My Hot Friends and Family

By hot I mean they live in Arizona. In Feb. Phil and I had the great opportunity to visit Arizona. Phil, once again, was involved in a conference and I was just along for the fun. A GREAT friend of ours was nice enough to watch all the kids. She is awesome. It is a great time of year to leave Minnesota and bask in some sun. Arizona was having an unusually warm week while we were there. . . and we enjoyed every minute of it.
I was particularly excited to visit because I have some friends from college there as well as some family. The night that we arrived my friends met us at the airport and we went to dinner and a yummy Mexican place. Whenever we have the chance to eat good Mexican food, we are all over that! So the picture below is MaryAnn (we were roommates for 1 1/2 years at Ricks), Phil, me, Steve and Teresa. Teresa and I were in the same program and had lots of classes together, so we became good friends. I met Steve through Teresa, and we had some classes together. He always got us in trouble because he is so goofy. They met at Ricks and got married after we graduated. We all have kept in touch all of these years. The funny thing is that MaryAnn and Teresa knew each other because of me, then they ended up living by each other. Not fair! I love being around all of them. MaryAnn's husband Mike is taking the pictures. He is always doing or
saying something funny.

The food was great, conversation even better. Notice the arrangement, the girls at one end, boys at the other. It worked really well that way. We chatted for hours!

Mike obviously said or did something funny or both!

Another day we went and visited family in Fountain Hills. Just visited and then went to dinner. It is always nice to spend time with them. I don't get to see them very much.

My Aunt Lynn, cousin Kari, me.

Me and my Grandma Ruby. She is an amazing woman. I love spending time with her.

Another day MaryAnn and I met and just spent the day together. Shopping, talking and eating good food. Can't get much better than that. One of the great things about MaryAnn is that we can go for years without seeing each other, then just pick up where we left off when we get together like no time has passed at all. We had a great day. We had so much fun at college, I'm surprised that we ended up graduating. And poor MaryAnn worked EARLY in the morning and it seemed like we were always up LATE. I don't know how she did it. I'm visiting them again the end of September and I can't wait!!!