 year old saw us and got mad she couldn’t go. She was seeming a lot more peppy when I left for the airport, but I’m not sure if that was just the Tylenol making her feel better.

It was a nice visit with my family even if it was short. I look forward to seeing them again at Christmas. Hopefully by some miracle no one will be sick, since it always seems like someone is sick when I visit.