phoenix (or thereabouts)

so i'm sitting here in chandler, arizona. and in the past three days i've been all over the valley. mesa to laveen to chandler to east side of mesa to more chandler to phoenix to tempe to opportunity to chandler. morgan is house and pet sitting for his cousin who got married yesterday in hawaii. odd, because my cousin got married yesterday too, but in mesa. i'll take you through everything that has happened so far.

thursday: went to isu bible study and stopped by at natalie's for supper beforehand. ashley made a really good soup. hung out at isu for the viaduct singing and then stopped by andy and amber's on the way home. got the "royal" tour of their new house. it's a pretty nice place. then since we were scheduled to leave gridley at 2am, neal and i decided to not sleep.

friday: 2:15am - neal somehow got coerced into driving all the way up to midway airport. jay forgot the tickets and we had to turn around and go back to get them (but that was only about six miles from home). i stayed awake all the way up and talked to jay and neal and chad although jay and chad fell asleep halfway there. i had two cans of mountain dew about ten minutes before we got to midway. we got there plenty early and our plane left around 6:20am. the first half of the flight to denver was pretty uneventful. they had personal tv's on the back of each seat but it cost $5 to watch the good channels. so i just listened to music on my cd player and read the colorado rockies magazine (all about the baseball team). ordered a cup of coffee on this flight. had to change planes for the second half and drank my third can of mountain dew. the second pilot wasn't as smooth as the first, but then he had an older plane to work with. after landing, i had a tall caramel macchiato at starbucks. i was wired. finally in phoenix, we ate lunch at a food court in arizona mills and then walked around the mall for a couple hours. went to chad & michelle's place in mesa and took a two-hour nap (michelle = first cousin). "rehearsal" dinner was at eric & christine's place in laveen (christine = first cousin). got to hang out and catch up with a lot of cousins and a few other people. finally contacted morgan and got directions to his cousin's place (hereafter referred to as morgan's place) and went there for the night.

saturday: 10:30am - finally made it to salt river after a 20 minute detour courtesy of morgan who thought he knew where it was. we (morgan, neal, jay, josh johnson, caleb heinold, and i) tubed the salt river. we were on it for about 4 hours and most of us got burned. even the native arizonian morgan. but the water was great and we had a great time. back to morgan's place and got ready for the wedding. it was an outdoor wedding for jeremy & rachel (rachel = first cousin) at a really nice place. i cannot begin to describe the place to you, but it was a beautiful place and a beautiful wedding. afterwards, we went back to morgan's place and crashed.

sunday: church in the morning and then jeremy's mother took us all out to eat at some vegetarian place. all they had was salad and soup and a little pasta (the pasta contained the only meat in the entire place). afterwards, we went to rachel's and watched the new couple open their gifts. oh yeah, i should mention that jeremy & rachel are going to spain and italy for their honeymoon. i'm a little jealous. i wish i could do that for my honeymoon, but there's no way. unless i waited until i'm at least 30 like they both did (i think). back to morgan's to hang out for a little bit and then we met my other first cousin rachel (on the other side of the family) for supper at claim jumper. they serve huge portions. it was really good. and now, i'm sitting here doing this while morgan, neal, jay, and sam sit downstairs watching tv. our flight leaves tomorrow at 8:something and we should arrive back in central illinois around 3 or 4.

now you know.