Vacation!

It wasn't our vacation but it almost seemed like it was. Mindy and Lance took a few days off of work and came down for some sun and relaxation. Instead of the snow, they got sun the entire weekend. Luckily we also had cooler temps, it was only into the 80's. While they were here we had a lot of fun. We ate some good food, mainly mormon muffins (which we finally finished a week later). We also did some shopping and tried to go to the farm. But it was closed. We also got to go to the temple. Here are the temple grounds. Don't they look great right now?

Here is Jeff and me. Mindy and Lance got pictures but they are on their camera. Sorry.Here are some pictures from the Spring Training baseball game we went to. The Brewer's vs. the A's. We were going to go the the Mariner's vs. Angels but the game was sold out. We could have bought lawn tickets for $15 (the sell retail for $7) but decided we would rather go to another game.
Here is the sausage race. Entertaining to say the least.

The sausages walking right past our seats. Mindy, Lance and Jeff lucked out getting seats in the shade. It was a little cooler.
Here we are after the game. Right next to the field.
Jeff and me at the game. You can see we got some pretty good seats. We lucked out and got 4 tickets for $6. We bought one off of some guy and the were able to get three tickets free. These tickets were for seats. Not the lawn like we were expecting.
Some famous people. I would ask Jeff, but he is studying.
We also went to Tempe Towne Lake. It was a fun little walk. Here Mindy and Lance are posing in front of the Office Buildings. The lakes behind me...the picture taker.
And that was that.

A/C

We are glad we have air conditioning. We were not glad that we had to turn it on so early. We finally gave in last Friday. The temperature hit 90 degrees several days in a row, and started to make our apartment unbearable. When it  was 87 inside at 8:30 pm, and no hope of cooling off, we gave in and turned on the a/c. We only left it on for a few minutes, because it started to feel amazingly cooler. That was at 82 degrees. We have appreciated the slightly cooler temps this week. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Every year I have made a different meal for jeff that ends up entirely green. Some years there is a little more dye used than other years. This was a year for a little more die. Mostly because I wanted breadfast burritos. They were on spinach tortillas, with cheese dyed green and some eggs that were a little bluish but still green. When I was making the eggs I thought all the way back to elementary school where I learned if you mix yellow with blue it makes green. So I decided to add blue to the eggs to get them green. Didn't work. It just turned them blue. Then I added some green and a little yellow. But they still turned a little blue. I also colored the orange juice. It was funny because Jeff hadn't picked up on the green theme yet (I know crazy?), so when he looked at the juice he said "what is this crap?" I had to tell him that it was all green before he clued in. It was pretty funny. And here was the mess afterwords. If you look closely, the only die you can see is the blue one! 

Baseball

The last day of Jeff's spring break, we decided to go out and watch a baseball game. There are a lot of teams in the area who are playing all of their spring training games. The weather was great 85 degrees, we got cheap tickets, and we had fun. Tickets for the lawn are $7, and I was able to grab a free ticket from someone who was giving it away. So even though my ticket was for a seat, I sat on the grass with Jeff. Luckily we had on the sun screen because it sure was sunny. We saw the LA Angels beat the Chicago Cubs 6-4. 

Look closely and you can see Alfonso Soriano, star player for the Cubs.
And once again Jeff. Our game was cheap. But we were amazed at how much others payed on food and alcohol. The people in front of us spent over $100 on beer. I know because I counted the containers. And the guy next to us spent at least $50 on food...just for himself. 
We were grateful for our friends Devin and Marianne who invited us over for dinner that night. They made a great meal, which we really enjoyed. And we also enjoyed some fun games.  It was great Spring Break. Thats for sure.

Another hike

We went on one last hike. This hike looped around but we cheated and cut through because we were freezing. Too bad once we cut through we could see the end of the loop. We really didn't save any time or distance. But still fun.

Here is Jeff when we got back. If you look closely you should see that it was snowing. It snowed one other night, but that 1/4 inch melted really quick. We enjoyed the cooler weather, sleeping under a blanket, and drinking lots of hot chocolate. 

This was right outside our room the morning we left. The most snow we've seen in a while. Good thing we were leaving!

Feeding the Ducks

We decided to feed the ducks, so we went to Safeway and bought some duck bread. It was fun, a little chilly, but we think that with anything under 85 degrees. 

Jeff had a lot of fun feeding the ducks, until the big ones got a little close (read within 5 feet of him). He used the excuse of some agressive duck a neighbor had when he was little. 

Jeff had a lot of fun feeding the ducks,

Indian Ruins

We drove out to some Indian ruins close to Whiteriver, Az. It was a scenic drive. Here are some mountains we passed on the way out there.

And the city of Whiteriver.
And here are the ruins. It was a little windy but a fun place to explore.

Here's Jeff standing in front of some of them.

And the only other people up there took this picture for us. Notice the clouds behind us. They were sure getting dark. It actually started raining right after we left. 
Just another view. 
And Jeff...again. Here you can clearly see the two floors.
And me. Showing the ruins from a distance. 
We would have explored a little more, but we didn't exactly have the permit you were supposed to pick up in a the town 15 (give or take) miles away.  It was also at a danger of flash floods and there was a storm coming in. 

About 5 miles from the place we stayed were the Reservations. It was funny because it looked like the middle of nowhere, but right passed the border of the reservation was the casino. You went around the corner in the mountains and there was a huge flashing sign and a huge building. Nothing else around at all. Too bad we didn't win anything. Actually we didn't even try. We have so little money that we can't take the chance of losing it. We wandered around for maybe 5 minutes before leaving and we smelled like smoke the rest of the night. It was awful.

We went miniature golfing on a nice, sunny, warm day. If you look closely I won both games. The first one was 51-57 and the second game was 46-43. Par was 45. I got 3 hole in ones. Jeff got one. On the second game. 

One of the reasons Jeff lost. His ball stopped in the middle of that hollow rock!
Me with my first hole in one.
Another reason Jeff lost. He is just too strong. His ball is way off course. 
Showing off my great form.
And Jeff's great form.
Jeff is much better at most anything that requires a ball. Miniature golf is the only thing I can beat him in. Which is why I have to take advantage and brag the few times I beat him.

Snowflake Temple

Pinetop is close to Snowflake. So we decided to go to the Snowflake Temple while out there. It is one of the smaller temples but was very pretty. We also loved the location. It is literally on top of the mountain. You have to drive up a huge, steep road to get there. There are a few houses but really not too much around it. 

Here is the front of the Temple.

And us in front of the fountain.

And a view from the side. If you look closely you can see that it says erected 2002.
This is the back of the temple. Once again with Jeff. I think there were some awesome pictures places here. And remember, its winter here, snow had just melted.
Another view of the side...and Jeff. 
We then went and got ice cream at McDonald's and explored Snowflake a bit more. 

Spring Break cont.

We got to Pinetop on Friday and were all prepared to search for a church to attend on Sunday. We ended up not looking to far because there was one a mile down the road from where we stayed. The dilemma was then "do we attend the 9 o'clock of 11 o'clock ward?"

We went out searching on Monday for some volcanic fields. We found the area, but not the exact place that the guy had told us. Here you can see the road we were driving on to get there and the rock on the left was volcanic.

Here is some more rock with Jeff standing in front of it.
And just a little view from not very far off the road. We were freezing so decided to skip the hike and just go back to the resort and play around. 
Did I mention this place had two t.v.'s. One in the living room and one in the bedroom. That means I got to watch a lot of Food Network and TLC, while Jeff watched basketball. On Wednesday we watched the Syracuse vs. UCONN game. I watched quite a bit of basketball with Jeff but I agreed to stay up with Jeff and watch the end of this game. Unfortunately it went into six overtimes. Too bad my team lost. 

Daylight Savings

Funny thing. We were watching a little bit of CNN, trying to catch up on current events. When we saw the time on the bottom flash through. It said MT and then the time...which was an hour later then we were. We were confused as to why they had put the wrong time up. Turns out we didn't realize Daylight Savings time had ended. We completely missed the time change. It wasn't until a few days later when my dad was telling me a story about his spinning instructor almost missing class that we realized the rest of the nation had changed time. 

Spring Break

For Jeff's spring break we were lucky enough to get out of Mesa and head up to Pinetop, Az.  We had lots of fun. The place we stayed had swimming, ping pong, pool, racquetball courts, basketball (inside), horse shoes, bocce ball, miniature golf and bbq's. All available without a charge. Needless to say we did all of it. We also did a bit of hiking. This was a hike around the Woodland Lake. It was nice to get out in the mountains and hike without dieing of heat. This hike was great because it circled around the lake with a few trails that went off from there.