I had a quiet, lovely weekend. I hung out with Rachel and Mico on Friday night, and we laughed at how old we are when we realized we were watching Dateline (or whatever news show was on) and playing Scrabble.
Kristin and I went hiking up near Payson on Saturday. Payson is up in the mountains, so it's cooler. (It's all gross and hot here now.) Payson is beautiful because it's right by the Mogollan Rim. The Mogollan Rim is this really interesting geologic feature. The northern part of Arizona is on a plateau (that's where the Grand Canyon is; everything's flat, and then all of a sudden there's this hole in the ground), and then the Mogollan Rim is where there's this huge dropoff into the valley where Phoenix is. And it stretches on for hundreds of miles. I didn't get any good pictures on this trip, but I'll try to next time. It's breathtaking.
Anyway, the hike was so pretty because it reminded me of northern Michigan, all green and piney smelling. It amazes me how there is so much diversity in this state. All of that lush green landscape is only an hour and a half away from me, and I'm in the middle of ugly brown desert.
We were really excited to see a creek. It's funny how water becomes a novelty when you're in the desert.
(Kristin is making a face because the water is really cold.)
We enjoyed hanging out by the creek for a while, but then we were being dive-bombed by enormous butterflies (which was even more terrifying because they were types I'm not familiar with), so we got out of there.
I was super excited to sing for church on Sunday morning. I was asked to sing a special Mother's Day song, which was really difficult because pretty much everything we could think of sounded so cheesy. We finally settled on Taylor Swift's "The Best Day," thinking that at least the teen girls would like it, and the words are pretty cute. I was self-conscious about singing it, but there was a slide show of mothers and daughters in the background, so I felt better not being the center of attention.
In addition to singing Taylor Swift, I got to sing with the worship band, and it was SO FUN. I wish I could do this every week. There was this Appalachian hymn called "Holy is Your Name," that was so beautiful, and we sang acapella in harmony, and there was this call and response African piece where I got to be the leader. The comment I heard the most after the service was how happy I looked to be singing, so I'm glad that showed. I just hope the singing was good, too. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the emotion of the moment, and the rules of good singing go out the window. Our choir director in college used to yell at us to not get sentimental.
I went to yoga class on Sunday afternoon, and there seemed to be a lot more groaning than usual, like people were just dying. And afterwards, in the locker room, the ladies were all like, "I thought there would be enough time for the mimosas to wear off!" Haha. Anyway, I'm still in love with Bikram yoga and think everyone in the world should be doing it.
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