One Last Western Roadtrip (for now)

Hallelujah! WE HAVE RENTERS!

Yesterday morning I was on the phone with my sister choking back tears explaining how stressed we’ve been about our house sitting empty in Tennessee the last 12 days, and mid-conversation I got this text from our property manager.

No lie – I completely lost it and had to go ahead and hang up with Jenn. I really felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted off of our shoulders. We are so thankful that we have tenants again and can move on with closing on our KS home in three weeks. God is good!

In an effort to temporarily escape from the funk the rental situation had put us in, we three DeSpain amigos (plus Ted of course) packed up and drove three hours northwest to Phoenix to visit our dearest friends, the McManigals (do you remember the post about their beautiful wedding from a few weeks ago?).

Once we got there, we let our pups get reacquainted and then headed out for a day on the town.

Amy knew we’d been wanting to visit Scottsdale at some point during our time out west, so we headed there first. We found a fun trendy Mexican restaurant and parked it there for a while. Hadley passed out in her stroller within minutes of getting there, so Jamie and I gave each other a fist bump and enjoyed our double date. Since we were feeling in semi-vacation mode, Ames and I decided to splurge and ordered a margarita flight to split. They were not fabulous, but we enjoyed sipping on them here and there anyway.

After lunch we did a little bit of walking around Old Town Scottsdale and playing in a couple western stores.

The blazing heat was zapping up quickly, so we killed some time before the Diamondbacks vs. Rockies baseball game by driving up to the top of a mountain which has a stunning lookout area. While we were up there I made a mental note not to take the views for granted; I know we’re going to miss this breathtaking landscape tremendously when we leave Arizona behind.

At 5 we found our seats at the game! Jamie left the baby carrier at the McManigal’s house (dad fail) and I left Hadley’s pacifier in the truck (mom fail), so we knew we were going to have a busy baby! She loved the atmosphere like we figured she would. She couldn’t get enough of everybody hollering around us and all of the colorful lights. We could just see her brain workin’ and taking it all in.

She took a few breaks from the game to play with Cole’s facial hair, but otherwise she was pretty captivated by it all.

I think she actually scratched the inside of Cole’s nose pretty good, but he was such a trooper and totally down-played it. He & Amy were so good with her!

When the cheerleaders came by to throw t-shirts to the crowd, Jamie held her up and he caught one!

The shirt is definitely just her size.

We left during the 7th inning, and she passed out before we pulled out of the parking lot. She crashed hard again once we got back to their house, so we got to enjoy a little bit of adult catch up time before crashing hard ourselves.

On Sunday morning Amy and I knocked out a P90X3 workout (home DVDs are so much more fun with a friend) and were then treated to some of Cole’s infamous omelets.

We left mid-morning so that Hadley could snooze the whole way home (didn’t quite happen) and were back home with enough time left in the day to knock out some stuff around the house. Our goodbyes with them were quick because I’m really just terrible with all the goodbyes we’ve had to say to friends lately and don’t even like to talk about how long it could possibly be before we see them again. Super thankful that we were able to spend a couple weekends with them though while we were all out here in Arizona.

We have two more weekends left here out west, and now we are more than ready to get this show on the road! C’mon September! We are anxious for you!