Frazzle dazzle

My son wrote to ask if he could get my pancake recipe. I cherish requests like that, which give me hope that I am still a somewhat necessary dimension to a life that is in every other way productive and fulfilling without me.

So I dropped everything and sent off an email with my recipe — a much-modified rendition of one I originally received from my stepfather, Paul Chaffee. My sons grew up on “Chaffee pancakes.” When they were little, I stirred chocolate chips into the batter to mimic pancakes they once enjoyed during a family trip to San Diego. As they got older — and more athletic — I started experimenting with healthier additions. During high school football season, I made these hearty pancakes each Friday morning — a complex-carbohydrate load to provide energy for the physical demands ahead.

Now both of my sons are grown, college-educated and completely self-supporting. They live and work in Washington, D.C., where they share a car and an apartment on Capitol Hill. My husband and I are eagerly anticipating our Thanksgiving visit with them next week.

But the pancake recipe is bothering me right now. When I talked to Andy the day after I sent it, I asked how the pancakes turned out. “They were good!” he said. “But I used milk instead of water.”

“Water?” I asked, incredulous. Somehow in my distracted, sleep-deprived, multi-tasking frame of mind, I’d typed “water” instead of “milk” when I emailed the recipe. Mental slips like that are frightening to me, especially when I remember my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s disease and her long, slow mental decline.

“No big deal,” Andy reassured. “I knew what you meant.”

It’s comforting to know that people have your back when you’re frazzled and your eyeballs feel like sandpaper from too many hours on the computer. It’s also comforting to know when there’s an end in sight to a long and daunting project.

That’s where I am today. For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to help Calendar & Directories Editor Mala Blomquist with data entry and fact-checking for our annual Schools, etc. book. This year’s effort includes two new directories — preschools and postsecondary schools — in addition to the tens of thousands of words already committed to describing private and charter schools in Maricopa County, public school districts, Arizona boarding schools, online schools, special needs schools, tutoring resources and more.

If my eyes are shot, I can only imagine how Mala’s feel. But we’ve been doing this book for nine years and we know the routine. Just when we’re the most exhausted and overwhelmed by this project, we reach a tipping point: There is more work done than there is remaining to be done. And that’s when a second wind — and renewed excitement — kicks in.

It usually begins with the moment of meltdown. Mala’s came Sunday night, when she called me to say she was afraid we’d never make the deadline. Somehow, just articulating that fear, putting it out in the open, galvanized both of us. We created a game plan, pulled in some support from other staff members and by Monday evening we were in a completely different place.

I am always in awe of Mala’s resolve throughout this arduous annual project. She is enormously proud of this, her “baby,” and spends many sleepless nights pondering whether she’s covered absolutely every base in her quest to provide local families with a comprehensive guide to planning their children’s education.

So when I’m feeling the most frazzled, I’m also a bit dazzled — awed by Mala’s resolve and especially her ability to work through exhaustion with humor and grace. Most people facing this kind of pressure would be (understandably!) grumpy. Mala remains serene, patient and focused. It makes me want to be the same.

I just won’t be making any pancakes until this is over.

The word of the day is relief

I know he was trying to distract me and, hopefully, make me laugh. But all I could muster was a scowl when my husband compared the crowded waiting room to “a bunch of people waiting to get their oil changed.”

It did feel a bit like an assembly line. Each of the dozen or so people in the tiny, cramped lobby had been told to arrive at 9am to fill out paperwork. Then we sat (in my case, for 75 minutes) waiting for our names to be called. I read a few magazines but it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate with a dehydration headache from orders to “take nothing by mouth” since midnight and the hunger pangs of 40-plus hours without food.

Dan initially said he’d wait with me but after about five minutes he started twitching. “I think I will go get that cup of coffee,” he said, referring to the receptionist’s suggestion as we checked in. I found out he hadn’t made coffee for himself that morning because he didn’t want the welcome aroma of our morning ritual to make me even more miserable. (I was so lost in my own efforts at distraction I hadn’t noticed.) He returned at 10:15, just as my name was called.

I was handed a plastic bag that contained a clean hospital gown. The intake nurse had to repeat the instructions twice because of my lightheadedness: “Leave shoes and socks on; take everything else off and leave the opening in the back.”

Shoes on? I was wearing Sketchers with dorky, ankle-length gray socks. Could I look any more ridiculous?

As she was hooking up my IV, the nurse asked me if I was feeling any pain related to the procedure I was about to undergo.

“Only my pride,” I said, with a half-hearted smile. She laughed. “Well, you’re in good company,” she said. “Everyone here is in the same boat, so you have nothing to worry about.”

In the end, what I found after I woke up from the anesthesia was that I’d once again dodged a bullet. My second colonoscopy in eight years showed no polyps, no signs of precancerous lesions, no reasons to worry. No minefields in the family history — at least not yet.

On Sunday, when I was talking on the phone with one of my sons, I explained why I was putting myself through this expensive, uncomfortable, preventive-health screening. I told him I didn’t expect the doctors to find anything but I didn’t want to end up like my dad, who found out only weeks before he died that he had end-stage colon cancer that had already spread to his liver.

My brothers and I didn’t find out about it until after my dad died. He didn’t tell us and he died alone, en route by ambulance to the hospital from his room at a boarding house in southern Florida, where he’d moved after my parents’ divorce.

Some people would say I’m giving “too much information” to share the gory details of a colonoscopy with my sons and (by virtue of this blog) anyone else who cares to pay attention. I say “too much information” is better than what I got from my dad, which was nothing — and which left me with a lifetime of wondering why he never felt he could trust me enough to share the difficult details of his life.

Prep day

Yesterday was my father’s birthday. I celebrated by making a trip to Walgreen’s to purchase a 238-gram bottle of Miralax, two Dulcolax tablets and a 64-ounce bottle of Gatorade. Today I’m home trying to get all that into my stomach so I can wait, uncomfortably, for the inevitable result.

My father didn’t make it to this birthday—or any other birthday in the last 18 years. He died of colon cancer when I was still raising babies and just starting a magazine. He was 67.

That age doesn’t feel so far away anymore. Which is why I’m putting myself through today’s preparation for tomorrow’s colonoscopy.

It’s my second one and it’s three years overdue. I had my first at age 45 because of my “family history,” as the doctor so subtly put it.

This isn’t an easy thing to schedule. There is, of course, the avoidance-of-unpleasant-tasks aspect of it. There is the where-do-I-find-two-whole-days-of-time aspect of it. And there is, of course, the what-if-they-find-something-scary aspect of it.

But that’s why you do it, of course, because if they do find something they can typically take care of it before it becomes a problem.

And I have a lot more living to do than I can pack into the 14 more years my dad had available to him when he was my age.

SEEDS of ideas

When I walked into the classroom I could hardly breathe. “How are you doing?” asked Melissa Beran Samuelson, program director for SEEDS (Supporting Entrepreneurs and Enterprise Development Seminars), which launched this year at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale.

“I feel like my stomach is in my throat,” I said.

She smiled. “You have nothing to worry about,” she said. “You are going to love Hanan.”

I glanced nervously around the room but saw only the other local business women who, like me, had volunteered three full days of time to provide intensive, one-on-one mentoring to some of the best, brightest and ambitious business women from the kingdom of Jordan.

“They’re running about 15 minutes behind,” Melissa explained. “We’ve found that to be the case pretty much most of the time.”

Different culture. Different pace of life. Different expectations. Lots of differences. Would we find enough commonalities to sustain a conversation for three full days?

Suddenly a beautiful, very young-looking woman was standing to my right. Everything I’d learned at orientation about how to greet her immediately flew out of my head. (A hand shake and a kiss on both cheeks is a common greeting between Jordanian women; marhaba means “hello” in Arabic and “Isme (my name is) Karen” might have won me some brownie points.)

But Hanan couldn’t have been more gracious — or more confident. She stuck out her right hand, shook mine firmly and the natural curiosity we each had about the other sustained the ensuring (and intense) eight hours of discussion.

The women participating in this program all came with ideas of either launching a business or growing an existing one. Hanan is part of the first group. The mother of two grown children and a 12-year-old daughter, she is extremely well-educated and an accomplished professional who has worked in several fields over the course of her career (many of those years working as a personal assistant to Queen Noor). She currently is working as executive assistant to the CEO of Al-Ghad, an independent newspaper in Aman. (The only other newspaper is government-run.)

As someone who has always been surrounded by children (as a babysitter in a large extended family, a university student who minored in education and a mother herself for 26 years), she came into this program with a seed of an idea — that she wanted to run a business that somehow benefitted children, mothers and families.

Her first thought was that she could start a publication, which is why Thunderbird assigned her to me. Then she visited a friend in Jordan who was running a successful garden that provided healthful fruits, vegetables and herbs to local restaurants, so she started thinking about ways she might incorporate that idea into a business of her own that supported good nutrition for families. But the practicalities of that–water and land shortages in particular — had her rethinking that idea.

Then she came to Arizona and was introducted to Mary G. Warren, Ph.D., new parent resource coordinator for Prevent Child Abuse Arizona. Mary told Hanan about Educare, a non-profit venture that establishes centers where a network of programs under one roof provide state-of-the-art support to families based on the latest, science-based brain research for children from infancy through age 5. (Arizona will open its first Educare facility in late 2010.)

This concept completely captivated Hanan. She comes from a culture where children are typically kept at home with siblings and relatives until they start kindergarten. (Hanan’s mother took care of her children until they entered school, while Hanan worked.) The idea of preschool, even professional childcare, is only slowly catching on among middle-class families that can’t afford staffs of nannies and caretakers found among the weathier members of society. When we first sat down to talk, Hanan immediately started asking how she could build an Educare center in Jordan.

I told her that I could certainly put her in touch with people involved in the Educare effort. I told her about Jill Stamm, Ph.D.’s New Directions Institute, which also promotes the importance of birth-to-5 learning. I told her about all sorts of other efforts in Arizona and around the U.S. that support the value of age-appropriate instruction during the critical early childhood years.

It was all very exciting and wonderful until we started talking about the practicalities of bringing such a program to Jordan. The money that would be involved, the timeline, the risk of giving up her job to start something that would require a tremendous educational and public relations effort to win acceptance in her community.

And then there was this: She kept telling me how much she loves her current job; how much she admires and enjoys working with her boss; how happy she is where she is.

I am a big believer in baby steps. So I suggested a different plan — something smaller that she could do on her own time while still keeping her job. Something that would allow her to promote these exciting concepts she’s learned about early childhood education, and perhaps build a platform for future networking with programs like Educare.

This morning she will present her plan to a panel of judges who will critique both her idea and her presentation of it.

As we worked together yesterday to prepare her presentation, we looked at a worksheet that had been provided to help us plan. One of the questions said, “What is the goal of your presentation?”

I looked at Hanan. “I know what your goal is,” I said. “You want to finish your presentation and have everyone on the panel nodding their heads and saying, ‘That’s do-able. That’s a good idea.’”

SEEDS of doubt

I’ve been up since 3:52am — anxious, worried, excited…wondering how the day will go and hoping I don’t fail to live up to expectations. Soon I will get in my car and drive to 59th Avenue and Greenway, where I will meet a woman who has made a much longer trip to meet me.

A few weeks ago, I was recruited to be part of the SEEDS mentoring program at Thunderbird School of Global Management. The acronym stands for “Supporting Entrepreneurs and Enterprise Development Seminars.” The program, which Thunderbird provides in collaboration with the non-profit Jordanian Business Development Center, brings current and aspiring women business owners from Jordan to the West Valley campus for two intensive weeks of classes, field trips, seminars, workshops and one-on-one mentoring with local women business owners.

I was asked to participate because one of the women had expressed an interest in starting a family publication and that’s something I know a little bit about. Now, I understand, she is considering medicinal herb gardening instead. That’s something I know exactly nothing about. But the confident, enthusiastic, well-traveled and unbelievably smart program director, Melissa Beran Samuelson, has promised to have my back. She says that members of the Thunderbird faculty and contacts they have in the community will provide answers to questions that I cannot. My role is to listen to my mentee’s business plan, ask questions, make suggestions and generally support her efforts to do something that is truly extraordinary within her society.

We’ve gotten used to women business owners in this country. I never felt, in the 20 years I’ve run my business, that my company was any less respected or appreciated because it is women-run. It’s a tougher road in Jordan, I’m told, where ancient stereotypes about the roles of women run deep despite this country’s relatively progressive stance.

I can’t wait to meet Hanan. At the same time, I’m scared to death — worried that I won’t know what to say, nervous that I’ll accidentally make a cultural faux pas, anxious about whether I can truly help this woman who, I hope, by Friday afternoon, when my official obligation ends, will be a lifelong friend.

The company you keep

I had no idea one of my co-workers was a murderer. And a bit of a slut. And British. But I saw it for myself when I grabbed a girlfriend and headed to Theatre Artists Studio to catch one of the remaining performances of the Rupert Holmes play, “Accomplice.” (It runs through Sunday.)

Debra Rich Gettleman who writes for Raising Arizona Kids and blogs for raisingarizonakids.com, stars in the play, which is about a bored and sexually frustrated British actress who figures out a creative way to bump off her husband so she can get it on with his business partner, her lover.

At least that’s who she is in the first scene of the play. As the story progresses, you find out who she — and fellow actors Dominik Rebilas, Alan Austin, Heidi Haggerty (and even director Tom Noga, who finds himself on stage at one point) — really are. And who you are, too, for that matter.

Can’t say much more about the plot without giving away the surprise ending and I was sworn to secrecy. What I can say is that I was enormously proud of Debra, who has been a regular contributor to our magazine for as long as she’s been a mom. She is slender, sexy and drop-dead gorgeous from her first scene — when she enters the stage in a long-sleeved purple dress with what my friend referred to as “poodle” trim above the hem — and in two slinky, skin-tight numbers she wore later in the play. Her comedic timing was spot-on and her upper-crust British accent was impeccable.

Debra comes from Chicago, where she performed in theatrical productions like “Emily,” “The Wizards of Quiz” and “The Baby Dance.” She has performed with The Michigan Ensemble Theatre and appeared in “The Heidi Chronicles” at the Tracy Roberts Theater in Los Angeles.

Locally, and after she became mom to Levi (9) and Eli (5), she co-authored and produced “Pearls, Motherhood Unstrung” (sponsored by Raising Arizona Kids a few years back). She also wrote and starred in “The Happiest Place on Earth,” a hilarious and heart-stopping mother/daughter story that I saw with some other members of the staff when it ran during a season at the Herberger Lunchtime Theatre.

Debra has whole-heartedly embraced the “home” she has found at Theatre Artists Studio, which is a member organization of actors, directors, playwrights, producers and designers founded to provide a place for theater artists to work at their craft in an atmosphere of mutual growth and collaboration. The non-profit studio has a small, black-box-type stage and workshopping venue near Paradise Valley Mall. It’s small, but bursting with imagination, energy, make-do-with-nothing resourcefulness and purity of creative purpose.

The studio is staging a a special family performance for the holidays. “Father Christmas and the Snow Queen,” performed in the British Panto tradition, will star another member of the Gettleman household: Levi, who apparently inherited his mom’s love of performance art. For ticket information, visit theatreartistsstudio.org.

Road trip: the ending

In the end, what I have is a collection of receipts. I didn’t get all the pictures I wanted. I didn’t write down all the stories. But the receipts jar memories and the memories are what matter.

I’m back from my adventure—a 2,500-mile cross-country road trip with my son David. We made it, with our Penske truck, our Camry in tow and relatively few glitches. There were a lot of exhausting, bone-stiffening, mind-numbingly monotonous moments along the way. But there were also moments of pure magic.

Shortly before I left on my four-day road trip to Washington, D.C., Raising Arizona Kids was named “Best Resource for Phoenix Parents” by the Phoenix New Times. In the spirit of that award—the affirmation from which couldn’t have come at a better time for me and my recession-weary staff—I’ve created my own list of “bests” from an extraordinary road trip with my 22-year-old son.

BEST STARBUCKS – Tucson, Ariz. We visited plenty of them all across the country but the one that was hands-down most charming we discovered during our very first stop in Tucson, where we ate dinner the night we left and visited with Alexis Danneman, a friend of David’s who is attending law school at the University of Arizona. The Starbucks on campus (at University & Euclid) is housed in a refurbished historic home reminiscent of the Willo District in central Phoenix. It has lots of cozy nooks and crannies, a fireplace, low ceilings and lots of class.

BEST LUNCH – Pecos, Tex. There weren’t many choices in this desolate area when our stomachs started rumbling. So when we found a Subway sandwich shop wedged into a corner of a gas station mini-mart, we grabbed the opportunity. The vegetables in the bins were vile—almost colorless—so our sandwiches weren’t quite what we were used to. And there was no place to sit. So we took our lunch and headed back to the truck. Then David remembered that inside the truck we had two lawn chairs. He quickly unlatched the door, grabbed the chairs and set them up in the shade of a nearby tree. I snapped a picture on my iPhone and sent to my husband, who replied (via BlackBerry), “The lunchtime rush in Pecos.”

BEST BREAKFAST – Our second day was the longest. In all, we traveled nearly 600 miles in just under 12 hours. But there was a real treat waiting at the end of the line. David had a chance to meet up with his best-friend-since-fifth-grade J.T. Holmes, who is finishing an engineering degree at Baylor University in Waco, Tex. We grabbed a quick dinner at an on-campus pub and the next morning met for breakfast at J.T.’s favorite place: Café Cappuccino. Best pancakes ever!

BEST DINNER – Memphis, Tenn. We were pretty fried by the time we got to Memphis. I was at the wheel as I nervously drove down narrow city streets to our destination, it suddenly dawned on us that parking our two-piece rig was going to be a challenge. Sure enough, the hotel’s parking garage couldn’t accommodate our 11-foot, 6-inch-high truck. Eventually we found a different hotel with a lot for oversize vehicles. It backed up to a huge, loud event featuring hundreds of motorcyclists and thumping music that continued until well past 10pm. But the evening was a huge hit; David asked the security guard for a restaurant recommendation and he directed us to Rendezvous, a barbeque, beans and slaw kind of joint that gets food on the table in no time flat. Famished, we devoured two plates of barbequed chicken and a full plate of ribs to boot. Best barbeque sauce ever.

BEST GAS PRICES — $2.15/gallon in Benton, Ark.

BEST UNEXPECTED SURPRISE – Tennessee is an absolutely beautiful state. I don’t know why I didn’t know this. It’s not just scenic—it’s pristine.

BEST MOMENT OF COMPLETELY EMBARRASSING MY SON – Leaving Greenville, Tenn., where we’d stopped the night before to visit Lyall Harrison, a friend of David’s since high school. (Lyall is there finishing college on a football scholarship at Tusculum College). Though breakfast was free with our $69 hotel room, the white biscuits, white gravy, stale Cherrios and empty coffee carafe sent us scrambling to McDonald’s. When I asked for a skim milk latte, the cashier asked if I wanted “fl-EYE-ver” added. Horrified and obviously misunderstanding her thick accent, I repeated, “fiber?” She looked at me like I was crazy and I thought David was going to leave me at the curb.

BEST EXAMPLE OF POOR DRIVING – David saw a semi-truck driver reading a book he had perched on the steering wheel of his rig in central Virginia. Unbelievable.

BEST REUNION – When my older son Andy joined us at our last hotel, in Fairfax, Va., and I knew our journey was over. The next day, the guys moved into the apartment they now share on Capitol Hill. I can’t wait to visit them at Thanksgiving.

Road trip: the beginning

The last time I drove across country, I was 26. My husband and I were newlyweds and we had just quit our jobs as reporters for the Arizona Republic. We were headed for New York to visit Dan’s family before we moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Dan would start law school. It was an exciting time of adventure and new beginnings.

On Monday afternoon, I began this daunting journey once again—this time, with my 22-year-old son David, who is moving to Washington, D.C. The tone of this adventure is complicated by opposing emotions: exciting beginnings for him and bittersweet endings for me.

We spent most of the day packing Dave’s belongings into the back of a 16-foot Penske truck—the smallest size the rental company would allow us to drive because we are also towing the beat-up 1997 Toyota Camry that has safely carried both of my sons through nine years of their respective educations. It’s really a great car—but for the fact that you can’t reach the gas pedal if you’re shorter than 5’8” because the electronic seat adjustment no longer works (I have to use a thick pillow when I drive it), the moon roof won’t open (another electrical issue) and it has a bit of a cosmetic problem (that’s a longer story).

At 5 p.m., David announced that he was ready to go. As someone who routinely awakens at 4:30 a.m. and crashes on the couch not long after dinner, I knew I had to drive the first shift. So in the middle of rush hour traffic, I learned how to drive a 16-foot truck that was only one-quarter full but pulling a 1,000-pound vehicle stuffed with pillows, clothing and a Southwestern-theme painting David’s artist grandfather donated for his new apartment.

I was exhausted but exhilarated. While David gave me tips on driving our behemoth (he’d learned earlier in the day, when he picked it up across town), I couldn’t stop smiling at my good fortune. First, that he was letting me come with him. Second, that his schedule coincided with the small block of time I get each month before we go into production for another magazine and I can’t contemplate an extended absence. And third, that we were starting a collaborative adventure on a magnitude few mothers and their grown sons are allowed. My son is leaving the nest—this time for good—and I am helping him do it.

When my older son Andy left home with all of his belongings two years ago, he was traveling with a girlfriend. So I helped him pack but said goodbye in my driveway. I thought I was handling it pretty well, until I got in my car to go to work. Clearly I was more distraught than I realized. As I backed out of the garage, I crashed into the side of the Camry, which was parked at an angle on our driveway.

And so the explanation for the “cosmetic problem,” which we opted not to repair on a then 10-year-old car. The back left bumper of my Toyota Highlander still carries its share of the scars.

Time for chores

I grew up with a working mom, so teamwork on the household chores was a necessity and a regularly scheduled routine. My brothers and I used to grumble profusely on Saturday mornings, when we wanted to watch cartoons on TV but my mom announced instead that it was “time for chores!” We’d grudgingly picked up dust rags and sponges and get to work.

When I think back on it, though, it wasn’t the work itself that I disliked–it was having to give up the cartoons. I secretly enjoyed seeing our furniture shine when a few swipes with a cloth and some Lemon Pledge removed a thin layer of accumulated dust. I took pride in the sense of accomplishment when I scrubbed copper-bottom pans until they gleamed.

Hanging clothes on the line in Boulder, Colo. at age 8.

And I loved working side by side with my mom, especially when she’d give me what I considered a real grown-up task like hanging the laundry on the line, where it dried very quickly thanks to high-altitude dry air and bountiful sunshine in our Boulder, Colo. backyard. She showed me how to fold the fresh-smelling shirts, socks and towels and talked about helping her dad with tasks at his dry cleaning shop in western Pennsylvania when she was growing up. I still hear her voice in my head when I’m rolling the socks I now pull out of a dryer.

Brittney Walker has written a great piece “In Praise of Chores” for our September magazine. She interviewed a number of local moms and local child-development experts about the many values that accrue to each member of the family when children are expected to participate in the business of running a household.

We’d love to hear how you encourage your children to be part of the home team.

Mooo!

It may be heading for 112 degrees today but in magazine land we’ve moved on to October. This morning, we had a very early photo shoot for our October cover. Art Director Michelle-Renee Adams, photographer Daniel Friedman and I left my house at 5:30am to drive to our location: Shamrock Farms in Stanfield, Ariz., southeast of Maricopa.

We were met by Molly Costa from Shamrock, who’d arranged for us to use the facility, and who proved her 110% commitment to her job by showing up with us in the wee hours (six months pregnant, no less). The Shapiro family of Scottsdale was close behind. Daniel I. Shapiro, M.D. and his wife Lisa won the cover opportunity more than a year ago (thanks for your patience!) at a fundraiser for HomeBase Youth Services, an Arizona-based, non-profit organization founded in 1991 to address the growing needs of at-risk and homeless youth age 21 and younger. Our models were their two children, Sophia and Dalton. Sophia was totally into it but Dalton needed a bit more persuasion — and a few reassuring hugs from mom.

This is the fun part of my job…watching creative people work their magic. Dan and Michelle, both former teachers, know all the right tricks when it comes to keeping kids engaged. Dan shares information, respecting the kids’ intelligence and taking advantage of their natural curiosity. At one point, he asked both kids to look at the preview shot so he could explain why shadows were showing up on their faces and tell them how to avoid it. A bit later, when Dalton was growing weary of standing still and smiling on command, Michelle asked him to close his eyes. “Open them on the count of three!” she said. He did–with a big grin.

Both kids were troopers in their long-sleeved shirts (remember: October cover) and they never complained about the heat, the farm, uh, scents…or the flies, which Molly says are only a problem in the hot summer months.

Shamrock Farms is a real working dairy farm (10,000 cows!) and reopens for school tours and public enjoyment on Oct. 6. Molly told us that tours even stop by the nursery and that sometimes kids are lucky enough to see a calf being born. We want to go back for that.

I’m learning my way around slide.com, so I apologize for the technical awkwardness (and these photos are mine, not Dan’s, which we’ll save for the magazine…) but I wanted to share my mini-documentary of the making of a cover shoot for Raising Arizona Kids.