We just got home from Phoenix Monday night, and the internet has been down all day today. It's alive again, so I'm going to take a minute and post a few pictures. Greg is on his way to St. George tonight, so we had a very easy dinner.
We got to spend time with Jessica, Greg's sister, Joannie, and our niece, Melissa. All of the time spent visiting was awesome! The days were sunny and warm to us--one day it got up to 84 degrees. We would snicker when we would see the AZ folks still wearing jackets and winter scarves around their necks. (Someday I want to research how the human body acclimates to new temperatures. I think in order to deal with the AZ heat in the summer, their threshhold for coldness also rises a bit.)
We rented a very nice house using vrbo.com and had a yard and 3 bedrooms and a kitchen and living room. I have grown to dislike hotels since we discovered vrbo.com!! We had a swimming pool in our back yard, too, but it wasn't heated. One morning while we were out buying groceries, Maggie and Marcie decided to jump in anyway. They said that by the fifth jump, the water started feeling warmer--I think they were numb by then!
There were flowers blooming, a grapefruit tree dropping nummy grapefruits on the lawn for us to eat, and we ate a couple of meals outside.
Coming home was almost depressing--Salt Lake is in an inversion and is shrouded in a brown cloud of smog and cold air. Hopefully, that will get blown away soon. We volunteered to be bumped on our flight home Monday afternoon. I was thinking that they would do what they did last year, they put three of us on a flight one hour later into SLC. Well, they did bump us, but when they put two sets of boarding passes into my hands, I knew we were in for an adventure. Later, we were at the right gate when we were supposed to board a plane for Oakland (yes, in California), they announced that this plane was going to San Diego before it took us to Oakland. Greg says we flew for six hours and didn't get any closer to home. I thought it was an adventure worth taking since they gave us vouchers worth $1200+. We ate dinner in Oakland and then got on the plane to actually get us into SLC at midnight. Next time I volunteer to be bumped, I'll be sure to ask them what the alternate flight is!
Handblown glass art exhibit by Dale Chihuly at the Desert Botanicals gardens near Phoenix, AZ.
Maggie & Marcie soaking up sunshine at Desert Botanicals.
More Chihuley art. This guy also had some pieces in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Olympics. That's when I first learned a bit about his technique.
These glass tubes are very fragile. I'm not sure how they get them to stand up on the ground.
Colleen & Maggie & Marcie outside a little Mexican restaurant that Joannie & Terry took us to. It has a cute name -- Aunt Chilada's (say it fast).
Greg's early morning walk.
