I took a quick trip this weekend. Thursday, I drove to Phoenix. The scenery on my drive was beautiful. Flagstaff is a beautiful city. There are so many tall pine trees that you don’t see many of the buildings, just glimpses, here and there. It reminded me of Portland, OR. Also I did not know Arizona had so many beautiful mountains. Phoenix looked so strange to my eyes. If I looked at the city, it reminded me of Cancun and the Yucatan peninsula because it was so flat and full of palm trees. Yet if I looked at the mountainous backdrop, I felt I was looking at Orem, UT.
From Phoenix, I flew to Springfield. My lovely sister-in-law, Amy, picked me up and I stayed the night with her and Peter. The next day, all my Missouri siblings and Mom and Dad, came up to Peter’s house and visited with me. It was just what I had hoped for and so nice of Amy to go through all that extra work.
Then at 5:30 came the big reason for my trip: I attended the wedding of Hunter and Alex Bartelt. It was a lovely sunset wedding with reception afterwards.
Alex had a most beautiful peachy dress with long sleeves and lace, and Hunter wore a cream colored suit with a pale green shirt. True to their personality, the frame for their wedding arch was printed on a 3D printer.
They had a celtic hand binding, using a rope Hunter made himself, and henna wedding tattoos. It was gloriously nerdy and the whole thing made me very happy.
Hunter and Alex have pretty healthy attitudes towards life and working as a team, and I think they are going to be wildly successful as a couple.
Just like every outdoor October wedding I’ve been to, it got pretty cold and dark fast, but all the guests made lanterns with their phone flashlights and water bottles, and there was a bonfire. The catered dinner was really excellent. I chose the vegetarian saffron-rice-stuffed-pepper, and it was delicious, as was the salad and the buttery oven potatoes and the candied green beans and carrots. When I commented on how good it was, Hunter told me that he and Alex decided that food was the key to a successful reception, and that they had spent the bulk of their budget on the food and drinks. I think they made a wise choice. I visited with Hunter’s mother and grandmother, and it was nice to hear about what is going on with them.
Friday night, Ana, Gwendolyn, and Renata came up to Springfield and stayed the night at Amy’s house also. (Good luck some of the kids had gone camping with Peter.) In the morning, they took me to breakfast at Van Gogh’s Cafe downtown.
It was super cute and fancy, and I really enjoyed talking with my girls.
Then they took me back to the airport, so I could catch my flight back to Phoenix. It is nice that there is a direct flight from Phoenix to Springfield, and the drive is a pleasant one, even though it is almost 6 hours. I did not calculate my arrive home time very well, because I forgot to account for Arizona not being on Daylight Savings Time. So, I thought I would get home about 8pm, but I actually got home at 10:30 pm. My kids were all happy when I arrived and promised me that they did not have any fighting while I was gone.
Monday was a day off school, and I took full advantage of the time to get laundry done and tidy up corners that had begun to gather piles of homeless books and papers. I also found the floor of the Twin’s bedroom and sorted all the legos (again). Those little turkeys had piles of dirty laundry hidden under blanket forts and pokemon cards. I have just been avoiding their room for a couple of weeks, and clearly, avoiding it is not a good solution. It feels good to have it clean.
Marvelous Pigs in Satin 