Travel Journal Part 1

We are back from our trip to Arizona! We had so much fun. Here is our travel journal for the first part. I hope I don't leave anything out. Beware it is going to be a long one, which is why I chose to do it in parts.

FRIDAY
The kids and I went to the valley on Friday the 3rd to help my mom with a little dinner party. We decided that Nick could sleep better without us around. Nick came home from work about 2:00 and went to sleep so that he could drive through the night. He called us about 8:30 and said he was ready to go. We packed up and met him in Evanston. We didn't actually get on the road until about 10:00pm. (I just have to add that is was starting to snow pretty good as we were leaving) We made pretty good time. We were planning on a 16 hour trip but it only took 13 1/2. The kids did great. They slept most of the way.

SATURDAY
At 5 am we all got out and went to the bathroom, and then the kids went right back to sleep. We stopped again in Flagstaff for breakfast and let the kids run around and play for a while. The rest of the way we were occupied with singing songs, coloring, reading books and opening surprise packages with toys and treats. We got to Nikki's house about 10:30 (Arizona time). We watched the rest of General conference session and then went to the park. The rest of the day we just watched conference, played outside and went grocery shopping for the week.

SUNDAY
This day was mostly dedicated to watching conference (or sleeping through it). We tried to go to a park again in between sessions but the park happened to be closed for a big event so we just played outside and enjoyed the heat. We also got to hang out with my cousin Jennifer and her husband Derrell. They came over and we had dessert and just talked. It was really good to see them. Ryan, Jessica, Talan and Camryn also came over. It is always fun to get together with family!

MONDAY
Nikki had to work all day on Monday so we decided to hook up with my Jessica and her kids and go to the wildlife zoo. We had a lot of fun at the zoo. The highlight was probably feeding the giraffes.

Carter, Trevor and Abby at the petting zoo. Carter loved the animals until he got too close, then he was not too impressed.

Trevor and Abby loved the animals. I couldn't get them to come out.

Trevor, Carter, Talan and Abby outside the petting zoo.

This is Carter feeding the giraffes. They all loved this a lot!

The kids before going into the zoo. They don't look that excited in the picture, but they were!

After the zoo we were all pretty exhausted so we went to Ryan and Jessica's house and just hung out. We ended up just staying there most of the evening. We had a really good time and it was so good to hang out with Jessica again. We used to live by them in Laramie and we got to be really good friends and we miss them a lot. While we were at Taylor's house Jerry Hanson and his son came over because they were looking at houses in Arizona. We knew them when we lived in Star Valley so it was crazy to see them in Arizona.

TUESDAY
This was the hottest day while we were there. I think it was about 95. We spent most of the morning dying Easter eggs. In the afternoon we had an Easter egg hunt in the park. Nikki is a nanny for a little girl named Drew, so her and her mom came and joined us for the hunt. The kids had a lot of fun looking for eggs. We found out the hard way that Easter egg hunts are different in Arizona than Wyoming. We bought chocolate - oops it melted really fast.

Trevor and Abby looking for eggs

Carter found one!

Drew, Trevor, Abby, Carter and Nick showing off their goodies!

The rest of our day was pretty lazy. Nick and Trent (Nikki's husband) went to a Diamondbacks game. They sat in an all you can eat section and they ate enough for an army, but they really enjoyed it. Nick caught a ball at batting practice and he had to sleep with the ball that night. I have always said he is my first child! He was pretty excited and had a really good time. While they were at the game we went out and got ice cream and then went to the mall. We had a lot of fun looking at the pet store and the rain forest cafe.

The three amigos at the rain forest cafe.

Nikki with the kids by the frog at the cafe.

I think that I will call that good for today. I will post about the rest of the week tomorrow.