Phoenix Fun

We flew directly into Phoenix this year, and ended up only being there a week.  Many friends were busy, or out of town, so we spent most of the week with family, which was great.  Aunt Pearl recently moved from Missouri to Phoenix, so it was fun to see her and Uncle Jeff.  Nate's aunt (Dawna, in the background) and uncle were nice enough to let us invade again this year, and even hosted a family bbq one evening.  Will got to play with their granddaughter, Molly (behind mask number 1).  Molly and her mom went on a coyote hunt to find the villains who ate Aunt Dawna's chickens, but luckily were unsuccessful.  Will waited inside and we made sure to talk about how to scare coyotes away if we ever see them (yell Boo really loud at them).  A hungry bear from a story in school is still plaguing us, so I thought it best to have a plan in place for the coyotes...  Jet lag hit pretty hard and the first few nights were pretty rough for everyone - luckily we were down in the basement, so didn't keep our hosts up too much.

The Gilbert Temple is almost finished - I think, and so we drove by it a few times, and talked about the Moroni statue on top.  Will couldn't figure out how he got up there!  But it was great to let him see an actual temple, instead of the mosques in Dubai that he calls temples.  He really wants to go inside one - hopefully one summer our schedule will coincide with an open house of a new temple. 

We had dinner with friends Nate met in his first teaching job, and Lauren kept both kids really entertained.  Shopping, our favorite Mexican restaurants and a trip to the temple in Mesa rounded out the rest of our week.  I didn't take many pictures - we were too busy, hot, tired etc.  My brother Landon is currently working in Mesa on the light rail project near the Mesa temple, so we got to see him several times too - he got to hang out with my in-laws:) At the end of the week, we headed to Payson, AZ for a reunion with Nate's family at his brother, Rodney's house.