Baysinger: Love Grows Here: Week of Love: Around the World

It happened again - I got older. Twenty-six years old. For some reason that sounds real old to me. I'm sure I'll laugh at that in ten years but it's a true statement at this moment in my life. Maybe it's just the motherhood taking it's toll - the crummy sleep, long days, slowing metabolism. It's not all bad though.In fact, most of it is really good.

One really good thing about having a birthday is that so many people make you feel so loved! With all of today's technology I probably had at least fifty people take the time to wish me a happy birthday. Amazing.

Plus I got showered in thoughtful, wonderful gifts. SEE:

And of course, the very best thing about being ME on MY birthday is that it is the first day of the famous "Week of Love"!

This year's theme:

Around the World

Ammon and I dream of seeing the world. Of bettering the world. Of creating our own beautiful place in the world. But those things take time. And money. We are neither rolling in time or money at this point in our lives.

But Ammon decided that if he couldn't take us to the world right now, he could bring the world to us! And he did. And he did it amazingly well.

First up -

The United States of America

The good ol' U. S. of A. We'd like to consider ourselves patriotic. America is in our hearts and in our blood and we love this land and all that it stands for. We might dream of seeing other places but we only dream of living here.

We also strongly believe that there is a particular kind of American heart and charm in "Small Town USA."

In fact, we hope to live in a small town one day. Whenever we have a Saturday or a weekend to spare, we make the rounds to see if we can find "the place." So today's activity was naturally heading out to one of those small towns we've had our eye on:

Clarkdale, AZ
Population 4097

To clue me in to the day's theme and to keep us company on the two and a half hour drive, Ammon made up this sweet mix:

We arrived mid-morning and spent the rest of the morning enjoying the town center (which is a BEAUTIFUL area including a grassy area, park and gazebo - very Stars Hollow of Gilmore Girls, love it!) and exploring the main street.

We then grabbed some delicious grub at the local Mexican restaurant (hmmm...maybe we should have called this day "North America" day.) The food was good, the waitresses were very friendly and I even got some free birthday fried ice cream. YUM!

We asked a nice lady in the town information booth about good places to fish and on our path of discovery we also stumbled upon the Tuzigoot National Monument nearby. This is a pueblo village built by the Sinagua People around the year 1000 (I'm definitely thinking we should refer to this as North America day, haha).

In the Visitor Center. I'm making sure she doesn't fall off her chair -not palming her in the face or picking her nose. ;)

This monument was SO cool. Well, actually it was a bit warm and sunny. But the site was cool. As in awesome. Neat. Interesting. Totally worth seeing. It was a really great way to be outside, be a little active, learn something new and see a beautiful area. From the top of the monument you could see for miles in every direction. And so we scoped out our dream property - lots of acreage, cleared and flat but still surrounded by trees. Sigh.

See? You'll have to forgive the photo quality - we forgot the camera and had only our cell phones to work with.

In an effort to find some good fishing we also scoped out Deadhorse Ranch State Park. But evening was already upon us and so we didn't actually drop a line in anywhere. Beautiful area though.

Once we got home, Ammon had planned and prepared a delicious American dinner too - hamburgers! Not just any hamburgers mind you. These were huge, juicy, beer-infused, delicious hamburgers.

(Sidenote- alcohol is not a thing in our lives. That being said, basically all of our favorite foods (particularly hamburgers) are cooked with alcohol. If it says whiskey or bourbon or white wine or so forth and so on, we basically know we'll love it. Weird. But true.)

And just when I thought my birthday couldn't possibly include anything else - he pulled out this beauty:

Is that not the most beautiful birthday cake EVER? Wow. A HUGE thank you to Ashley who made this creation. It was as delicious as it was beautiful! Blew. My. Mind.

Wow.

Happy Birthday to ME!

Spain

The next day was Sunday - always a tricky day to incorporate into the Week because that's not our focus on the Sabbath. But Ammon was able to bring a few Sunday appropriate and Spain themed activities and it worked out brilliantly well.

We had a siesta.

If you are a parent of small children, you know what a gift this is.

He also tried to teach me how to play the guitar. It is safe to say that I am still not musically gifted. Plus guitars are built WAY too big (or maybe my hands are built way too small?). Oh well. We had fun trying. And I always love it when Ammon plays. What is it about a man with a guitar? Mmmmm.

We watched this classic:

And then we had a bit of a fiesta con familia!

Lots of the family got together to celebrate us February birthdays - so much fun! And delicious!

These cupcakes had ice cream frosting (I forgot to get a picture of one frosted - darn!). I'm not kidding. Oh. My. Gosh. How cool is that?!

Asia

Monday morning Ammon left me my letter for the day and told me that we would be dabbling in the Asian world that night. And he told me to tell him what kind of Panda Express and what kind of sushi to bring home. SUSHI. I've never had sushi and so this was a daunting task for me.

I took my conundrum to the Facebook community. To say that people were willing to help would be an understatement.

Yup. 113 comments. ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN. Wow.

I carefully considered their suggestions and sent my order to Ammon.

Also, in case you're curious, the overwhelming recommendation was for a place called Sushi Creek in Queen Creek. They weren't open that day or else I probably would have gone with them based on the outpouring of recommendations.

The rest of the evening looked like this:

Definitely happy with my decision - it was way nice to try a few different things and it was all pretty good. I can say that I liked it but didn't love it. Wouldn't consider myself a sushi person but that's okay.

Do you see that Panda in the bottom corner up in that picture? That was new to me! YAY! We ate our food and watched both Kung Fu Panda movies.

Plus I got to win a couple rounds on our new Chinese Checkers board.

Fantastic night.

Holland/Sweden/Belgium

Tuesday evening was full of many sweet surprises.

You just know it's going to be a great evening when your husband walks through the door with something like this:

Tulips. My beautiful tulips.

Upon receiving my tulips, I also received my letter. Tuesday was taking us to a few quaint areas in Europe: Holland, Belgium and Sweden.

Dinner was devilishly delicious. Homemade Belgian waffles. Homemade syrup.

Belgian Waffles

After dinner, Ammon created the full Swedish Massage experience for me. He pulled out his weight lifting bench for me to lay on. He laid out warm towels over me. He brought out the lotions and the oils. And then he gave me a Swedish massage. Amazing. No. Really. A-MAZE-ING.

He massaged away while we listened to this talk by Elder Holland (get it?- Holland!). Yup. A massage that lasted twenty whole minutes. That is a loonnngggg massage.

United Kingdom

Wednesday we had an adventure worthy of the UK. We went golfing (golfing originated in Scotland in case you cared to know)!

Where did we go golfing you ask? Well, only on the most sought-after greens in the nation.

The Baysinger Desert Club Upper Course

--- conveniently located in our backyard! ;)

We're not ordinarily golfers. So this became no ordinary golf game. We were a little low on equipment but not on creativity.

Happily, Uncle Royal was very generous and lent us the golf balls...those would have been a little more difficult to improvise.

On this four-hole course, Ammon won at four holes. By a lot. It was a good game for him.

That's okay. We all have our talents. Ammon may be good at scoring on a difficult, backyard golf-course - I, on the other hand, am good at eating. Which came in handy for the next portion of the evening. Trust me, you wouldn't want to be bad at eating when there was SO much delicious corned beef and cabbage made for you and not by you. *happy sigh*

While we filled our bellies on that Irish feast, we started watching a BBC show on Netflix: The Paradise.

This was such a fun night. And really something anybody could do anywhere. Feel free to steal this for a date night. You would not regret it.

France

Thursday night we sampled a few things "French." It was SO delicious if not exactly authentic.

He also had plans and supplies for doing something like this:

buuut we were exhausted. So we opted instead to continue watching The Paradise. So sue us. ;)

Italy

At last, Friday night arrived. The night he had told me to prepare to be away from our babies. A real date night folks. Even better. An all night date night. Even better better. An all night date night that is themed "Italy."

Call me a romantic. Call me a girl. Call me typical. But of all the places in all the world, I dream the most of experiencing Italy.

Ammon knows this.

And he created an absolutely magical night for me.

We started by dropping off our little ones at Tamzon and JT's house. (Does "thank you" even begin to cover it? Probably not. But it's all I have to offer. Thank you, thank you, thank you!)

From there we headed straight to dinner in Scottsdale: Nick's Italian Restaurant

You wouldn't think much of this place just to drive past it. If you're looking for a restaurant that blows you away from the parking lot then you better keep looking. However, if you're looking for a place with unbelievably delicious, authentic Italian food then stop looking now. The menu was HUGE and the food was incredible. Like really, really incredible.

If you are ever lucky enough to be in the area please try this place. I think you would not regret it. We didn't.

Spaghetti Pollaio

Linguini with Clams

Homemade Chocolate-Chip Cannoli

The food at Nick's would have been a complete Italian night for me - and well worth the drive into Scottsdale. But that was not our complete night. Not even close.

What else? Well, a gondola ride of course!

Did you know that there were gondola rides available right here in Arizona? No? Me neither. Italy and Las Vegas. I was pretty sure that was the extent of that availability. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Right here in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Hyatt Regency you can take a ride on a gondola!

This is not my picture - I forgot to take one!

It was pure romance. Just the two of us on a gondola with our gondolier. On a moonlit night with courtyard lights sparkling and the peaceful water all around us. And the absolutely beautiful voice of our gondolier. Amazing. We were so lost in the moment that we didn't even take a picture. Even in this day and age some things are just left to the filing systems of our memories.

Yet another thing that I would highly recommend if you are ever in the area. Just do it. It's romantic. It's unique. It's awesome.

Surely, that is all there was to the evening, right? Well, that's what I was thinking too. But no, my friends. That is not all.

We headed home to enjoy the rest of our kid-free night and my sweet husband pulls out our wine glasses and a bottle of wine (fear not, it was the alcohol-free kind). What is Italy if not prime wine country? And we did not want to miss out on that.

Of course, we did not consider that we might need a corkscrew. Hmmmm.

Thirty minutes and many failed attempts later, we successfully opened that bottle of wine with some tools from the garage.

At long last, we poured, we swished, we sniffed, we sipped, we gagged, we poured the bottle and both glasses down the drain and declared the wine-drinking population of the world absolutely insane.

I find this picture absolutely hilarious - do you see the wide array of tools on that table? And the splashed wine all over the table from our violent opening? Hahahaha. We are clearly not wine drinking people.

This was a perfect night. You gotta make yourself an Italian night. You just gotta.

Africa

Bright and early the next morning we went to fetch our littles from the Olmsteads. I wish I had taken a picture of Ammely and Rori's cute little faces pressed up against the window upstairs as they saw us pull up to the house. But I did not.

Our girls were both happy and alive and none the wiser to the exhaustion and sleep deprivation they placed upon their gracious hosts. I'm sure that family was happy to go back to bed or catch some naps that day. Again, thank you!

Our last stop on our journey around the world took us to Africa.

Betcha didn't know Africa was in Arizona too, did you?

Well, Arizona is a very diverse place.And in Cottonwood, Arizona is a gem of a place called "Out of Africa Wildlife Park."

It's akin to a zoo experience but I actually liked it much better. Granted it is a little smaller and has a smaller selection of animals - however, you are so SO close to the animals. They have shows and bus tours and feedings and all kinds of ways that actually let you experience the animals instead of just spotting them from afar.

It was SO cool.

Do you see how close we are?!