A Week Worth of Fun

Jason was on vacation all of last week. We had originally planned to take a trip to California, but after a lot of thought, we decided to wait until next year when Mila will be a little bit older. She doesn't enjoy her car seat or sleeping without her crib, so we thought it would be better...

We really enjoyed having Jason home with us. We got to play a lot...

Our 4th of July wasn't very exciting... and I didn't even get any pictures of the girls in their red, white and blue. We spent the whole day shopping for school clothes for Carter (even though he was at Grandma Nelson's house). When he got home he just had to try everything on which was right up his alley...no shopping. We then just went down the road to watch the Schnef Farms Fireworks Show. We found a really good park right away and unloaded Mila and Leah, and set up their little chairs to sit in, and within 15 minutes of us being there Leah got bit by a mosquito. You would have thought it tore her leg off or something, the way that she was screaming. We decided to pack it up and head home so that everyone else around us could enjoy the fireworks. When we got home we watched the rest of the fireworks from Carter's bedroom window. (Which was actually kinda nice, air conditioning and no traffic to fight when we were leaving.) Mila was pretty mesmerized and really didn't know what to think of the whole thing.

On Sunday Jason's parents brought Carter back home. He had so much fun in Safford that he's hoping to be able to go back before school starts. We'll see. He only has 2 weeks left of summer break.

We did some shopping with his parents and then went to Peter Piper for lunch. Surprise. Surprise. Leah tends to get her way to eat at Peter Piper whenever she can.

This tends to be her favorite ride and I have pictures of her on it every time we go there.

Leah with her dirty face and all.

We took a trip to Canyon Lake with my brothers and their families and my mom. The kids had lots of fun! Except Mila did not like her life jacket, so as long as she didn't have to wear that then she was happy.

Again, she ate almost the entire time there.

Carter still didn't want to try the tube, he just enjoyed playing in the water...

The kids going out for tube rides.

Carter and Leah just took turns being the flag holder.

This was Mila's excitement...A bunch of ducks and birds. They would almost come right up to you to get food, and she was loving it!

Then, we had never been to Sunsplash because I've either been pregnant or had a tiny baby. So my mom treated all of us to a trip to Sunsplash with the whole family. It was so fun! I didn't know how big that place was...It really was Fun for All.

The sidewinder half pipe ride was one of the scaryest rides that they had there and Carter was not afraid of it one bit. You go straight down 5 stories and then up the other side.

(You'll have to make the pictures big to get the full effect.) Their faces are what's so funny...

Here's Carter and Jason.

And then Jason begged me to try it.

That was pretty scary to say the least...At the top, the ride worker is strapped with harnesses and I asked her if she's ever had to use them. She said that some people try to stop going at the last second and they grab her. I really felt like grabbing her at the last second too.

Carter and Brad.

Carter went on this multiple times before, but his face shows the fear... We were laughing so hard at the bottom just watching their faces.

Here's the whole clan of kiddo's just before Mila fell of the bench.

Thanks to Grandma for the really fun day!!! We ALL had so much fun!!

Carter has been begging to go somewhere and stay in a hotel for a long time. (We don't go anywhere, can you tell?) We were going to stay at a local hotel that had a water park, but we were all pretty tired of being in the sun, so we just decided to go to Tucson for the weekend. Jason found a cool western strip mall in the middle of Tucson. I think it's mostly known for the steakhouse that's there, but it was lots of fun. They had a train ride and lots of old western stuff that Carter really enjoyed looking at.

Of course this old Jail cell was one of his favorites. They had an old pair of handcuffs that Carter was a little obsessed with...

I don't think the kids really understood that they were standing in front of someones old "house".

Mila really enjoyed this dog. When we first got there, the dog was taking a ride on the train and they thought that was sooo cool.

My favorite part was the Wild West Hot Sauce Store. They had every bottle of hot sauce under the sun. (I really did go on this vacation. I'm just always the one in charge of the camera.)

This was an old bath tub.

Carter with what else....the fire hoses.

This sheriff building was tucked away on the outer edge of the place and when we were all done looking at everything Carter says we didn't see the Sheriff Building. Of course that was the first thing he saw as we drove in and made sure that we didn't leave until he got to go inside. They had old jail cells to look at, but Carter didn't want to just "look".

At night this little town does a Wild West Stunt Show with gun fights and all, but it started pouring rain just 10 minutes before the show was suppose to start, so we didn't get to see it. Carter was pretty bummed! He kept begging to go back the next night.

It was one of the best rain storms that we had seen in a long time though...It poured rain and the lighting and thunder was amazing! As we were sitting at a stop light, lightning hit the corner right across from us and blew the stop lights out. It was pretty crazy. We couldn't see the car in front of us it was coming down so hard.

Mila had a really rough night without her crib. Getting her to sleep was pretty bad, she slept till 1 a.m. and then there was no getting her back to sleep. So we didn't get much sleep that night.

The next morning we were going to take the kids swimming at the hotel pool and they had it closed because they had to treat it from the storm the night before. They said it would be open in an hour and a half, so we waited...and waited...and waited.... Two hours went by and then two and a half....

Here's the kids waiting for the pool to open....

We just decided to take showers and go shopping. We were going to stay another night, but with Mila missing her crib, we decided to head home and sleep in our own beds. (I guess it was a good thing we didn't go to California after all.)

Now back to reality...