Phoenix vacation: part 1

We recently got back from a wonderful vacation in Phoenix.  We stayed with my parents, who co-own a house down there.  The weather was gorgeous, the kids traveled well, and it was a really good time to rest, have fun and get away from the cold for a little while.  Here's some of the highlights.

Tuesday, February 26
Our plane was scheduled to leave at 3:00pm, but on our way to the airport we discovered that it was delayed an hour and a half.  We decided to still keep going to the airport and wait there (I believe we sat and waited for about 3 hours after getting through security :P), which was a bit hard on all of us.  We finally flew to Denver, and thankfully had just enough time to catch our connecting flight.  In a bit of a happy accident, my brother and sister-in-law were also in the Denver airport, waiting for their flight home (they had also been to visit my parents), and they met us at our gate and brought us supper (which we wouldn't have had time to pick up otherwise).  We made it onto the plane on time, however, we had to sit and wait in the plane for almost an hour for de-icing before we could take off.  Emmett slept the entire flight.  Finally we made it to Phoenix, but unfortunately our luggage did not.  Thank goodness I always pack the kids' pajamas in the carry-on.

Tim Hortons donuts and the iPad helped to pass the time.  So did running (literally) around the airport.

Way past his bedtime

Weary travelers

Wednesday, February 27
Good thing I had just planned for this to be a "rest" day, because we had to stay home all day (wearing our "winter" clothes!) to wait for our luggage to be delivered (which it finally was at 10:30pm).  We discovered the little playground 2 doors down from my parents' house and ordered in pizza for supper.

Playground fun

Large saguaro cactus on the walking path behind my parents' place

Reading books before bedtime

Thursday, February 28
We spent most of the day at the Phoenix Children's Museum.  The kids had a blast!  We stopped for ice cream on the way home.  This was the day that Emmett's stitches needed to come out, and luckily my parents' neighbour is a nurse practitioner and was willing to come over and take them out for us.  Emmett was perfectly still and didn't make a peep - but even still, I was glad someone else was doing it, and not me!

This climbing structure was 3 stories tall!  You can't even see all of it in this picture.  I wasn't brave enough to climb to the top, but Carey took each of the kids all the way up.

Emmett loved this sand and light table.

Annika spent quite a bit of time making pretend ice cream cones...

... so of course we had to get the real thing on the way home!

Yum!

More pictures to come!