Assorted things...

This is the first view of Anthem from the I-17 exit onto Anthem Drive.  On either side of the road are these step-fountains.  Anthem is twenty years old this year.  My brother and his wife have lived here almost from the beginning.  I think they moved in 2000...

The desert flowers continue to bloom but my allergies seem to be subsiding somewhat.

This is the mission office / Deseret Industries parking lot with all the palo verde trees in full bloom.  When the wind blows, we have yellow petal snow

Here is another local palo verde tree so loaded down with blooms

We had our LAST VEHICLE INSPECTION ZONE CONFERENCE!  Can you tell how excited I am about that?  To make it even better, it lasted only two days - four zones per day - and Elder and Sister Harris helped us with the inspections.  Here we are at the Campbell Street building conference.

Tuesday morning was at the meetinghouse lovingly called "The Bathtub Building" - because it is adorned with this pretty blue tile.

Here are some pictures of lunch - which offered Barro's Pizza (think Shakespeare's Pizza -

all of you from Columbia) including a gluten-free cheese pizza just for me! The second photo is when all the missionaries gather after lunch to sing the Arizona Phoenix Mission "fight song"

Steve and I had a lovely weekend that started with a Friday night Amazon Prime video called "I Can Only Imagine" based upon the writing of the Christian rock song of the same name.  It was really good.  Saturday, after the temple in the morning, we drove to the McCormack-Stillman train park in Scottsdale.  We first went there last May with Kirsti, Ryan, and Alice but we didn't see all that we wanted to see.  This time, we went to the museum and toured the train version of Airforce One that served several U.S. presidents in the mid-twentieth century.  It was in beautiful condition.  We also visited the model train pavilion again and admired all the amazing work bringing model train landscapes to life.  Bill Keene, the creator of Family Circus cartoon, lived near the park for 30 years and there is a sweet statue in his honor.

After the train park, we continued to Mesa to visit my sister Jerri, to catch dinner at a Wendys, and then to attend the Millennial Choir and Orchestra concert at the Mesa Performing Arts Center.  There is no photography allowed so I pulled this from their Facebook page.  This is a HUGE choir comprised of an adult choir, a youth choir (ranging in age from junior high to college), and a children's choir.  Each group is massive.  The youth choir has so many female voices that they have to be split into two groups to perform on different nights.  Cade Ellsworth sings in the youth choir.  

The balcony seats closest to the stage are left empty because the choirs spill out into those spaces.  As you can imagine, they produce a wall of sound - which the directors take advantage of.  They arrange/compose most of what is performed and they go all out BIG with pretty much every number. Steve felt it was a bit too much.  I tend to agree.  There are Millennial Choirs in Orange County, Idaho, Utah, Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Mesa-Gilbert.  Comprised mostly of members of the Church.  They are unabashedly patriotic and religious but sometimes they lay it on a bit thick.  Each one of the members pays a fee to be a part (except the extremely talented orchestra) so I cannot even imagine the money involved in these choirs.   Anyway, I am glad we went.  

I have been re-watching Avengers-Infinity Wars this past week in anticipation of the new movie - which I hope to catch next weekend.  I did make Elder Wall tell me about it on Friday since he saw it late Thursday night.  I am so looking forward to watching it myself.....