::out with the boys::

Kris had a conference in Phoenix over the weekend, and like the awesome husband that he is, he thought it might be easier for me if Max went with him. It was true, and Max was SO excited to get to go with dad.
I think they generally had a great time. These are some of the pictures that were emailed to me over friday and saturday.
A huge hotel breakfast--I can't believe he ate all that!

Max's little workstation for during class time. Lots of fun entertainment.

Producing cool stuff like this:

Love it!!

Testing the temp of the pool water with a changing color car. Max swam, Kris was too wimpy for the colder temps.

Max getting to be the dummy for demonstrations of headgear. This one cracked me up! We had to make sure he earned his plane ticket somehow!


I'm glad they had such a good time together, and it did make things tons easier for me--love you Kris!!

::phoenix::

Just a quick rundown of Phoenix activities.
Kris did lots of learning all day and Max and I got to play.
We swam and swam. In fact I was too busy swimming to get any good swimming pictures. When it's 110 outside, you've got to stay cool somehow, and swimming worked out well for us. In fact Max made huge strides in his swimming while we were there. The pool didn't have much shallow end, so I was keeping a tight eye on him. He was following Kris around the pool on a floaty. Then Kris took off fast across the deep end and Max, wearing his mask and snorkel, took off after him. He was completely without any flotation! I was stressed out but he swam perfectly and made it to the edge without even realizing he was really swimming on his own. After that it was like something clicked and he was all over the pool. By the time we were done he was swimming so confidently. It was amazing.
So that was the swimming.

In the afternoon Max and I went to a huge outlet mall in Tempe. Phoenix basically has anyplace you could ever dream of shopping--that's a chain.
Of course Max had to ride the carousel immediately.

He got the weird cool mer-horse. He's also wearing the sunglasses they gave out at the hotel pool. He wore them everywhere that day and felt very awesome.
We went to the Disney Store for some PJs and a cool shirt or two. (We don't have a Disney Store in Santa Fe!)

We went to the Carters Outlet and Max very cutely helped me pick out a bunch of baby clothes. We tried to go neutral, but I have to say we did pick out a couple of things that weren't neutral at all. We'll have to just see what needs to be taken back! (We don't have any Carters in NM at all. Boo Hoo.)
We went to Gap and got Kris work shirts.
Then we were tired tired. Max spied the Rainforest Cafe, and since I knew he would love it we stopped in for some (yucky tasting)ice water and to share a dessert. Who knew that the dessert would be bigger than Max. We barely made it halfway through.

It didn't really matter about the food though, because we were enjoying the animatronics and the fake thunder storms too much.

We had In-N-Out Burger for lunch both days, mmmmmmm.
We had a big Rainforest Cafe dinner on saturday night, to please the Max. Max and I went to a movie.
We went to sacrament meeting in Gilbert in our friends' humongous ward. We had dinner with the same friends that night. So fun!

I'm going to leave out the part about how I scratched somebody's car in the parking lot. I'm also not going to post pictures of my feet swollen up to the size of Montana. I'm not posting about the air conditioner in the hotel that barely worked, even though I had the thermostat put down to 50 degrees.
But really those were the only bummers.
We had lots of fun otherwise, besides the CRAZY HEAT!
At least we got to get away from the responsibilities and just hang out.
There you go, there's the report. Good thing I had my phone along to take photos since I didn't break out the big camera once!

(oh, and these are our new monkeys for the office. They scream when you squeeze their bellies. Yes they're very cute, and yes the kids love them. Including Max!)

::holbrook az::

This last weekend we took a drive to Phoenix. Kris had an orthodontics course to attend, and Max and I had some swimming, shopping and resting to do.

I don't really have many photos from Phoenix, it was TOO HOT for me to even think, but we had lots of fun. I'll have to post about it later.

But on the way to Phoenix we drove through the coolest little town on Route 66.
Holbrook AZ. I think it's the town Lightening McQueen's Radiator Springs was based on!
Check out the wigwam hotel:

Have you stayed in a wigwam lately?

Does it remind you a bit of the Kozy Kone motel?
And to make it even better, there was an awesome old car parked outside of every wigwam. Including a very authentic Mater which Kris drove by too fast for me to get a picture of.



And this muffler shop fit right in as far as I'm concerned. It's just so cool and vintage looking, don't you think?

And Ramone was there too, complete with his awesome paint job.

But I'm not sure who took off with his wheels.

I have no idea where the dinosaurs fit in all this, but they were there too, and they were awesome.


This is all we saw driving through the town quickly--bad pictures, bad lighting and all. I'm guessing there are probably more hidden gems in this little town. We'll probably have the opportunity to check them out at some point. I'll keep you posted.
Oh, and we stopped for lunch at DQ on the way home in Holbrook. Go there if you want a little vintage atmosphere, but not if you're in a hurry. It was still delicious though.

::Lava, we're gonna do it all day::

I'll explain the title of this post a little later.
While we were in St. George we decided to take a drive out to Flagstaff Arizona to see what it was like. We'd heard that it has four seasons, which we like and was high up in the mountains, and we like mountains. And since we're only a short two years away from actually deciding where we want to be, we are trying to check out some of the places in the west we might be interested in.

So anyway, we headed out for an overnight visit to Flagstaff. It was a very interesting drive. First we went through Zion's, which of course is incredible looking.

I love how even the road is red.

Then we drove out through the Navajo reservation and saw some more really amazing landscape. The desert red rocks and mesas and stuff are so striking. Its hard to take pictures of some of that stuff--it's almost too much for a camera to take in.

We got to our hotel in Flagstaff and then decided we'd like to go on a hike. There's a famous old volcano crater just outside the city, so we went over there.
I wore the wrong shoes.

But I was tough, so I survived. Don't look too close at my dorky toes please.
It wasn't a tough hike, but it was very cool looking out there.
There were piles of the old lava rock everywhere.

The crater itself was a very cool color--which is probably why they call it "sunset crater"

Max wore himself out running way ahead of us, and finally just had to be carried most of the way.

Little did we know that he had the stomach flu and would wake up the next morning and throw up all day. Good thing we didn't know.



We couldn't really figure out what his deal was. Oh well.

He made up a song while he was riding on Kris's shoulders that went "LaVA, we're gonna DO it ALL DAY" and sang it over and over and over, very loudly the whole way. It was funny.

After the hike. All that shoulder riding must've been very dehydrating.

After our hike we went and had dinner (good yummy mexican food) and went to bed, planning to take a good look at the city in the morning. Then as you already know, Max decided to throw up. All morning. When he finally stopped throwing up for more than about 15 minutes we quickly threw him in the car and hurried away. We drove through the city a little bit, but after he threw up in the car we decided it was time to head back. So I don't even have any good pictures of Flagstaff. We liked it though. It was small and kind of interesting with lots of pretty trees. I do have a tree picture.

Just imagine a city where most of the buildings are hidden behind trees like this. That's the jist of Flagstaff. Or at least that's our impression after spending about 12 hours there.

We had to skip the grand canyon on the way back, but we made it to St. George without any more big problems, luckily.

Doesn't it seem like little kids always get sick on trips? And always at such inconvenient times? Remember what happened to me at Disney World?!?......Blah