Phoenix Trip 2015 - Part 3: Visiting with Friends

We decided to go to Phoenix because David had to work there for a week (having the hotel for the week completely paid for) but as a bonus, one of my good friends lives down there and we made plans to spend a couple of days together.  (Sue and Cal decided to take those days and go visit some of their friends as well.) Plus, two of my cousins are currently in the Phoenix area so I was able to visit with them, too. 

My dear friend Tausha Bentz lives in Gilbert and so we met up with her at her beautiful home. We played at a nearby splash pad, ate lunch together, and swam in their swimming pool. Lydia got along with Tausha's girls really well and Austin loooooooved  the splash pad more than anything else from the whole day. He just couldn't get enough!  

A couple days later we met up with the Bentz family again at the Phoenix Children's Museum. There was a huge climbing playground which was well loved by all the kids. We spent the majority of our time at the museum climbing around on that structure. Austin seemed SO big. Pulling himself up and walking all on his own. We've been to Children's Museums in lots of big cities, Houston, TX. Indianapolis, IN, Salt Lake, UT, Lehi, UT. The Phoenix Children's Museum was my very favorite museum of them all! We loved it. They had so many rooms that we didn't even make it to but looked so fun as we walked past. The kids loved going through the car wash, playing in the giant noodle forest, and painting a the castle in the art room. (I loved this, it is just a cardboard castle that has been painted every day for two years and that is what makes it so gloppy different shaped. The paint is like 6 inches thick in some places. 

I loved spending time with Tausha and getting to know her sweet girls better. 

We also make a special trip to visit my cousin Jonathon Walker. His wife and kids had already moved back to Wyoming but he was staying just another week until he graduated from his college. So we caught him right before he moved. I haven't seen him in a long time and it was good to catch up. 

My other cousin Nathan Rae lives down there with his wife Courtney and daughter Natalie. They were incredible gracious, and although we just stopped by for a few minutes before bedtime - they made us brownies and let us go outside and feed their pet turtle tank. (He was a HUGE turtle that just lives outside like a dog. They opened their back door and called to him and he came lumbering up to the porch to eat the apple they had for him.) I was so glad that we were able to meet up because I loved seeing their home and visiting with them. 

Phoenix Trip 2015 - Part 2: At the Hote

We stayed in several different hotels on the trip down, then a really nice hotel right in downtown Phoenix. Both David and I were worried about how sleeping was going to go with two kids. For the weeks and months before we left it was like "Yay - Phoenix is going to be so awesome." And then the day before we left it was like "Hey, what about sleeping? Are they going to sleep? Maybe this isn't such a good idea after all." We brought our pack and play and Sue brought her pack and play so we had a bed for both of them. They both did surprisingly well! Most of the time we had Lydia set up in the bathroom, and Austin stuck in a corner of the room that we tried to keep separate from where we were sleeping. (In the picture below we moved two chairs to create a barrier - the pack and play is hidden behind them.) They both slept pretty good the whole time, although our favorite hotel was a cheap little hotel outside of the Lake Powell-ish area that had two separate rooms and a hallway for Austin to sleep in. Everyone slept awesome, even Austin only woke up once. 

David had to go to work every day, so the kids and I spent most of each morning hanging out at the Hotel and then met up with Grandma and Grandpa Peaden to go play in the afternoon. At the end of each day, we were all pretty wiped out and had some good lounge time back at our room. 

(Also, we held as a bribe a pair of minnie mouse pajamas because Lydia has this pair of minnie mouse pajama pants that are size 12 month and she still requests to wear them all the time. (We got them in a box of hand-me-downs and they were too small even then.) They are ridiculous but she loves them. So we held on to them and gave them to her one night when she was fighting bedtime and it worked like a charm.  Ah, bribery. A great parenting moment for us. 

Cal and Sue stayed at a different hotel than we did because it was much more expensive than other options, then on Friday night we packed up and moved over to the same hotel as them because David's work had stopped paying for our other one. It was fun to stay in the same hotel as them and I wish we had been able to make it work all week!

Phoenix Trip 2015 - Part I: The Grand Canyon

David has a client in Phoenix, AZ and each year he goes down there for a week to work his auditing magic. This year, he was going to be gone over my birthday. I wasn't thrilled about that and said that I was coming with him (and I was bringing our kids). I say that almost every time he has to travel for work, but this time we started talking about it seriously. Then we mentioned it to David's parents, and they hopped on the bandwagon and decided to come with us. (Sue is from Phoenix, Cal served his mission in that area, and they were married in the Mesa Temple- but they haven't been back since they were married!) We rented a mini-van and all drove down together. We were gone for 10 days, leaving on a Friday and returning the following Sunday - because David had to work M-F and he wanted to be able to do some fun things, too. We had a great time, although it would have been 100 times better if David hadn't had to work. (I kept having to remind myself that him working was the reason we were there in the first place and it paid for our hotel stay.)

Note: I got ready to blog about our trip and realized that there was no way it was going to fit into one post, so I'm going to have to break it up into several posts, but I'll arrange them so when we print our blog book at the end of the year it will all read in chronological order. 

And so, here is the rundown of our super-awesome road-trip to Phoenix: 

Part I: The Grand Canyon

It's about a 10 hour drive to Phoenix, so we decided to do it over two days. We left on a Friday afternoon, stayed in a random hotel that night somewhere along the road then hit the Grand Canyon on Saturday before driving the rest of the way to Phoenix. We'd never been to the Grand Canyon before and were really excited! We went to the visitors center, then rode on their shuttle bus to a couple of different viewing spots along the rim. 

Some things to remember: Austin learning to walk and wanting to practice all over the place, Lydia having almost no interest in the actual canyon but just wanting to climb all over the rocks, looking at the Cacti, baby wearing both of our kids, being together as a family.

It was a great experience and even though we were only there for a couple of hours we had a nice time. It would be fun to go back when the kids are a little older and we can stay a little longer.