Welcome to AZ : Ben & Christine

See these cute people? We were thrilled to have them drive down last weekend for a visit. They had a long weekend from school and made the trek to the desert. We were so excited.

I always enjoy the chance to hang out with Ben and was so excited to be able to finally get the chance to really get to know his GREAT wife Christine. Loved every minute of having them in our home.

They arrived late Friday evening and after a relaxing Saturday morning we decided to head out on a little AZ adventure to show them the area. After gorgeous weather during all of the preceding week, we finally were getting some storminess. Not the best timing but we didn't let a major dusts storm stop us.

We had heard of a nearby ghost town and that it was their annual chili-cook off so we decided to go check it out. The wind was whipping around and dust was everywhere. See the flag in the picture below? You can see that it was some serious wind. We thought the Superstition Mountains looked really neat with all the dust and clouds:
It was a gathering of serious chili cookers all presenting their best. For $2, we each got a cup and could wander around and taste chili to our hearts content. Below are some of the cookers struggling to keep their canopy up in the wind.

The kids were not too sure about wandering around with the dust blowing in their eyes and stayed pretty close to Mom and Dad. Our timing was just right because it started raining when we got back in the car to go home and rained hard the rest of the day. Definitely an event we will try out again next year.

The rest of the weekend was spent with a little b-day party for Nathan (more coming on that), relaxing, and a Sunday taco-making.

Thanks for the visit you two. Just loved having you here with us.

side-note: do you see that red "bow" in Christine's hair? That was a creation Heidi made in anticipation for her arrival out of Elmer's glue, tissue paper, and a little jewel. We then attached it to a hair clip. Heidi was so excited to give it to her and Christine was a very, very good sport and wore it all weekend. Even in public. Made some serious good aunt points.