Adventures in Arizona

So I'm a little late in posting this, but I recently went to Arizona and had a grand old time! I went with Lizzie to visit our friends Cara and Steve Lyon. Our adventures included:

#1: The Phoenix Art Museum
We saw some really cool stuff that I want to share with you all. If you have a chance to go for yourself, it is totally worth it!

You can see some of the artwork behind Cara in this picture. We walked around a lot so sometimes we had to take a rest on the benches.

You can't really tell how cool this artwork is just be seeing it in a picture. This is wood from an old church building that burned down. Several pieces are tied to each string that's hanging down to form a cube. So it's kind of like an exploding wooden cube. The peices spin a little bit as they just hang from the ceiling. It's way cooler in real life, I promise. I loved this one!


Once again, you can't appreciate this piece of art without seeing it in person. Have you ever seen those pictures that seem like they're moving? (A horse is
galloping in one) The ones with black and white lines. Anyways, this reminds me of those pictures. It's a white background with straight black wires along the back and other black wires bent into different shapes in front of the other wires. It creates a cool illusion, but I obviously can't show you in the picture. I should've got a video. sorry!

This next one is a little creepy.

It's an eyeball that sticks out of the wall. Lizzie apparently didn't understand it. I loved this one for some reason unknown to anyone because I don't usually like creepy things.


See if you can guess what the next two are. The answers are below the pictures.















lady with a fancy hat and the top part of her dress
snoopy in an indian headdress
















This is just a bunch of junk hung in a circle. It sticks out a bit from the wall. I think the idea of it was a circus, but I'm not sure. This is another one that is not very interesting in a picture. The thing that made this cool was that the artist would connect the pieces of junk, then take pictures of different parts and put those pictures as part of the artwork. So there would be a picture of a pencil sticking out and then the actual pencil would be sticking out of the picture. I'm not sure that makes sense, but that's the best explanation you're going to get! Here's a close up so you can see some of the items the artist used.
















When my mom saw this picture, she asked if it was Cara's house:

Cara has a really nice house, don't you think? If only Cara was about 3 inches tall. Then she might fit in this room.




This was my favorite one! A small room of mirrors with little color-changing lights hanging everywhere. It seemed like an endless forest of glowing lights! You couldn't tell where the mirrors were so it was safe to just stand in one place. It was so cool. I think we were in that room for a good 5 minutes or more! You can see me and Lizzie in this picture that turned out pretty cool.

#2: Wicked

AMAZING!!! That's all I can say.

#3: Eating out

One of the places we went was an italian place called North.





#4: The Mesa Temple















Do you love how my arms are way tanner than my legs?

#5: Learning how a toaster oven works

Steve was fixing their toaster oven so he showed me what it looks like when you take it apart. He then explained what the different wires were for and how they all worked together to heat up food. I wish I was as cool as Steve and could take things apart and put them back together.

#6: Swimming
I got a little tanner, but mostly we just wanted to get out of the heat.

#7: Surviving the heat
110 degrees is not my idea of comfortable. Needless to say, we spent most of our time inside where we had air conditioning. If you ever hear me compain about Utah heat, just remind me how bad Arizona is and I will stop complaining immediately!

#8: Shopping
I spent way too much money on cute dresses! But for some reason, it doesn't seem as bad when you're on vacation.

#9: Playing games
I'm pretty sure I won at least one of the games we played: Cranium, Speed Scrabble...

#10: Meeting nice people at the airport and on the plane
So I've never had a stranger ask me about my religion. But while I was waiting for my flight to come home, I was reading the Book of Mormon (discretely, so as not to draw attention to myself). A man in a cowboy hat, sitting behind me leaned forward and asked, "so are you a mormon?" I told him I was and then he continued to make comments and ask me a bunch of questions: "I hear you're a cult. Do you worship a prophet? Don't mormons have lots of wives or something? Where did you go to school? Now didn't Brigham Young have lots of wives? I hear you aren't Christians." I responded appropriately to each of his questions, but said I didn't
know everything about some of the deep doctrinal topics. Then after a while he looked at me and said, "I'm just givin' ya a hard time. I'm LDS too." I told him I didn't want to talk to him after that, but laughed and then continued having a real conversation. He was a nice man and was surprised I wasn't married. He made me feel pretty good and he apologized for testing my gospel knowledge.
Then I sat next to another LDS man on the plane and we talked all the way home. He was very nice and I pretty much learned everything about him. I don't normally talk to people on planes, but I enjoyed that plane ride.

It was so fun to see Cara and Steve and get to spend time with them even though they were both busy with work. I miss them and wish they could move back to Utah so I could see them more!