Arizona Trip Wrapped Up

It was so fun to go to Arizona and not be on any schedule. Usually our visits are limited to work vacation time and school breaks. Going without Nick meant we didn't have to work around his vacation time and being that Summer classes were finished I had a full month until Fall semester started. It took every ounce of self control not to stay that entire time. Words can't describe how much I enjoyed being with my family. I love that Sally's family lives with my parents right now because it means we get to spend all day, every day and all night, every night together. And we took great advantage of that time. We stayed up until midnight every night playing board games together. Those are my most favorite memories! Once Sally's family moves it will be very different when I visit.

Lacey was able to spend a good chunk of time at my parent's house too. She was able to take time off of work so she could stay longer. I'm so glad she could do that. Even though it's crazy sometimes when Sally, Lacey, and I are all under the same roof because between the three of us we have seven kids ages 3 and under, it's SO much fun. I wish Kiley and Gabe could have stuck around longer, but they only got to stay through the weekend.

I definitely wasn't gloating over this score sheet. And it definitely didn't end up on the fridge after everyone went to bed. That would be completely out of character for me!

One really bizarre thing while I was there; almost every night we had lightning storms. And not normal lightning. On this night that I tried to snap some pictures, the lightning literally crawled across the sky. It was so strange, but so cool! Then there was one night when bolts of lightning were coming straight down and at one point I was certain one touched down in my parents backyard. It was SO close. Then a few minutes later there was a firetruck and police cars two houses down from my parents house. Turns our lightning struck a neighbor's palm tree and caught it on fire. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the bolt that I was so certain touched in my parent's backyard. The lightning was so crazy the whole time I was there. And there were some nights when we had some pretty good thunderstorms. Oh how I miss those Arizona desert storms. Nothing beats them.

Matthew, Amber, Hannah, Shasta, Sara, Shelby, and Lizzy

 No amount of time spent with this girl will ever be enough. I forced her husband to take a picture of us with our kids because I wanted proof to show how much our lives have changed over the last nine years. Never mind that we couldn't get all the kids to cooperate. Shasta didn't want her picture taken so she decided to hide behind her hands! I loved every minute I spent with Amber. I don't know how any friendship ever survived after high school graduation without Facebook and texting!

I also got to have lunch with two good friends, Amy and Erin. It wasn't until I got home that I realized we didn't take a picture. I was super bummed about it too because I tried so hard to document this trip. I guess if I didn't get any pictures of Kiley and my parents, it's only fair that I miss one of some friends!

One of the times that Amber and I got together we invited other high school friends to join us. We took our kids to the splash pad in Amber's neighborhood. Only a few friends were able to come, but it was so fun to chat while our kids played. Unfortunately, I managed not to get a group photo of everyone.

 Prior to this trip, Shelby has had no interest in splash pads. We went a few times in Logan and she cried if I even took her near the water. Apparently the 114 degree weather helped her change her mind. I didn't even bother putting her in her swimsuit because I didn't think she'd want to get wet. When she showed interest I was too lazy to go to the car to get her suit so I just stripped her down to her diaper. It was sure cute watching her toddle around in the water.

Love those rosie cheeks too. Even if it is because it's burning lava hot outside!

We got a special delivery while we were there. Nick sent us the prettiest arrangement of lilies. He wanted to send tiger lilies (my favorite flower) in orange and purple (Shasta's favorite colors), but he couldn't find any. That's okay though because these ones were pretty amazing. He sent them to us just to tell us he missed his family. Too bad they arrived only a couple days before we left so we didn't get to enjoy them for very long. This picture of them was taken the day we left when they were finally in full bloom and so beautiful. I was really sad to leave them behind. I had considered taking them with me, but it would have been more hassle than it was worth and they would have died in the heat of the car anyway so I left them for my family to enjoy.

I wanted to include this picture simply for its sentiment. This is my childhood home. We moved into this house when I was four and it's where my parents still live. My dad built this house with my grandpa who passed away when I was a Freshman in high school. I attended elementary school, junior high, and high school in this house. My first date picked me up in this house. I received my first doorstep kiss in this house. I graduated high school, moved away to college, moved back from college all in this house. Nick asked my dad for my hand in marriage in this house and now we get to bring our children back to this house when we visit. This home holds a lot of memories, but I think what I treasure most is the fact that my dad built it. Every time I look at it I'm reminded of how amazing my dad is and how lucky I am to have him in my life.

A basic idea of the floor plan: upstairs has an entry way, living room, formal dining room, family room, kitchen, breakfast nook, master bedroom, my mom's craft room, laundry, three full bathrooms, and a three car garage. The downstairs is the full length of the house minus the garage (which sits at the right end of the house that has brick up to the roof). The basement has four bedrooms, my dad's office, a store room, a room that was labeled "The Big Room" when we were kids because it is a big, open room that is the length of the kitchen and family room which sits directly above it, and a bathroom. Maybe someday I'll attempt to draw out the floor plan. I've noticed as I get older my memory isn't as sharp as it used to be. I never want to forget this house and since I'm sure my parents won't live there forever, a floor plan will help preserve my memory!

Leaving Arizona was hard. I didn't want to go even though I had stayed longer than I originally planned. I was planning on leaving Friday before fast Sunday because Shasta and I had spent the last two months talking about sharing our testimonies in church and I really wanted to do that in our home ward. But I was torn about going because my cousin Jodi was having a baby shower that Saturday and blessing her baby that Sunday so a lot of my family would be in town to support her. I knew that by staying I would get to see a lot of faces that I hadn't seen in a very long time. Then come to find out, Nick's sister was blessing her baby that same weekend. I realized that my reason for coming home that weekend, to have Shasta bare her testimony, wasn't going to happen because we wouldn't be in our home ward anyway so I decided to stay in Arizona a few days longer. Even though I wanted to be able to support Emily and Ivy (Nick's sister and niece that was blessed), I felt it was equally important to support my cousin and see my family.

When the day came for us to finally leave I spent an hour trying to claw my way out of Phoenix. Out of all the possibilities for me to get lost, I couldn't find my way out of Phoenix! While it wasn't funny at the time, it's a little funny now. I couldn't find the right exit I needed. I was heading in the right direction and saw signs that confirmed my way and then all of a sudden the only signs I was seeing was to Los Angeles and I was worried we were on our way to California. I decided to back track to the 60 and start again. Then I decided to exit onto the 17 towards Flagstaff knowing it would get me where I needed to go, but as I was driving down the freeway I started to get really nervous that I would get all the way to Flagstaff and there wouldn't be any signs helping me find my way to the path I needed to take and I didn't have any map quest directions to help me. So I decided to back track to the 60 yet again and just go the way I was supposed to. This time I decided to pay attention to freeway exit numbers instead of the names of the roads and finally found my exit that way. It turns out I didn't go far enough the first time. The only reason why this experience was frustrating was because Shasta and Shelby were both sound asleep the whole time and all I could think about was how I lost an entire hour of putting road behind us while they slept.

The drive home was much more difficult than the drive to Arizona. And I wasn't prepared for it to be hard. Because the girls were such angels on the way I just assumed going home would bring the same pleasant church bells. Boy was I wrong. There was a lot of crying on the drive home. And the girls cried a lot too! Haha! I'm just kidding. I think I only cried trying to get out of Phoenix. At one point Shasta told me she didn't feel good and thought she was going to puke. So I pulled over on the side of the busy highway, got Shasta out of the car, knelt beside her in the hot, desert landscape at the back of the car while she contemplated whether or not she really was going to puke (she didn't by the way), and three very large vehicles in a row (one being a semi) drove past us without switching lanes. It made me so mad. Could they not see the mother kneeling down next to her very young child at the back end of a car pulled off on the side of the road with flashers on? Show some common courtesy people. Seriously.

Then once we were on our way again we were almost in a car accident while in a small town. There was a car in front of me that was cruising along and then all of a sudden it was at a complete stop. I hit my brakes so hard as to not hit the car that literally everything on seats that wasn't buckled in flew to the ground. It scared the crap out of me! What happened was a car pulled out in front of the car in front of me and stalled their car so the car in front of me almost hit them leading me to almost hit the car in front of me. Thank goodness the speed limit was only like 25 or 30 miles at that point or it would have been a much different ending.

Once we finally reached our hotel in Mesquite, Nevada (the North side of Las Vegas), this is how I found Shelby. As we were driving through Vegas she was really grumpy and cried a lot. I thought maybe she was hungry so I handed her a poptart. It kept her quiet for a good chunk of time and then she started crying again so I assumed she finished it and wanted more. She's in a rear facing car seat and doesn't talk so pretty much everything with her is a guessing game. I handed her another one and it kept her quiet until we got to our hotel. Turns out she just enjoyed rubbing it on her face and legs and crumbling it. For how much was in her car seat, I'm not even sure she actually ate any of it. Oh well, it made the drive bearable.

We stayed in another Casino hotel, but this one was far less convenient. It was motel style so check in was in the building with the casino, but our room was in another building that we had to drive to. When I made our reservations I requested a room close to the elevator so I wouldn't have to haul the pack n' play as far and in my request I explained why I wanted to be close to the elevator. Well, the ever-so-helpful desk clerk asked me if I would like to be on the second floor. At this point I didn't realize it was in a different building so I agreed that the second floor would be fine. Then after he explained how to get to our room, we drove over there and there's no elevators. Sure we were only on the second floor, but this time I had to haul the pack n' play up a flight of stairs while carrying my 16 month old because although she's finally grasped the concept of walking, there was no way I was letting her climb the filthy stairs of the hotel. He could have put us on the ground floor and saved me so much heartache, but no. At least this time we could park right next to our room so I decided it would be okay to leave the girls in the room alone while I hurried to the car for a second trip. In the last hotel I would never have dreamed of doing that being that we were on the 10th floor and had to walk through the casino to get to our car. The hotel stays were by far the worst parts about the trip!

After the girls and I walked over to the casino and had dinner, we went back to our room to rest. It had been a long, stressful drive and I was done for the night. We were in our room hanging out and Shelby decided to take a nose dive off the bed onto the floor. I ran over and grabbed her and cuddled her on my shoulder and laid down on the bed and then Shasta asked me what was wrong with Shelby's face. I pulled her away from me to find her nose was bleeding. And there was blood on the pillow. And there was blood on my shirt. I pulled the pillow case off the pillow and there was blood on the actual pillow too. Ugh. Thankfully her nose didn't bleed much longer and we were able to call it a night.

Although the girls weren't nearly as pleasant coming home as they were going, they still had their moments of sweetness. Shasta was really helpful with Shelby. I packed individual snack bags before we left so it would be easy to hand snacks to Shasta. But Shelby would just make a mess of her snacks so I asked Shasta if she would hand some to Shelby out of her own bag and she was more than willing to help. She also helped Shelby when she dropped her lion (if she could reach it) and from time to time they played together as best as they could. That's one benefit to having Shelby rear facing is the girls can see each other better.

Really I shouldn't complain that the girls weren't as pleasant coming home. They were perfect angels on the drive to Arizona and because of it they skewed my expectation. Because I knew they were capable of riding without complaint, I was no longer prepared for them to be opinionated during the ride home. In reality, the ride home was still better than what I was prepared for originally when we went on this adventure in the first place. I only had to stop the car once (outside of gas and food) to let Shasta stand on the side of the road and realize she wasn't actually going to puke. We had to do it again the next day, but it wasn't a big deal. I knew she didn't actually need to puke, but I didn't mind giving her a break from her car seat.

I really wasn't prepared to entertain my kids on a 14 hour drive. I'm a firm believer that if I fill every waking moment with entertainment for them then they will never learn how to sit patiently and wait (at a doctor's office, in church, standing in line... they will always need something to fill their minds... but this is a rant for a different day). Anyway, so I decided I wasn't going to fill the car with a bunch of things to keep them busy on the drive. I knew it wasn't realistic because I wasn't available to keep handing them what they needed and the more they had the more they'd drop and I couldn't reach things for them. I Jimmy-rigged a bag to hold Shasta's stuff. I took an old purse and hooked it to the driver's seat. I extended the strap with some ribbon so it would reach all the way to her seat. Then I tied ribbon to the other strap and hooked it to the buckle that goes between her legs so she could always pull it towards her. Once she's buckled in she can't lean forward to reach anything so I was pretty proud of myself for my little invention!

In her bag we had an assortment of books, a notebook, and a pen. Each girl also had a baby doll and a stuffed animal. That's literally all we brought with us for entertainment. Oh, and I had a movie downloaded on my iPod just in case I was desperate. I never ended up needing it, and good thing too because it didn't work! Haha! Once we got to Arizona I was so pleased with how well the girls traveled that I wanted to surprise Shasta with something for the drive home. I thought a sticker book would keep her busy in the car so that was her special surprise. And I'm anti crayons in the car because they would just end up all over the floor and then she would cry about not being able to reach them, plus the heat would have just melted them all over everything so we don't do crayons in the car. Before we left I searched for one of those pens with several different inks so that she could color in her notebook with different colors without the mess of dropping them all over the floor or melting all over her car seat, but I couldn't find one anywhere. While in Arizona I found a two pack at the dollar store of all places. Being that it came from the dollar store, they're not the best quality, but they served their purpose well!

We came home to a pleasant surprise. Nick was at work when we got home, but a sweet gift was waiting for us on the couch. The note reads "Welcome home family. I love you and missed you very much. Love, Dad". The Reisens were for me... my favorite candy! The book for Shelby. The sticker book was for Shasta... it's a new pastime that Nick and Shasta enjoy doing together. And Candy Land was for the whole family to enjoy together!

Going to Arizona was amazing. I told my family that it just may be a new tradition. Granted, it really isn't fun doing that entire drive without someone to take a turn at the wheel. But we made so many fun memories while we were there and I LOVED watching my girls play with their cousins that they only get to see once a year... twice if we're lucky. Something about that needs to change! The drive may not have been fun, but getting to stay for two full weeks sure made it worth it.