Bill got special permission to miss part of his meetings
this morning so we could all do the hot air balloon ride. We had to get up super early and
incidentally, our water in the room and hotel was turned off due to a problem,
so no one could shower! We got ready a
lot faster! Hahaha! We made it out to Cave Creek and drove in the
van to get to the launch site. We had to
go to 3 different sites before the winds were right to be able to launch. It was quite the process to watch them unload
the balloon and fill it with air—about 45 min. just to get that ready! It was fun to watch though. I really enjoyed the ride… it felt like we
were just floating effortlessly over the desert along the Carefree Highway
toward Peoria. We saw Lake Pleasant in
front of us and even got a peek to the south of the Phoenix temple! It was so cool to watch the ground below us
and so many people honked at us! The
balloonist was really nice and explained a lot about flying a hot air
balloon! It was so peaceful up
there! After we landed in Peoria out by
the lake, they set up breakfast and we ate, while the crew put away the balloon
and got everything cleaned up! Then we
had a toast (with OJ!) for our successful balloon ride—I guess that’s a
tradition. We headed back to our car and
then drove back to the hotel. I took a
quick shower and made the tail end of the spouse meeting, where I got to donate
a bunch of children’s books for the service project they’re doing this year for
United Way. We made cards for the kids
wishing them well and encouraging them and then stuffed the books into bags
that we also decorated. Joseph and Laura
Crockett led the meeting and did a great job!
I felt badly for being late! They
gave us Nothing Bundt Cakes and I took it back to the room where the girls and
Todd devoured it! We headed for lunch at
BJ’s and had tickets to go see Aladdin, but the girls and Todd had ordered
THREE pizookies, so Bill and I ran to the movies while they finished eating
those and then met us at the theater. It
was a cute movie! Went back to the hotel
and got ready for the EJ dinner at Gravity Zone. It was such a FUN night! It’s an indoor trampoline place but had TONS
of other games and activities. We did
the rock climbing wall and then Todd, Katelyn, Brooke and I did the ropes
course which was extremely difficult! It
was really slippery with NO grips on any of the obstacles AND I was wearing
horrible shoes. (I wasn’t prepared for
the activities they had there in my shoes or clothes!) I was seriously scared I was going to fall
several times during the course! I let
Brooke go ahead of me because I didn’t want to hold her up. It worked out well because she’d shout out to
me tips on doing what she’d just finished.
Sometimes her tips worked well and other times I came up with my own way
to do it. There was no way for them to
get you back onto the course, so if you fell, you had to pull yourself back
up. Well I knew that my upper body
strength was spent, so I hung on for dear life, white knuckling every single
rope I could in order to not have to pull myself up. On the last course I had to hold onto the
previous rope and lunge forward to grab the next rope in order to not slip and
realized after I got down that my whole left arm was torn up from the rope with
a big huge rash. (The next morning a
bruise started to form and was pretty big by the end of the day!) That was crazy! I’ve never been so glad to complete
something! At one point, Brooke was
encouraging me saying that “we can do hard things!” Well this is true and her going on her
mission next week will be hard too! I’m
glad we could complete that activity together in preparation for that! And it WAS hard!! If I had only had good tennis shoes I
wouldn’t have had a hard time, I don’t think.
I at least wouldn’t have felt like I was going to slip! Katelyn and Todd were long finished before we
had completed the course! We stuck
around for a bit longer and then headed back to the hotel. All of us absolutely LOVED Gravity Zone
though…it was so much fun!
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