After showing them around we took them to Ted's Hot Dogs in Tempe, AZ for a little lunch before taking them on a tour of Arizona State University campus. Scott and I tried to convince Kiranne (Rachie's best friend) that she should transfer to AZ for school. I think we did a pretty good job. :)
We stopped by the bookstore on campus and purchased ASU gear to show our Sun Devil Pride. Below everyone posed, flashing their "pitchfork" sign
We told Camille to sit under this bush with tiny yellow flowers as we shook the pedals into her hair.
Following our tour of ASU we drove out to Gilbert to visit our extended family and have dinner. While we were there, they pulled out their desert tortoises that had awoken from their winter hibernation just the day before. This provided hours of laughs and entertainment.
We fed them strawberries. This one was especially funny with red stained all over his mouth.
That evening we had bbq sandwiches and salad for dinner and played games around the table. Following dinner, my sisters came to our apartment for a sleep-over out on our balcony. We stayed up until nearly 3:00 am laughing and talking.
The next morning we woke up early and prepared to attend our ward's church meeting scheduled for 12:30 pm. We were able to introduce our family to some of our friends in the ward, and it was the first time I've been able to sit with all of my sisters in Relief Society. We took up a whole row. Sunday night we went back to my Aunt Elaine's house for dinner. She made a yummy lemon chicken which she grilled out in the backyard.
On Monday we woke up early to meet my family at Trader Joe's. There aren't any TJ's in Utah, so they had a good time looking around, and purchasing fun foods for their ride home.
We decided to visit the Mesa LDS Temple since Kiranne had never seen it before. It was a beautiful day, and it was fun to see workers preparing for the upcoming annual Easter pageant.
Following our walk around the temple grounds we stopped at our favorite Greek restaurant My Big Fat Greek Express and had lunch. Everyone was pleasantly pleased with their food. I don't think we had any left-overs.
After lunch we headed to Tempe Town Lake to rent a boat that we could drive around the lake. Our boat was able to accommodate eight passengers so we all hopped on for a relaxing ride. My Dad was the driver, and my mother snuggled up close to him for much of the trip.
Behind Rachel is the view of ASU Sun Devil Stadium from the lake.
When we were finished on the lake we decided to come back to the apartment and lounge by the pool for a few hours. -(Author change: This is Scott now, Katie just handed this over to me for some reason, I guess I should finish this up.) So let's see, oh the pool. Well the pool was freezing cold, like unbelievably cold. I can only attribute this to the fact that it's only gotten warm here recently and it's an unheated pool. Kiranne was the only one who was brave enough to get in all the way, the rest of us just put our feet in and whined about that. We just sort of relaxed for awhile at our place until it was time for dinner.
Now that I'm on the subject I should interject that I had been planning our eating agenda here with surgical precision. Food is something i don't mess around with and there are several places around here that we just had to visit. I had planned on pizza at Spinato's Monday night but it turns out it's closed that night so we drove to El Rico's instead. El Rico's is a long way from our place, about 45 minute drive or so, but totally worth it. The owner is a friend of mine who used to feed us for free when I was a missionary here. He said they still feed about 14 missionaries a day for free there. It was great to see him and we all had excellent Mexican food with guacamole so good it would make a grown man cry. After that we headed off to Bahama Buck's for a nice dessert.
Tuesday we met up with the family again and headed to Scottsdale to visit Katie's uncle Scott's art gallery. It was incredible to see all the amazing pieces of art and gawk at the price tags. One was going to go for between 3 and 5 million dollars. Cool huh? If I was rich I would totally get some cool art. Afterward we walked around old Scottsdale and shopped and I got a delicious prickly pear soda float with homemade vanilla cream soda. Then we wandered off to the Chicago Cubs' spring training stadium to watch them play the Rockies. I hadn't been to a spring training game before, I didn't realize how crowded it would be but we got seats and had a great time.
Here are the girls at the game. We were not in the shade but it wasn't too hot, even though we did all get burned.
Here's my big head watching the game.
After the game we went to the Arizona Mill's Mall to just let people wander around and shop at all the fun stores they have. Then we got ready to go eat. We called Katie's Aunt Elaine, Uncle Scott, cousin Mallory, and Joel's cousin Marylyn and her husband Roy (who live down here as well) and all went to Spinato's for some excellent pizza. We had a huge group but it was a blast and we all ate a ton, which is what you do.
And that was pretty much it. We went back to Elaine's so the Fred's could pack up. They needed to leave at 5 or so in the morning on Wednesday to get back to Roy in time to get Camille to a choir concert thing for school. It was really really great to see everyone again and sad to see them go. Now it's back to regular life...
By the way, since I'm sure you're all saying to yourselves "well that's all well and good, except I wish that I could see what a tortoise eating a strawberry actually looks like and I'm sure Katie and Scott didn't have the presence of mind to take a video of one." You've got some nerve...and besides, you're wrong. Check this out.
I eat strawberries in much the same fashion.
