Phoenix

The day after my birthday, Scott and I flew out to Phoenix.  This is the third year in a row that we've made this trip.  An insurance company down there pays to bring us down.  I look forward to it every year, and hope we get to continue to do it for years to come.  Usually we go down during the Phoenix Open, but Scott had a business trip somewhere else during the Open this year, so we decided to plan the trip around my birthday instead.  My parents came down to stay with the kids for us (I am so appreciative of how willing they are to take on my 7 crazy kids!).  We flew out Tuesday afternoon.

After a short flight, we landed and picked up our rental car.  We drove to our hotel and got checked in.  We stayed in the same place as we did last year (Hermosa Inn).  I was so happy to have this sunshiny scene greet me!

We got settled into our room and Scott got caught up on all his emails from work (even on vacation, he's always putting out fires with work).

We wanted to go do some shopping at a discount outlet store for Nordstroms, but traffic was really crazy.  So we decided to walk the 3 miles there and the 3 miles back.  The weather was perfect for an evening walk.  After shopping, we stopped at Cafe Rio and got some dinner.  Then we walked back to our hotel and enjoyed the quiet of not having a bunch of kids to put to bed.

The next morning, Scott had a couple of meetings he needed to go to.  While he was gone, I slept in.  Then I lounged by the pool, soaking up the sunshine and reading a good book.

After he got back, he put his swimsuit on and enjoyed a soak in the hot tub while I showered and got ready.  Then we lounged around in the fresh air on our patio for long while.  My very favorite thing while there, was that we didn't have to be on any schedules.  We could sit for hours and do nothing, and it was wonderful.

That evening, we went out to dinner with Jim (the guy who paid for us to come down) and his girl friend Jakki.  We go out to dinner with them every time we go to Phoenix, and I really enjoy spending time with them.  After dinner, we went back to our room and enjoyed a fire in our fireplace and another quiet evening.

On Thursday, we spent the morning getting a couples massage at the spa at our hotel.  It was so nice and relaxing!  Then we got ready and headed out for our main activity while there--a hot air balloon ride at sunset.  I was so excited about getting to do this.  We were supposed to meet up with the balloon company at 3 that afternoon.  When we arrived at the meeting place, though, no one else was there.  Scott checked his phone, to find a voicemail from Jim 20 minutes earlier, telling us the balloon company had called him to say the ride was cancelled.  They were afraid there was going to be wind that evening, so they cancelled the flight.  To say we were disappointed would be a huge understatement.  I wanted to cry.  But, there wasn't anything we could do to change it, so we decided to make the most of it.  We grabbed a late lunch at In-N-Out Burger, then went in search of a good hiking place.

We drove to San Tan Mountain Regional Park, and set out hiking.

 

We knew we didn't have a lot of time before sunset, and we hoped we'd get some beautiful views of the sun going down.  We were not disappointed.  The sunset was absolutely stunning!

 

 

 

 

Soon the sun was completely down, and we only had the moon to light our way back.  The hike (which was a loop) ended up being a lot longer than we expected, so we spent quite a bit of time hiking in the dark.  But, the moon was full enough to light the path, and the stars up in the sky were so bright and beautiful.  It wasn't a hot air balloon ride, but it was still a pretty spectacular evening!

After we finished our hike, we grabbed some dinner at Cheesecake Factory, then headed back to our hotel.

Friday we woke up, got packed up, and checked out of our hotel.  Our flight wasn't till 9 that night, so we still had an entire day to do things.  Last year we hiked Camelsback Mountain.  This year we hiked Piestewa Peak (Squaw Peak), the second tallest mountain in Phoenix.  It was a good tough hike, that provided amazing views from the top.

After our hike, we had lunch at a darling restaurant (Flower Child) that served all kinds of healthy foods. Then we drove back to the airport, turned in our rental car, and checked in for our flight super early.  Last year we were running late and missed getting on our flight and ended up spending the whole day in the airport till there was another flight.  We did not want a repeat of last year, so we got there plenty early.  We landed in Boise at 11:30 and got home after midnight.  We were tired, but so happy we'd had the chance to get away together!