Arizona Trip

Friday, May 19, 2023

A few months back Ben and Sharley invited Lisa and I to go on a short Disney Cruise with them. We have these Chinese students so we can’t just leave them (that can be a royal pain in the rear at times) plus I didn’t feel I could miss another week of work, so I stayed home, and Lisa went with them. She left last Thursday and got home on Monday.

As it turned out Yuchen joined a school trip to New York and left Saturday and because so many of the students were on the New York trip, they cancelled school for the rest of the students, so Jonathan had no school this week Mon thru Wed.

I have been needing bring some wood pellets from Mesa back to San Diego for some time so I figured this would be a good time to go get them. I would leave Monday morning; Lisa would get home Monday night and she wouldn’t have to deal with getting them to school and back.

In all my work in the yard I have accumulated a bunch of bricks that had been used to outline the flower beds and Kira has been wanting them. Since I was hauling out a trailer to bring back the wood pellets, I figured it was a good time to get rid of a bunch of the bricks.

Kira and Ben have both been able to find some tortoises as pets, so I got to meet Kira’s two baby tortoises. Meet Taco and Tortellini. They are desert tortoises.

Kira then took me to Ben’s house where I got to meet Bowser. Bowser is a Sulcata Tortoise native to the Sahara Desert. She will get huge. She seemed quite a home in Ben’s yard.

Ben’s yard is starting to look beautiful. His trees are healthy and happy and he is growing some healthy looking vegetables.

He has a mulberry bush that has some delicious berries on it. Of course, I had to go around and around the mulberry bush. I never found a weasel.

Kira took time out of busy schedule to come and help me load up the wood pellets so after running a few errands we headed to the storage unit. I don’t know why I didn’t get pictures of my load of pellets, but we did get a picture of ourselves after loading the pellets. I am surprised by how much dust has collected on those pellets. This isn’t normal dust either, I wonder what else was going on in that warehouse in Miami?

The original plan was to head straight home as soon as the pellets were loaded up but fortuitously Tuesday was also the day that Olivia Van der Veer was getting married. I decided I had to stay for that.

Kira and Justin first met Olivia in Calgary when they hired her to be with Evan during the nights and to get him ready for school in the morning. When they moved to the States Olivia moved with them but since a normal tourist visa is only good for six months, she had to register for college to remain.

Since young adults need a social life and she knew no one, Kira and Justin encouraged Olivia to go to young adults. She wasn’t a member of the church, but they assured her that they have fun activities, and it is a good place to meet nice guys. It wasn’t long before Olivia was dating a nice young return missionary named Kenny and not long after that when she got baptized.

Kenny and Olivia got married Tuesday and I’m glad I got to be there. It was a hot day, and I was sweating away but towards the end of the ceremony a breeze picked up and cooled things off. A little bit later the breeze turned into a windstorm and blew tables and decorations all over the place, but I still preferred that to the heat.

It then rained for about fifteen minutes and then it was a nice relaxing evening. I then hopped in the car and drove five and a half hours home.