Trip to Phoenix

Marissa and Zack's open house was in the Phoenix/Mesa area a couple weekends ago. Zack grew up in Arizona, so we made a quick trip to Arizona and stayed at Zack's mom and dad's house a couple of nights. Before we left Utah, we arranged to meet with some families in Phoenix that adopted from Ukraine also. Alex was excited to see his friend Dima (now Donovan), who was in the same orphanage. We thought they would go crazy talking about old times and speaking Ukrainian. As is typical with these adopted kids, they hardly conversed, and what little they did converse was in English! Alex tried to speak Ukrainian to Dima, and Dima didn't understand a word he was saying. But they did have fun playing arcade games.

This is Marie. She and her husband were in Ukraine the same time we were. We went to dinner with them in Ukraine and were going through the process almost simultaneously with them. They adopted a young boy. Marie's twin sister (Rose) hosted Alex for the first few days in Phoenix until we took him back with us to Utah.

Then later that day, we hung out at the church and helped prepare for the open house for Marissa and Zack.

Zack's mom had the cute idea of putting up giant pictures of their wedding day and some engagement photos.

Alex said he wanted this picture afterwards, so he rolled it up and took it back home to Utah. It now hangs on the wall by his bed. If he wakes up in the night, he'll have this GINOURMOUS picture of Zack and Marissa gazing down at him. Too funny.

How great that the Allreds have an honest-to-goodness chef in the family who oversaw the food aspect.

Aunts and cousins showed and spent hours in preparation. Great family support.

These look like balloons, but they're really lanterns with lights inside. It was a nice effect when the lights were dimmed.

The boys looking bored before the guests arrived. Quinn and Alex were the "table clearers."

Quinn was an awesome table clearer. He stuck to the job till the bitter end.

Zack's mom and dad.

Our great friends, Dan and Debbie. We got to go to lunch with them too! It was so nice actually knowing some people that came to the open house.

I thought this was a great idea. Zack's brother-in-law is a graphic design artist and put this design on the entrance into the open house.

It was a fun weekend. We got enourmous amounts of reading and homework done while traveling the eleven hours each way. Everything went off without a hitch, and it was nice to get to know Zack's family a little better.