A Friendly Visit

We had our first friend visitors stay with us this weekend. It has been so great having my family visit us this Spring, but it is always good to see some old friends. We had been given lots of great places to take friends so I am very glad we got to finally try them out. And who better than with Andy and Jess!? They got in Thursday and we left them a car at the airport with a very extensive Welcome Packet. After 6+ pages of reading, hopefully that had an idea of what to do while Matt and I were still at work. I know they spent lots of time in the sun. I took them to Papago Park and the infamous hole in the rock to get a good view of the valley. I think they were pretty impressed we actually got to go inside the hole in the rock. 

That night we took them over to Four Peaks Brewery. I had heard it is a great place to go but never on the weekends because it is so crazy busy. It was PACKED! Luckily, this place is huge so they found a way to serve us. Everything was amazing, especially the spinach artichoke dip! 

Friday, the boys got an early start with a round of golf that included free breakfast! Then we gave them a list of things to do while we were at work. They took another hike, this time at South Mountain, tried out our amazing Waldo's BBQ and picked their own peaches at Schnepf Farms. Friday night they treated us to some homemade cooking, and we laughed for hours over Taboo. I never knew it was so hard to explain the word biscuits, but the boys proved to us it is nearly impossible. We also took them to our new favorite shaved ice place, Bahama Bucks for some Bahama Rama Mama's. 

With the temperature rising to triple digits in the valley, Saturday we headed north to check out Sedona for the day. We started with what I thought was going to be a quick 2 hour hike that turned into 5 hours of breath taking fun. 

After hiking for what seemed like hours,  

(but with views like this who can really complain??)

we finally found the creek we had been searching for, and it was totally worth every drop of sweat! 

At the creek we took some good ol' fashioned senior pics, 

let these two show off their true colors, 

found the tiniest baby pine cones you'll ever see

 hopped over many rocks,

found a camouflage tree

and some of the prettiest red rock you will ever see.

 After a hot and hungry hike back to the car we enjoyed our late lunch and headed for our initial destination, Sedona. We were pretty exhausted from our hike so we enjoyed the shortened Sedona tour including stopping at a scenic route to take in some amazing views, a quick break at The Chapel of the Holy Cross, driving along the downtown and uptown shops, and of course more food.

 

Make sure you click on this photo to enlarge it: awesome view!

We ended our day enjoying some well deserved Mexican food with yet another pretty incredible view. It just doesn't get much better than this...

We very much enjoyed hosting our friends for their long weekend in Arizona taking them to see the beautiful state we currently call home. We got to enjoy some of our favorite things: hiking in the sun, eating way too much food, laughing, and just spending time together. We hope they enjoyed the same and can now go home and show off their newly tanned (mostly sunburned) bodies! We love visitors!! Who's next?