We had more friends in town this weekend. It's become a regular trip the last few years for Lane, Tawni, Julie & Gary to all be out here in March to catch a few spring training baseball games, and a welcome sun break from the cold & rain of dear old Oregon & Washington. Luckily Tawni has a house out here too, because our compact & bijou condo definitely wouldn't hold them all!

Saturday we hooked up with Lane & Tawni for a quick hike around Dreamy Draw, where Tawni kicked all our butts by running up the mountain faster then a bionic billy goat. Afterwards we took Lane to the Wildflower Bread Company for lunch, it's rapidly becoming one of our favorite places for cheap but healthy & tasty food. I think Lane would have enjoyed it more if he hadn't recently and repeatedly been spoilt by trips to the excellent Herb Box.

Our friend Lee came to visit us this weekend, which was perfect timing as Sally has just started her summer vacation. We did some of the normal stuff like mooching around in Scottsdale, an early morning hike around Papago Park (which turned out to be really good as all the animals were out and about, and all the flowers are blooming right now - seeing flowers on a cactus is still trippy to me!), and heading up to the top of South Mountain to catch a sunset. We also ate some great food...

Hey--so those of you who don't know my dad is going through some state of the art protron treatment at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. He is doing really well (he drove 6 hours to get here) and it is the place to be in the US. 

My old friend Amanda came to visit this weekend - yay! She was supposed to have her husband Jim with her, but unfortunately earlier in the week Jim had decided that running a 5k marathon, followed by playing a game of soccer, would be a good idea. His legs didn't agree however, and he managed to completely rip the tendons off the bone on one of them - ouch! First Sally's brother Ronnie on crutches, now Jim? What do you Portlanders get up to all winter?

After the hike, Tawni took us all to a great burger joint that we'd never seen before - Greasewood Flat. It's up in North Scottsdale, and while it sounds like the name of an old blues singer, it's actually housed in a 120 year old bunkhouse & stagecoach stop that was on the route between Fort McDowell and Phoenix - now that's some history!

My Big Brother and Sis-n-Law are in town. It is brother number one, that means the oldest of the three older brothers. Ron and Heather flew in Friday afternoon and are here until Tuesday morning. They are staying at a really nice place called Sanctuary. It has all kinds of stuff to do, like golf, tennis and hiking. Too bad Ron pulled a muscle in his calf and now has to take it easy. I feel so bad for him beacuse the place they are staying is really hilly.

We met up with them Saturday night and went to dinner. We picked them up to bring them over to see our place. They gave us a really nice picture of Portland to remember home by. Then we went to Stax for food. Ross and I love that place, it's our new place to take everyone.

It was great to see them. I enjoyed just hanging out talking about the old neighborhood and the family. They looked great and it sounds like all is good at their house. I can't believe how big their kids are getting. I look forward to hanging out with them some more at the end of the month when we are in Portland.

I (Sally) had my two week fall break not too long ago. During the forst week Ross and I went to Tucson (he wrote about that). The second week my friend Sarah came for a visit from New York. Her boss told her she had to go on vacation. When Sarah called to see when I had my break and if I was going to be around she told me "I swear I almost killed 15 people TODAY!".

All she wanted was to sit by a pool in the sun ejoying an adult beveridge. I can provide that no problem. Turns out I am not the only sorority sister out here in sunny Phoenix. Two other Phi Sigs from Portland State are out here too. Miki, who has an adorable little girl, and Carrie who is a big shot at a hotel not far from where I am living. (I don't care if she thinks she is not a big shot--we think she is)

Sarah arrived on Monday and we got our toes done. I have decided that is the thing to do after a flight. Tuesday we sat by the pool, drove aroudn to see how the other half lives (rich people) and had dinner with Miki. Wednesday we went to the hotel/spa Carrie works at and sat by their pool all day. Then we all went to dinner.

The hotel/spa is called FireSky and it is nice! I told Ross we have to go there and stay for a night or two. At the very least we need to go for dinner and walk around the grounds. They have fire pits with comfy chairs, water falls, a lagoon, two pools (one with a beach), an outdoor bar area and outdoor eating area. Way cool!

It is weird to see all of us all grown up, one with a kid, one a big wig at a hotel/spa, one basically a commercial building manager, and a teacher.

Thursday Sarah flew home. It was a short trip, but it didi the job. She said she was much more relaxed and she didn't have to go to work that Friday so she had extra to re-coup after the long flight.

So, who is next to visit? I know a great place to stay if you don't want to sleep on the couch.

My old friend David Matz is here in Phoenix for a few days. His wife Rebecca had a family reunion going on over the weekend so we took the opportunity to catch up with them this evening before the partying really gets going.

They're staying out in Surprise AZ, which while a suburb of Phoenix is still about an hour's drive away from us. Had we been kind we would have gone to see them, but I wanted them to check out our new condo, so we made them drive to us - sorry David! Luckily they called me about 3.30pm and got on the road before rush hour started getting really bad.

After chatting for an hour or two at our condo, we headed over to Scottsdale and one of our favorite local Italian restaurants, the "Bada Boom Pasta Room" (http://badaboomaz.com/scottsdale.html) and did lots of reminiscing about old times :-) It's kinda funny how you forget how old you or your friends are. David and I used to hang out a lot maybe 10~12 years ago when I was in my mid-20's partying every night stage. When I ordered a coke with my meal instead of alcohol, David was like "what????" until I replied "Dude, I'm almost 40!" :-) Hey, funny and depressing - yay! He he.

As always, the night went way too fast. What had started out as 4.30pm had somehow become 9pm. They'd been up since 5am that morning to catch their plane, and still had that hour drive home again to the hotel in Surprise so we bid them adieu. Hope you had a good time in Phoenix guys, despite the heat...

Day 4 we went for a quick breakfast, then took Jim to the UPS store so he could mail back all his camping gear and lighten his bike up a bit. After a week of camping he was ready for some motels and a real bed, shower and some TV in the evenings! Then we packed up our stuff and started the long drive home. Originally we were going to spend the night at the Grand Canyon but Sally & I were so exhausted from all the hiking around in the sun (110º on average) and at elevation (topped out around 7000 ft according to my GPS) that we decided to just head home and do the Grand Canyon in a couple of weeks. We did stop at Flagstaff though for an hour just to have a look around the downtown area. Flagstaff is beautiful and totally reminded us of being back in eastern Oregon. It’s at elevation too so it’s a lot cooler and greener (i.e. trees instead of cacti) then Phoenix. It’s also a lot hippier too and the smell of patchouli wafting from many of the stores was intense :-)

When we finally got home, we basically slept for a day. I don’t envy Jim having to ride off again on his bike for another week. It was great seeing him though. A year ago when Sally & I left Portland we wouldn’t have imagined the next time we’d see him would be in Utah. That’s what makes life so great though, isn’t it?