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Life around here is getting back to normal around here.  After three weeks of hanging out with Dario, I have to go back to work.  So give me a few minutes of your time and I will summarize his trip.

We took Dario and Monika to Vegas for a few days.  We stayed at Circus Circus which turned out to be pretty good.  They have an amusement park in the building so we spent pretty much the first day hanging out on rides.  Dario and I went on their roller coaster which had 2 loops, and 2 twisting loops.  There was also a water log ride which was cool.  Erin went on the kiddie rides for about 5 hours straight. 

The next day we took Dario to see The Blue Man Group.  We had a ticket for Monika, but she seen them before and didn’t care for them.  So Erin was able to go and she had a blast.  All the lights, music, and goofyness of The Blue Man Group.  We have a DVD of them so she knew who they were.

After leaving Vegas, we went to Flagstaff.  The reason for the stay was Dario wanted to see the Grand Canyon.  Checking the AZ Cardinals website, we saw they had practice that day so we went to see them.  Faith wanted to get us a treat, so she got Dario and I a football, and Monika a Cardinals shirt.  After the practice, we stood on the side of the field where the players left and we got several autographs on our footballs.  We got many starters including Warner, Fitzgerald, Hightower, and Dario got Leinart.  The next morning we got up and went back to the practice field where they had a team autograph session.  There, I stood in line to get Edgerrin James.  Faith took the couple autograph pages they handed out and got probably 30 autographs from some of the players that didn’t have a line.  Dario was able to get many players and both of our footballs and pages were full.

After the autographs, we went to the Grand Canyon and spent several hours there.  What can I say about this, its the Grand Canyon.  We drove home after leaving the Canyon.

The rest of their stay we pretty much hung out around the house.  Dario helped me put our window coverings up.  We ordered them back in July but it took like 3 weeks to come in.  Other than that, we played Wii and GameCube.  I picked up Madden ‘08 and a couple controllers, and another Wii game that came with a controller so we could play against each other.  Dario pretty much played Wii tennis so much that his shoulder hurt by the time he left.  We had a lot of fun playing, and by the time Dario left, he pretty much was able to kill me in tennis. 

We had a BBQ with pretty much everyone in my family showed up.  Faith’s parents were there, my mom and Kevin drove up from Yuma.  Elmer drove in from Maricopa, which was a real treat.  I haven’t seen him in years and to have him drive all that way to see Dario was very special.  Kallie was there and she brought her quads.  Dario drove through the neighborhood on one for a while.  It was a real good time with lots of food, laughs, and family.  What more could you want.

We all went to the movies with my dad and Pat.  We saw the new Indiana Jones movie.  We pretty much had to.  Every time we saw anything that had a picture of Indiana Jones (pretty much everything in Wal-Mart) Dario would start singing the theme song.  No brainer when it came to picking a movie.

Faith and I took them to see the Arizona Diamondbacks.  They didn’t know too much about baseball, so I taught Dario about it by playing my old Sega baseball video game.  There were a few things I had to explain while we were there, but they pretty much understood everything that was going on.  He got to see a home run, stolen base, and the Dbacks won.  So it was a success.

A couple days later we went to see the Arizona Cardinals pre-season game against the New Orleans Saints.  This was their main thing they wanted to do while they were here.  I had a hard time trying to get tickets.  Seriously, to a Cardinals pre-season game, I had to jump through hoops.  I finally found a guy who had 4 tickets for sale for a good price, and it included a parking pass.  Before the game, we stopped and grabbed some Subway sandwiches and we had a mini tailgate party.  We parked next to a couple people who had tents, grills, flags, games, and all that.  There was a couple guys who were playing Playstation hooked up to their truck battery. 

Dario and Monika really liked the stadium.  That was a real highlight to their trip.  The seats were pretty good, lower level, corner of the end zone.   So we had really good seats to see the Cardinals lose a game they were winning at half time.  When I asked Dario what he thought about it, he said the stadium was good, the game was not so good.  But it was a lot of fun.

A couple days before they left, I took Dario out to some of the back roads and let him drive.  He never drove for real, just in video games.  He did pretty good and after about an hour of driving and a quick trip to my dads, we got home.  Later that day we went to Donald’s house and went swimming.  We were there for a few hours and had a real good time.  Dario and I kept dunking each other and Erin (of course) was the last to get out of the pool.

Like all good things, this too had to come to an end.  We got up early and Erin and I took them to the airport.  Faith had to work so she couldn’t go.  It wasn’t fun, but it was as good as it could have been.  Lines were short (it was 4:30am) and traffic was light.  I gave Dario a hug and kiss, and they went through security and then walked down the hall to the gate.

If you are looking for pictures, I am having issues being able to upload them.  I will post as soon as they get uploaded.  I will hopefully get them up in the next day or two.  I was able to figure out why I can’t upload them this morning.  So I will need to spend some time at home to get them up.

Long post I know, but this was three weeks, and we did a lot.  I hit the big things we did, and maybe later I will post some other things from their visit.  Hope this satisfies for now.

Tropizm