A trip to PHX again!

Even though we were just there two weeks ago, we got the chance to visit AZ again. Gordon's company was sending him for a one day meeting of the Casualty Actuaries of the Desert States. We decided to jump on the chance of someone else footing the gas bill and went to play again.

This time the weather was much more how we remembered Arizona, with beautiful clear skies the whole time.

A cool stop on the way is the continental divide. We, of course, had to take pictures in front of it.


We made it to AZ safe and sound, just in time for some fooling around.

Here's Eve with Tyler. Who she called her husband the whole time. It was cute until they got into an argument, then she'd come to us saying "my husband hit me". Tyler never agreed that he was a husband.





Thursday was Gordon's day of meetings. So while he was away, and Calvin was at work, Julie, the kids and I worked on our super secret project. We also went and visited a friend. This friend, Jessica(9), just broke her leg on Monday while playing on their trampoline. The break was so severe she spent three days in the hospital. She was home, but still on some major pain killers and was biding her time until she could have a surgery to help set the bones back in place. Her parents were going to host a party for us, but couldn't with Jessica being so laid up.

Thursday night was late night. The boys went to the midnight showing of the Hulk Julie and I stayed up watching Christy since I had borrowed that book from Julie and just finished it. I think that book is Julie's favorite. I liked it too. Julie and I were able to go to bed at one thirty, a full hour before the men came in. Or so they reported to me, I didn't wake up at all when they came home.

Friday our families went for a day of fun out at Saguaro lake. Not until after a lazy morning of sleeping in, mind you. We forgot to bring our camera, but it was really fun. The water was warm so it felt really good to swim in, and we did for hours. The beach is very gradual so the little kids could walk around in the water and play pretty far into the lake. We did have a little problem with birds helping themselves to our bread while we were swimming. Luckily another person on the beach stopped them and rescued most of it for us. There was also the great swimming race between Julie and I, which I lost.

On the way home we notice that the fountain was going in Fountain Hills, so we drove over there to check it out. We found the coolest park. We didn't stay, because it was already getting late, but next time we head to AZ we want to plan some time there. There was a water playground, plus the fountain to watch, plus tons of grassy area to play. It just looked like a fabulous park.

After getting all 10 of us through the showers to wash the smell of fish off of us, we went to down town Mesa. There was an ice cream festival that we couldn't miss. They had ice cream eating contests for the kids, live bands, and cheap ice cream for sale. Lily and Megan were in the contest, each contestant was given one cone of ice cream, and they raced to see who could eat it fastest. Neither one won, but they both enjoyed the ice cream anyways! A funny thing was the hippy band that was playing there. We had fun dancing to there music, Eve and Abigail were totally going all out in their dancing, but the band didn't seem to be having fun at all. Not a single one of them smiled, none of them seemed to enjoy making music. We gave them our change anyways, and hope that cheers them up.

Saturday we went with our other friends, Paul and Molly, and their two children, Houghton and Mary, to the Zoo.


To be honest, we didn't see very many animals. We spent most of our time playing in the splash playground. Luckily Paul and Molly have a membership and were able to get us all in with that, so it wasn't a waste of our admission price. And we did have a lot of fun.



The fountains had Abigail worried, we still go her wet several times to keep her cool


Gordon's Eye view of Mary


The train ride, so we could see at least of couple animals before leaving.




Saturday night was a party we threw to see more of our friends. Our friends, Ben and Sara, hosted it at their Condo's pool. We had a great turnout with lots of yummy food (it was potluck).

Here are the kids with the pinata. It wasn't as dark as it looked, the flash just made it that way.


Then the mad grab!


Sunday (Father's Day) we went to the earliest meeting available. It wasn't our old ward, but we felt we couldn't postpone our leaving that long. After church the kids presented their dads with our "super secret project" I surprised it was kept a secret so well. I guess we kept the kids busy enough they forgot about it!




After that we had to head home. It was bittersweet, we really have some good friends there in AZ.