A Tucson Birthday Weekend!

We had family visitors last weekend... Not directly related to either me nor Melinda, but mother Betty and sister Susan to my first wife Vicki!  So that makes her a Mother-in-law to me, and Melinda has been quick to recognize her as family too.  And while we don't see them very often, we speak to them often, so we keep track of their lives.  We all met in Hawaii a year ago, but it has been over 5 years since they've been in Tucson.  And while they came to Tucson to help "take care" of Melinda between her chemo cycles, she was feeling fine, so had a busy long weekend of tourist activities and meeting friends of Vicki's that were all glad to see Betty and Susan too.

To make it even more special, Betty was celebrating her 88th birthday with us!  Betty is an inspiration to us all - not only was she mistaken at least a couple times for Susan's sister (!), but she still works every day at the PE department at the University of South Carolina!   Old pictures of her have been posted on this blog before, including the picture at right - Betty with Susan's 3 older sisters at the beach in South Carolina.  I figure that since Vicki is the toddler in the background, it was taken some 60 years ago, and Susan was still a gleam in Betty and Mackie's eyes!

We hit the road running during the 3 days they were here, with major trips to local mountain destinations - up to Mount Lemmon (where they had never been) for lunch at "Ski Valley" and shopping at Summerhaven.  The pictures here were taken at "Geology Vista" on the way back down the mountain road.  We celebrated her birthday at a local steak house, and celebrated it again the next night at a favorite Mexican restaurant.  We were going to do it a third time up on Kitt Peak at the astronomy club's "Star-B-Que", but I forgot the candles to put on the brownies that were my pot-luck contribution...  Everyone had a great time and we already talked about a trip to South Carolina when the State Museum's new observatory opens next Spring.  We can't wait to see them again!