Trip to AZ...

We left the morning of Dec. 26th to start our two part drive to AZ.  We were nervous about the roads but after some fog the first hour, we had sunshine the whole way which was awesome.  It was a long day especially since Kaley hates the car and spends some of the time just crying.  We made it all the way to Las Vegas where we stopped at a McDonald's for dinner and then headed to the hotel and to bed.  The next day the drive was much shorter and we made it to my parents' house at about 2pm with glorious sunshine!

Most of my family was already there and had been there a couple of days or more: Mike & Maile (Ellie, Benji, and Kaia) and Dan & Aranne (Blake, Chelsea, and Easton).  My other brother who lives in Chandler came over a couple of hours later with Katie (Juliet and Izzy).  So we had my entire family altogether for the family.  It makes for one very loud and crazy house!!  We got to announce our big news once everyone sat down together to open some more presents. (I had to wear a loose shirt and suck it in until then so they wouldn't already know!)  They of course were all surprised and it was nice to have them all finally know.  Once they all knew we posted on facebook and it became public knowledge which was such a weird feeling to have everyone know after so long of it being a secret.

The kids played, the adults chatted and it was fun to be altogether.  Mike and his family left mid morning on Monday and Dan and his family left on Tuesday.  We had a pretty low key trip this time around, here are some of the fun things we did: park time, lots of playing and sitting outside soaking up the sun, the kids playing with Grandma nonstop, naps, kid movie with Grandpa to see The Good Dinosaur, shopping for the girls, boys to see Star Wars (again!), and a dinner date with Steve while my parents watched the kids.  We had a great time while there except that I started getting a really bad cold on Wednesday.  That did not make for a great New Years Eve as I went to bed early!  I think between getting sick and being tired I was terrible at taking pictures for this trip.  I know my dad (and everyone else) took a bunch and my dad always compiles all of the pictures and sends out a CD.  Until then I just have the few that I took unfortunately.

There are currently 11 grandkids on my side of the family and there are only 3 boys, with 2 more girls on the way!

We left Saturday, January 2nd at about noon and drove all the way to Beaver, Utah, making the rest of the drive the next day.  Driving is already not our favorite thing to do but doing it while I had one of the worst colds I can ever remember was awful.  We were all so done with driving and ready to be home Sunday afternoon!  We were glad to find our house and Lucy were just fine and happy to be home even if that meant we were back to the cold and snow.