Hello from the valley of the sun

I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, right now visiting my dad and stepmom with P and McKenna, but I wanted to stop in really quick and tell everyone thank you for the condolences about Gabby.

This weekend has been okay, but it's easy to not be sad when you are so distracted with so many wonderful things to do and see in Phoenix, not to mention McKenna, my allergy attack, and the fact that my body is finally realizing just how exhausted it is.

However, the hard times are ahead. Right now, it still doesn't seem real that Gabby is gone. It just feels like she is at home waiting for us to get back from the airport. I think once we get home and pick up the dogs from the boarder, it will be a little better than it was the first night. The first night, we had taken Katie and Simon to the boarder's, and it was just so quiet at home with just us and the other two cats left in the house since McKenna was asleep.

I know she's in a better place and I did the right thing. I'm just going to miss her a lot.

Phoenix has been a lot of fun, aside from my horrible allergy attack and McKenna's ear infection which manifested itself Saturday afternoon. We went to Tortilla Flat, which is an old stagecoach town in the Superstition Mountains, and that was fun. We stopped at this old gold mining town on the way back and I bought a small little "goldglobe" for my desk. It's like a snowglobe, except with flakes of gold and not snow. Pretty neat. Yesterday we went to Arizona Mills and then to PF Chang's in Tempe for lunch. Saturday afternoon, Dad took us to our old neighborhood and I showed P my old elementary school, home and junior high (now a middle school) in Tempe. Kind of strange, but neat.

Anyway, we're flying out today, so I'm off to start packing up.