On the way home today, we broke up the driving with a stop at a special location. This spot is called The Naco Formation. This gray outcropping is shale/limestone deposited here about 300 million years ago when the area was under sea. It is a giant bed of fossils of sea life including brachiopods, bryozoans, and crinoids.

It is a bit of a steep slope up to the edge. The rock up there is very delicate and dusty.

The boys could not be stopped!

It is very easy to chip in to the rocks. Almost every chunk had evidence of fossils.

Pretty cool stuff for in a forest surrounded by desert

Brendan kept picking up pieces of rock and holding them up to say, “I found something!!” He was probably right in this case!

The nearby Northern Arizona University has been bringing paleontology students here to collect for more than 30 years. There is that much material here! It is legal to collect from here as well, so we brought home a couple of little pieces.

The hill was so loose and slippery, I told Trevor to sit and crab walk down. He just slid.

More fossils

The temperature was increasing with the afternoon, but the area was so pretty

I told them, “Shovel twin powers, activate!!”

“Charge!”

We are back home and some tired boys are in bed! Just over two weeks to go for Brendan!

We came up to this area to check out a drive-through animal park called “Bearizona”. It had lots of bears, and some bear cubs that you could watch up close as they romped and played -so cute! There were bison and wolves and big horn sheep and the like, and we had lots of great photo ops. I brought different lenses and everything. But….it helps to bring a memory card for the camera. It was still in my card reader from doing the blog post last night. Oops!

I had to use my crappy cell phone camera for the special moment that the boys got to meet an owl up close. We saw a 30min show about owls and hawks.

Bill and I are deliriously tired but the boys are go-go-go. We’ve just spent the day hanging out at the playground, enjoying the weather, and hoping some storms come in this evening!

I can’t let Week 37 get by without a single post!

We have had a tough week. The strong antibiotic that Brendan has been taking to eliminate the MRSA infection has wreaked havoc on his little digestive system. Plus, having a little cold virus at the same time did not help. We had to start him on a special probiotic and we are running his food pump really slow and giving him oxygen.

I won’t lie and say that MRSA doesn’t scare me. We just heard today that Brendan’s night nurse was admitted to the hospital because of this same bug. For her, a small skin bump turned in to a boil, then a deep abscess and it was not fully responding to antibiotics. Now she is spiking high fevers and needs to have the wound addressed surgically and has IV antibiotics running. I am hoping she gets relief soon and can get rid of this infection. We are all diligently doing our nasal swabs and meds for both boys.
I don’t want this to push back his decannulation procedure, but I also don’t want there to be great risk to his health if he still is carrying this.

We went ahead with our weekend plans today to escape to fresher air and cooler temperatures. We are currently at a KOA campground in northern AZ and plan to have some simple adventures with temperatures maxing out in the high 70’s. The campground has some nice amenities, we already took the boys on a hay ride tour of the grounds.

The boys played with “Bubble Ray Guns” while we set up.

Hopefully a little R&R is all we need. Our thoughts are with Mary Alyn, and we hope for a quick recovery.