Land of the Sun

We spent the latter half of Audrey's Spring Break, including Easter weekend, in Phoenix visiting my sister Julie's family. Despite the severe lack of sleep, particularly amongst the children, we had a really great time! Julie warned us that the weather might be a bit "cold" - which, to her, means in the 70's, so it was pretty much perfect (except for Saturday, when it rained, but we rolled with it and just took the Easter Egg Hunt inside, kids didn't seem to mind a bit!). The 5-6 hour drive is a piece of cake compared to the 10 hour drive to Utah - especially since we drove at night and the kids slept a lot of the way (Adam climbed in his carseat as we were loading up and fell asleep before we even got on the road - and slept not just the whole way home, but the rest of the night once we arrived home, too!).

We took the kids to a really fun park that had themed areas - there was a farm playground, a dinosaur sand area, and a transportation area that had bike/scooter paths that were painted to look like roads. The kids loved it! The unequivocal favorite was the tire swing:


We got home, got the kids settled in with a movie, and Julie and I hit Last Chance. It's not for the faint of heart (when Julie first told me about it, she compared it to DI. I didn't believe her, after all, it's owned by Nordstrom - but she was right, it's right on par with DI), but this place is rife with bargains - it's where Nordstrom sends all their returned merchandise and they sell it at a steep discount. Julie found tons of great shirts and some shoes, and my highlights were a fantastic pair of black flats and an awesome pair of jeans. It was definitely worth the trip out there and worth the 2 hours of sifting through um, other, not-so-great finds. The plan was to stay up and play Rock Band on the Wii after we got the kids to bed, but I fell asleep myself! I dragged myself out of bed around 9:30 or 10:00, but could not keep my eyes open. I'm getting old and can't do the 5 hours of sleep thing anymore, I guess! I think everyone else played a couple of songs, and then we all headed to bed.

Friday we took the kids to a children's museum in Mesa. They had lots of fun there, too:





Friday night, we welcomed Julie's friend Rebecca, and her family, who came to visit. Rebecca's family lived down the street from us growing up, but I haven't seen her in years. It was so fun to see her again and to meet her family. We had a great time playing The Office trivia game and eating candy from Julie's stash. The kids had a great time too - so much so that they didn't settle down and go to sleep until after 10:00 and were up and at 'em by 5:45 the next morning! Saturday dawned rainy, so we hid the eggs inside the house and let the kids loose. They loved hunting and the resulting spoils.




Saturday night we met up with Lynsie and her fiance Steve for dinner. Yummy food and great company! Sunday was church, followed by a quick photo shoot, then an impromptu hunt for Easter baskets since the bunny came a little late this year:




After baskets, the kids dyed Easter eggs while Julie prepared a delicious dinner. We took quick pics of the kids with their favorites before turning them all into deviled eggs.



I went and picked Jeremy up to join us for dinner. I was able to see his new place - he closed about a month ago and has put a lot of work into having it renovated. It looks great - very classy! We really enjoyed visiting with him over Easter dinner and, consequently, left much later than we should have, which meant driving late into the night. We had a hard time getting up the next morning for work/school, but it was worth it - we had such a great time! Thanks so much, Julie and family, for being such great hosts! Hopefully we'll be back again soon! :)