After Jude’s MRI and appointment with his oncologist, the 5 of us flew to Arizona for Christmas. My mom and dad, brother and his fiancée, sister and brother-in-law and 2 nephews met us there. We kept busy. On the first day we went hiking in the desert. Even though the hike was a wide, flat trail, all 5 boys got injured. My 3 boys got bloody, skinned-up knees and one of my nephews got a skinned up knee and the other got poked in the hand by a cactus. The boys had a lot of fun exploring the desert and looking for scorpions under all the big rocks and looking for dinosaur fossils. We also took a trip to Biosphere 2, a self-sustaining domed environment where some people lived for a couple years and that is now used for super-controlled science experiments. The boys were pretty chatty so I missed most of the tour, but it was something to see. My favorite day trip was the one where we saw Montezuma Castle (a Hopi Indian dwelling in a mountain) and Out of Africa (a private zoo that doesn’t like to be called a zoo). We saw a Tiger splash show. After the show, they announced that for $5 anyone could feed a tiger. Jude was sitting next to me in the front row and he yelled out, “Oh yeah, that’s nothing! I’ve had 2 brain tumors!†As you can imagine, most of the people scattered after the show (including everyone in our group), but Jude and I stayed behind and he was first in line to feed the Tiger. While waiting there, Jude recited all the dangerous things he had done in his life: Sat on an alligator before he was 4 (the day before he turned 4), held a snake, rode a camel… . Jude did great feeding the Tiger and I hope the pictures I took turned out. (He fed the tiger through a fence and with tongs, but that makes the story less exciting so I suppose we’ll leave those little details out in the future.) We also went on a safari tour on a modified school bus. Zebras (including a 6 day old one) and giraffes swarmed the bus and we fed them well. Asher was totally enthralled in my mom’s arms and fed the giraffe and made cute animal noises to the animals. Jude and his cousin were sitting with me and were doing a good job elbowing others to get a good look at the animals. We spent some time in my parents’ heated pool and at some nearby parks. And, of course, there was Christmas. We were all spoiled as usual with gifts, but Jude was quite embarrassing and ungrateful by sobbing after opening a few presents because he thought that was all he was going to get and he was tired of seeing everyone else get presents. He ended up getting a stupid Spider Man web shooter that I found for my mom to get him and that he wanted so badly. That shut him right up and it was all fun from then on.