We are in Florida! We arrived on Sunday, and after getting into the condo, we headed to the beautiful pool.

There was some cloud cover, but the pool was beautiful and the company was fantastic. Unfortunately, rain started that evening, and along with it came a weird power problem where the condo power was turning on and off with disturbing frequency. This was a precursor to…..Tropical Storm Emily, which hit Florida Monday morning.

While we did not take a direct hit (it was North of us), we did get some collateral rain. There was a pretty heavy amount of rain, so not a big problem, but the constant waves of rain made for a day spent indoors playing Rummikub, napping, and eating.

After dinner we decided to venture out. We started with a visit to Tin City. A nice little collection of shops and restaurants.

Then we headed down to the Naples beach, and snapped a few photos. You can see rain clouds out on the horizon, we saw the storm come in, and we headed to the car when the rain began. Below the picture slideshow, you can see a short video of the wind and waves. (You can hear the wind.)

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One cool thing on the beach was the turtle nests. I haven’t seen this before, so that was kind cool.

 

As this day approached, I was most concerned about how the day was going to go. One big concern I had was that we didn't have many plans for the day. The one thing that was planned was a dinner at the Wrigley Mansion, which is way up at the North end of the Phoenix area.

The day started like every other day while I've been visiting AZ, I went for a walk. I am always on the lookout for a good picture or two to capture while walking. I didn't really see anything that really caught my eye. I just grabbed a picture of the clouds.

I did some work today. I went and met Craig for lunch too. We split a MOD Pizza.

The big event of the day was the dinner at the mansion. It was very good, but Dad planned the dinner based on prices he saw when they visited the mansion on their anniversary and ate lunch. My chicken dinner, $24 with no sides. I got the cheap dinner. Other things were more expensive. It was very nice, and the food was delicious.

This picture is a room in the mansion, and they used the foil that wraps the gum in the packages as the wallpaper. They had one room with the foil as wallpaper in every house the Wrigley's built as a reminder to how they made their fortunes.

We took many family photos, much to Mark's delight.

One more thing that happened today, which I was reminded of when grabbing the pictures of the family, was the hummingbird. While speaking with Mom on the phone this morning, I captured a couple of photos of a hummingbird at the feeder. It was pretty cool.

I am anxious to be home, and tomorrow's flight can't come soon enough. I love you all and look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

Instead of starting at the beginning of my day, like I usually do. I am going to start with the end part (sunset) because that was probably the highlight of today. Since I had no DevCon today, and really nothing else going on, Mom & Dad Murphy and I were trying to plan something. One of the plans, which fell through, was to go see Renee and Daniel down in Tucson. Unfortunately, Renee’s great dane, Jackson, had to have surgery on his toe, so that didn’t work out.

As an alternate plan, we had discussed going to the Phoenix Art Museum. However, I was wondering if there was a way to see the sunset over Phoenix. I did a quick google search and found that South Mountain had a good lookout point near the summit of the mountain, and it was only a 30 minute drive from Mom & Dad’s house. I recommended that we go see it tonight. Well, we did go to the mountain and watched the sunset, and it was fantastic! Here’s a few of the best pictures I took at the top of the mountain.

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While it was a 30 minute drive to the base of the mountain, it was probably another 15 minute drive up the mountain to the lookout point, and that was a slow, small, 2 lane, winding road. There were many people up at the top waiting for sunset. The whole thing was really spectacular. We packed sandwiches, snacks, and drinks to have a little picnic at the summit too. It really turned out great.

When I got home from South Mountain, Mark and I went out just to hang out, and I got some pie. I forgot to take a picture of it, which is a bummer!

In the afternoon, we visited the Phoenix Art Museum, like we had planned. That was actually pretty cool too, and of course many great things to see too. The portrait of President George Washington is the image used on the dollar bill.

 

Before going to the museum, we stopped and had lunch. This Italian place was a favorite of Mom & Dad’s neighbor, Herm, before he died. I got the lunch special of baked manicotti, and it came with a salad, everything was delicious.

I walked this morning too, and Dad Murphy tagged along. I did 3 miles. I saw this sign, which I thought was cute, and I think we need to make one for Lucy.

I think that’s a pretty good recap for today. Love you all!

Again, up long before my alarm was set to go off. Not a big problem because I wanted to get my laundry out of the dryer and I was able to fold it before going for my walk. That bright bunch of flowers in what I think is a fountain really caught my eye this morning. I was surprised that I walked the same route as yesterday, but today it came up less than 3 miles, even though yesterday it was over 3 miles. Weird.

I left for DevCon about 7:20am. I didn’t have to be there at a certain time today because breakfast was served between 8am and 9am. For breakfast today, and most of the meals at DevCon, I have tried to avoid white stuff like bread, rice, and potatoes. I did have some potatoes with today’s breakfast, but I tried to eat lots of fruit too. I was pretty full after eating that plate of food you see there.

Then it was just a day of sessions and more food and snacks just like usual.

During one of the breaks today, they had these little cucumber sandwiches, and they reminded me of the ones we had at the party at Susie’s house (and Papa Andrews makes them sometimes.)

Here’s a few pictures of the resort. It is really a pretty place.

Before I left for DevCon today, I told Mom & Dad Murphy that I thought I would be back to the house by 7:30pm at the latest. I just assumed that we were going to eat dinner together, so I was surprised when I got back to the house and they had already eaten. I basically ate dinner by myself. They were sitting on the couch watching the Cubs/Sox game, but I thought that was kinda weird. Then we just sat and watched the Cubs/Sox game, and I was happy the Cubs won!

Kinda short today, but not a lot of stuff happens when you sit in sessions all day.

Love you all!

My day started early because I wanted to get my walk in before I had to leave to get to DevCon. I had to be at a breakfast at DevCon at 8:00am, and it was about an hour drive. I walked the route in reverse today, and the biggest thing I noticed by going the opposite direction was the giraffe. I snapped a picture of it as you can see below.

The conference was what a conference should be. I attended sessions about FileMaker Pro. I took a lot of classes in the intermediate developer level, and they were very good. After lunch, however, I could barely stay awake during the class titled: Workflow automation with script triggers.

Aside from breakfast, they have lots of food and snacks at these conferences. We have breakfast at 8am, then a snack at 10am, then lunch at 11:30am, another snack break at 3:15pm, and then they served us dinner at the attendees party at 6:00pm.

My time at DevCon ended today with an attendees party out by the pool. I didn’t take many pictures of the pool, and I should have. I did take pictures of the food table as I went through the line…

I waited for a few minutes at the table, and luckily someone brought more sliders…

The pool party was kinda dull, but while I ate, I watched these guys play bags. I think they were all speaking french, they were from Europe, and they had no idea how to play the game. They just seemed to enjoy throwing the bags at the board. They laughed a lot, and the guy with the grey shirt and white/blue plaid shorts was actually pretty good. The guy in the maroon shirt tossing the bag in the picture was really bad!

 

Since the “pool party” was kinda lame, and I would be swimming with people I didn’t even know, I decided to get out of there. I called Aunt Yvonne and Wayne and asked if I could visit and swim in their pool. Of course they were very happy for me to come. I stayed for about 2 hours (which was longer than I planned), but we had a great time visiting and cooling off in the pool. Well worth leaving the party.

Mom Murphy told me she made chocolate chip cookies, and I was happy to have some cookies and milk before going to bed. I also started my laundry, and I have to get that into the dryer.

I hope you all have a great day tomorrow!

Love you and goodnight!

Again, I woke before my alarm. My alarm was set for 5:45am, but I was up closer to 5:00pm. I decided to get up and go walking, and try to get back to the house before Mark left for his new job. I saw some baby quails while out walking (you can see them in the picture). It was raining on me during the first half of my walk, and it was humid, and I was sweating.

 

Breakfast was soft boiled eggs on a piece of toast. I worked for Boomer T’s at the kitchen table and I snapped a couple of photos of Mom & Dad Murphy in action.

 

After working in the morning, I headed off to DevCon around 2:30pm. I was happy when I got to the hotel to find out they had a Starbucks! I got myself a Carmel Frap. I had some time, so I sat in a comfy chair and sent some email and reviewed the sessions I would attend tomorrow. This is when I ran into Jeff London, he is part of CAFDA with me.

 

The DevCon keynote address started at 6:00pm. Interesting stuff, but I’m not allowed to share any of the upcoming developments because it is secret.

 

After the keynote, there was a reception with food and desserts. You can see the food in those bowls, it was a little weird. I did eat some of the stuff in the middle picture. It was pretty good.

For Dessert they had these little cups they called “shooters”. I liked the strawberry (on the left) and cookies & cream (middle), the pineapple (on the right) one wasn’t very good.

 

I got back to the car around 8:30pm, and the GPS said I had a 45 min drive. The radio was playing jazz, so I stopped and bought a aux cord for the car (I have Spotify premium, thank you Katie), that’s when I noticed the In-N-Out Burger. I wasn’t able to resist temptation, and I stopped and got meal #2. You can see it below. It was very good.

 

I had a pretty good day. I have to be at a breakfast tomorrow morning at 8:00am, so I am off to bed. I think the drive in the morning won’t be as smooth as it was tonight because it will be during rush hours.

Love you all…good night!

I set my alarm the night before for 5:45am, and I wanted to be out for a walk in the neighborhood by 6:00am. I woke somewhere between 5:00am and 5:30am. I shut my alarm off. I was out walking by 6:07am.

Returned from my walk and found that all the ingredients for biscuits and gravy were available, so I whipped up a batch for everyone before church. Mom Murphy threw together some fruit bowls. It was a nice breakfast, at the house.

 

Attended the “traditional” service at Sun Valley Community Church with Mom & Dad Murphy at the Tempe campus. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, but then found out the regular worship leader was out for the week. The pastor was shown via video and was very good.

Had a ham sandwich for lunch, at the house. Then watched the White Sox game for a while. Since we had a few hours this afternoon, we contacted Stephenie about getting together for some ice cream. We were going to pick up the ice cream at the store and bring it to Craig & Stephenie’s house. (Craig was working today). While at the store, Stephenie called with a need to change plans, so we put the ice cream choices we had selected back and headed for Superstition Springs Mall. We met Stephenie and the kids at the DQ in the mall. Had a nice hour long visit.

Headed up to the resort where the FileMaker Developers conference is going to be in order to register. Found the registration desk and registered. Then spent another hour talking to people. (Actually Mom & Dad Murphy were talking to people.)

Realized when we got back to the car (still at the resort) that I would probably drive directly to the restaurant where I was going to have dinner with Mark & Craig, Blue 32. During the drive to Blue 32, a big storm hit. Had a very nice dinner, although Craig showed up at nearly 8:30pm. Mark & I had already ordered dinner, but Craig didn’t want anything. We stayed there until a little after 10pm. We got home from the restaurant around 10:30pm.

Now time for bed.

I'm sitting in General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shortly I will be on a plane to Phoenix, final destination Mom & Dad Murphy's house. Aside from attending a conference in the Phoenix area, I will be visiting with my family. (Here's a side note…I just got notified that my plane is running late! The outrage!)

It is unusual for me to fly out from Milwaukee, but since we had come to town for a basketball tournament, it made sense. I had no idea I would be able to pass through TSA security so quickly. I was the only passenger at the time! A shocking and surprising development. I had a 2+ hour wait ahead of me, but with the flight delay, I'll be waiting a little bit longer.

I am listening to Spotify. Thanks Katie for purchasing a family plan and including me! Currently listening to the Ben Rector radio station, one of my favorites. (Currently listening to: Ben Rector Song)

Lot's of activity around you right now because another flight is getting ready to board, and everyone is getting ready to get into their spot in line. A little bit or organized chaos.