Arizona birthday celebration

We were invited to join a group of friends in Scottsdale Arizona to celebrate Butch Parker's 50th birthday. You never have to twist our arms to go to Arizona and then add a bunch of really great friends to the mix and you can bet we were in! Mike and Krista Lindhorst and Karen and JR Zundel joined us and Butch and Heidi Parker for the extended weekend celebration. We rented a big beautiful home in Scottsdale together. We didn't spend much time there but when we did we had a huge patio, three fire pits and a pool in the backyard and a pool table inside.

Most the guys flew down a day ahead of us to get in a round of golf. Heidi Parker and I teach seminary so we stayed a day longer at home to teach that morning before leaving. We had an Uber pick us up right from the church that morning as soon as seminary was over and we were on our way to meet up with our husbands.

We flew Southwest Airlines with no assigned seats and Heidi Parker was able to board a little ahead of me. So found an isle seat and saved the window for me. The flight was not very full so we figured by taking the isle and window we would have the row to ourselves. Wrong. Before the flight was even half full, a 20-something girl asks to sit in our middle seat! We told her there should be plenty of open seats that she wouldn't need to sit in a middle seat. She didn't care. She said she didn't like the back of the plane and wanted to sit in a row with thin women. While we appreciated the "thin" compliment, it was not worth the drama she caused on that flight...for Heidi P. anyway. Both Heidi and I showed up to travel that day in white pants. Heidi had gotten some chocolate on her pants before takeoff so she had already been to the airplane restroom once trying to get the chocolate out of her pants (new pants!). Then in the middle of our flight, the girl in the middle seat accidentally spilled her Bloody Mary all over herself and Heidi P. So Heidi made an additional trip to the back of the plane for the restroom but wasn't able to do much about that stain, let alone the smell! Luckily our rental had a washer/dryer and she was able to get the pants good as new again!

Our first stop was to The Gladly to try a famous salad Heidi P. said all the food bloggers are raving about. It was worth all the hype! It even has freeze-dried corn in it! JR and Karen Zundel joined us for this lunch and then JR took off to meet up with the guys for golf while we girls went to get checked in to the house.

Our first daily group activity was a Sonoran Desert Electric Bike Tour. This was our first time on an electric bike and hopefully not our last. You pedal the entire time as you would a regular bike but the bike has different settings such as eco, tour, and our favorite...turbo! Each gear would give you extra power as you pedaled and when you are in turbo and pedal hard you would take off like a rocket! We had two tour guides that educated us on the different types of cacti and how scary some of them can be!

The big joke turned out to be Scott getting his "couple" pictures. Scott was constantly asking our guides to take pictures of us. But as soon as they took our picture, Scott requested that we do couples pictures. After the third time, everyone started teasing him about only wanting pictures of the two of us, like he wanted to pretend that we were on this trip alone. Poor guy, he said he was just thinking of me and knew I would want pictures. Which I do, but I am also ok if there are other people in them haha!

Our big outing for our second day was attending a Spring Training game. Nobody seemed to care about which team we went to watch except for us and the Zundels, who are Chicago fans. We of course are Royals fans but we were fine going to see anything, but you can bet we were going to be sporting our Royals Jerseys!

Sunday we headed to church and then everyone started taking off to the airport to head home. Scott and I didn't fly out until that evening so had time to wear our Royals jerseys to a Royals game!

Then we toured Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West home and laboratory. This was Wright's winter home and the home of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the School of Architecture at Taliesin. It was built by Wright and his apprentices. 

It was pretty impressive to see how Wright incorporates his surroundings to his building and that even until today it is still used as a school. 

And then there was nothing left to do but fly back home to the kids!