Uncle Mike took us to Taliesin West this morning, which is the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright's Arzizona home/studio/campus. Dan and I took a 90 minute tour of the grounds and part of the house. It was fantastic, and really interesting. Frank Lloyd Wright was a very innovative architect, wrorking at the turn of the century and up until his death at the age of 92 in the late 1950s. He taught students here and at his summer place in Wisconsin. They had to use ...

DAN'S 26TH BIRTHDAY!! Stayed around the house during the day, I made Dan lunch and brought him tea and juice all day! We met Aunty Beryl and Uncle Mikel at Monti's Steakhouse in Tempe, which was built as a hacienda in 1871, one of the first buildings in the area. The steak was delicious. We then went on to a piano bar down the road, which was a really cool place. It was basement bar with a stage that had a 2 pianos back-to-back and a drum kit on it. ...

Today Laura drove us the 200 miles back to Scottsdale, and a teary goodbye with her, we'll see Nic and Mad in a few months at home. It'll be wierd not to have Madisson around, we'll miss the constant "joo, joo" (juice), "'beedboat" (speedboat = anything on water) and "blummbyblummybubuy" (water!!!). Laura was a fantastic host - thank you!!!

We could see the sail boats in the bay from our room so we went to have a look at them after we'd checked out. Dan bought ahackeysakand we played in the street for about an hour, with randoms joining in too. Went back to the Gaslamp Quarter to look in Urban Outfitters and other cool shops then drove over Coronado Bridge, across San Diego Bay, which looks like a rollercoaster, to Imperial Beach, where we sat for an hour. Imperial Beach is reminiscent of ...

We were all excited to go to San Diego Zoo, which is set in Balboa Park. Its a lovely zoo, although very hilly so we were all tired after a few hours... I couldn't wait to see the giant pandas - there were 3 of them and they were absolutely gorgeous. Madisson kept saying 'teddy bear' all the time, and they did look just like cuddly toys! We stayed about 7 hours in total. Tonight we went to the Gaslamp Quarter, whihc is the old part of town, and has...