Jason's Graduation

Jason graduated on Aug. 28, 09. It has been a fast two years. Jay's parents (Andy and Joyce) and his aunt and uncle (John and Sue) stayed with us over the weekend. Unfortunately it was one of the hottest weeks of the summer (115 almost every day!). still had fun! Here are a few pictures outside of our apartment before we left for Midwestern.
Dakota and Heinz. Perfect!!

The ceremony was about an hour and a half. We took a few pictures outside afterwards.

Us with Rob, Sharon and Lily.

We had a few days with everyone after Jason's graduation to take them out and show them around Arizona! We rented a 6 passenger van to drive all of us up north. We took the scenic route through Oak Creek Canyon up to Flagstaff, then back to Sedona to go shopping. We also stopped at the Holy Temple of the Cross church on the way out of Sedona to take some pictures.

Oak Creek Canyon:


Sedona:

Another night we went to Westgate in Glendale near our house and ate at Margaritaville. We also had a small three day addiction to Cold Stone ice cream :).

Hot Air Balloon Ride

My mom and Blair came out to visit us over the first week in March. One of the first days they were here, we went hiking at Thunderbird Park near our house in the morning. Afterwards we went to get a few things to make lunch, and we saw several hot air balloons taking off. Jason and I see these every morning and night by where we live and we've always talked about wanting to do it sometime. We decided right then and there that we should try to do a balloon ride while we were all together. We called and scheduled it for that same day at sunset. Once we arrived, we got to be a part of getting the balloon ready for take-off. There were about five other balloons leaving with ours. The actual ride wasn't as scary as I thought it might be. A guy in our balloon proposed to his girlfriend while we were in flight! On the way back down to land, we saw a coyote running by us. We had a rough landing (in a desert shrub) and everyone had to crouch down in the basket and hold on for dear life... its funny now but at the time I thought I was going to be thrown out. Once we "crash landed" in the desert, vans came to meet us and set up tables and candles for our dinner. We had champagne and really good appetizer and dessert snacks while out in the middle of nowhere with the scorpions. It was a great experience and I would do it again!