We felt a little bit "Down" this week...

but really it felt like the ups. ;)

One of Andrew's friends from the guard who served in Iraq with him (Richard Downs) and his family (Lauren, Aiden and Kyler Downs) came down from Utah this last Monday for a week during their spring break.

I had so much fun with them, thanks to Sara Murdock for her ideas! She was a life saver!!

We got to play at the park, ride trains, eat Mexican food, watch the Easter pageant rehearsals, go to the science museum, play in the kiddy pool and lots and lots and lots of games! FINALLY we found some hardcore gamers!

Lauren's kids are so cute. Their oldest, Aiden is only about 4 to 5 months older than Abby. I have never seen Abby so happy to play with some one. Most of the time you hardly noticed them around unless they were hungry or laughing loudly. They were like two peas in a pods. Until they got cranky and wanted the same toys, but after a nap they were back together again. Normally Abby doesn't want to play with the kids, or the kids don't want to play with Abby, but not Aiden. He kept saying "girl! come play with me!" She definitely misses her play buddy. We'll definitely have to keep our eyes on them when their older though, the two of them could get into some trouble.... easily.

And i thought that Lauren and I got along well. If Richard gets deployed some time, i told her she's more than welcome to stay here!

Anyway, here's some pictures from the week.



The itinerary for the week:

We went to Desert Breeze Park on Tuesday. We got to ride a little kid train, eat lunch by the lake and play at the park. We thought it was going to be a little bit more up key than it was. The website was a little deceiving, but Sara had told me it was just a park to run around in. She was right, and the website was... well... misdirecting. None the less, the park was still fun. And it was 80 degrees outside so it was nice to get out of the house and play in the sun.

Wednesday we ate green eggs and green blueberry pancakes. The kids weren't a fan of the fact that it was green or had blueberries, so they had a smoothie while we ate green breakfasts to celebrate st patti's day. Then we waited on Richard to visit a school he's hoping to attend in Tucson soon (we hope so too! We'd love to have them live close by!). Then we ate some really good Mexican food at Mangoes Mexican Cafe. Let me warn you though, the Mangoes website says that it's "Coffee, Tea, Cookies, Pizzas, Bugger Sandwitch, Soft Drinks". It's not, I was worried and I got Sara all worried too-- sorry Sara. It was excellent Mexican food and the chips were fresh. Then I thought that it was the 24th of march and when it was ACTUALLY it was the 17th-- oops. So we went to go see the Easter Pageant at the Mesa Temple thinking it would be playing but it was just rehearsals. I think it worked out anyway. We were able to watch with the kids running around and not having to worry about being too loud. We were able to be close to the stage and we even got to pet the sheep that were in the pageant. Then we played Nurtz until 2am, when we could no longer see the cards.

Thursday we went to the Science Museum. I got us all in on our membership so it was free for them-- sweet! :) I think the kids had fun. I was trying not to hurry them through, but i needed to be pack in time for the Relief Society Meeting. I'm on the committee so i needed to be back in time to help set up. I also needed to do a 20 minute thing on my other calling, Family History and Temple work. I forgot until the day of that i was supposed to do the 20 minute spiel. on top of that we were in traffic for much longer than we should have been, so I got home ten minutes before the meeting started and i still needed to figure out what to do. I got it all figured out. I think it went fine, better than expected. I got home and we played more nurtz until 2am again.

And friday, we pulled out the kiddy pool and the cards and played until they had to leave in the evening.