Daniel had fun going to the Homecoming Dance with his friends tonight. He and Andrew went to the tailgating event, carnival, and Homecoming game last night. Their high school won! Andrew wasn't interested in going to the dance, but Daniel went and had a great time!
After three years of renovations, the Mesa Temple and grounds are finished and we were able to go to the open house today. It was beautiful! We loved seeing the new Visitor's Center across the street, as well. They don't have room for the Christus statue in the new location, but this smaller one is beautiful. We feel so blessed that we were able to go today! We were able to show the boys the room we were married in, even though they have changed it and it's no longer a sealing room. I remember it vividly. I am so blessed to be sealed to Michael for time and all eternity!
We are so proud of Daniel for how well he did on swim team this year! He had been taking lessons for a while and they definitely paid off. There were two JV teams, and he made the higher one. We have enjoyed attending his meets and watching him continue to improve.
Great job, Daniel!
As much as I wish Michael and I could finally have an anniversary trip, we just have to be patient. For now, we decided to have a 24-hour date in Scottsdale and we had a great time! We stayed at The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch. It was beautiful! I especially loved the courtyard area by our room with the pretty lights. We went to a fabulous dinner at El Chorro, which had been on my list of restaurants to try for a while. The weather was so nice yesterday evening! We were seated in the dining room, but our table was right near the large French doors and when they opened them, it was like being on the patio so we had the best of both worlds. They had the nicest outdoor seating I have ever seen. Next time, we'll have to request a table outside. Normally, I prefer to sit inside, but that's how nice this place was. Anyway, after dinner we went to see the new James Bond movie. It was really good! This morning, we got up and ready and checked out of the resort. We decided to try our luck at Butters Pancakes and Café one more time. Miraculously, the wait was only about 20 minutes! We had tried eating there on two previous occasions and the wait was always at least an hour. When we sat down, I thought, "I hope this place is good after all this effort." And it was! The food was exceptional. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. I bought a couple of skirts at Tennis Cabana, Michael got some new shoes at New Balance, we went to Great Harvest Bread Company (I love that store in Provo and I didn't even realize until recently that they have a location in Tempe), and looked at an outdoor furniture store. Finally, we picked up Michael's car (which had been in the shop all week) and headed home. We had a wonderful time!
The resort
Michael and I had a great time at the Air Supply concert tonight! It was at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale. We were surprised at how good they sounded and they played all their greatest hits. We have a knack for sitting next to the loudest, most obnoxious people, but we didn't mind as much this time and we had so much fun!
We had a fun, quick trip to Las Vegas this weekend! We left on Friday when Jonathan got home from school. We left at 5 PM. It was about 7:30 PM by the time we made it to Wickenburg. When we originally looked, it was only supposed to take an hour and a half to get there. However, there was a lot of traffic. The highway coming out of Wickenburg was packed. The McDonald’s was crazy. We decided we could stop at Arby’s, but traffic was totally stopped. I found a route using Maps and told Michael to turn around and go a different way so that’s what we did and it worked out great. We had dinner at Arby’s and got some gas and got on our way. Nathaniel and Emily made it to the hotel at about 10:30 PM. I had called this morning to tell the front desk to put Nathaniel’s name on the reservation so he could check in for us. Unfortunately, when they got there, Tahiti Village told them that they didn’t have a room for us with two bedrooms. They only had a one bedroom. They expected seven of us to fit into a room for four people and they said they would give us a hideaway bed. Then they said they could send us to their sister property but still have us stay there tomorrow night. Then that changed. It was a mess. I was so furious. How is it possible that there’s not a room for us when I paid in advance months ago? This morning when I called, they confirmed that they had a Royal Tahitian room, which is the two-bedroom, reserved for us on the sixth floor and when we checked in we could request a lower floor. How did it disappear? They could not answer that question. She just said I’m sorry, I understand, it could be maintenance or housekeeping problems. It took us until 1:30 PM to get checked into the other property called Club de Soleil and find the rooms and get our stuff brought in. We had two rooms that are right next to each other and they were very nice. Michael and I were in one room with Emily and Jonathan and the other boys were in the other room.
We slept in and took our time getting ready and didn't leave the hotel until noon. We went straight to New York New York and parked in the parking garage and went to the Big Apple Coaster. Everyone rode it but me. They didn’t have to wait too long. Then we walked across the walkway to Excalibur and went to their buffet. We had to wait quite a while just to pay. We enjoyed our meal together. We walked back to the car and drove over to the Pinball Hall Fame. The kids and Michael had fun hanging out there and playing the games. While they were playing the games, I got a call from Tahiti Village that our room was ready. I told her it was too late! She had said someone would contact us this morning to let us know that we could stay at Tahiti Village tonight, but no one ever did so we didn’t check out of the other hotel. We just stayed at Club de Soleil both nights. I’ve never had a worse experience with a hotel. It was almost 5 PM by the time we left the Pinball Hall of Fame. We came back to the condo and had a break for a little bit and then got ready to go. I took Michael and Andrew and Nathaniel to the stadium. I had figured out the perfect way to drop them off and it worked out great. There were so many people and so many roads blocked off. I came back and got the other kids so we could go to the Donny Osmond concert at Harrah's. We got there in plenty of time and the kids were pretty amazed by the fact that we were in the second row. The seats were awesome! I loved the show. It was very entertaining. He has such a great voice. He talked about his career over the last 60 years. Apparently, he has made 65 albums. One fun thing he did was take requests from the audience. A couple of ladies were having a birthday so their friend or husband piped up and made the request on their behalf. The band and dancers were great, as well. The show was over by 9:30 PM. We spent a little time taking pictures by the peacock costume and buying the pictures that we had taken as we walked in. The kids were hungry, so we looked up which restaurants were nearby. We ended up choosing to go to Guy Fieri's restaurant at the LINQ next-door. It took us a while to get there. The food cost a fortune but the kids had fun. We finished up and rushed over to the car so I could take them back to the condo and pick up Michael and the boys and Cole. It was a very fun day!
