Phoenix Vacation

Since Rachel had Spring Break last week and this week, we decided to take a short vacation. Since the kids aren't great about driving long distances, and Jacob is trying to save up his PTO for when the baby arrives in July, we stuck close and went up to Phoenix for a couple of nights.

The morning when I was getting ready to leave I decided to run to the store real quick for a smaller cooler so it would be easier to take our lunch into the zoo the next day. When I got in the car I saw that the airbag light was on, which, in the owner's manual, indicates that you need to "drive directly to the dealership." Not how I needed to be spending my time that day. But I did, and there was a problem that needed fixing, but the part had to be ordered, so it couldn't get fixed that day. I hadn't planned on driving anywhere that morning, so I guess it was a blessing that it did so I could see it in time to switch cars and not worry about car problems for our vacation. We squished into Jacob's 4 Runner and headed up to Phoenix.

A few more months, and we'll have too many kids to pull that off. The kids didn't mind the close quarters, though I quickly realized how nice it is to have an empty seat between the kids--a lot less "Stop touching me!"

We stopped in Casa Grande for dinner, then settled in to our hotel Thursday night. The kids were so excited, but surprisingly the girls went to bed easily. Ryan ran back and forth in the room a million times and did not have such an easy time going to sleep, but eventually we got him to sleep a couple hours after bedtime.
Friday morning we got ready and headed to the Phoenix Zoo. We have a million pictures, so I'll just summarize here, and do more detailed posts of the activities we did separately.

After the zoo we went back to the hotel so Ryan could nap. While he napped I took the girls out to the pool for a swim. After he woke up we went out to the pool again so Ryan could enjoy the frigid water.

We went to Ruby Tuesday for dinner.

Eating at a restaurant is a rare treat for the kids and they were very happy to be there (and very well behaved).

Ryan was happy about his dinner. "See, food!"

We went back to the hotel and were very happy there were two TVs in our suite because the only kid show that was on was Sponge Bob. We let the girls watch that in on their bed, and Jacob turned on some basketball.

Ryan wasn't much interested in either show, so I put him in the tub to play. He had fun in there for about an hour.

Here's some of the fun he had in the tub.
He is once again singing "Let it go" from Frozen (in between "cheese"s). And he loves making his cars fall into the bath. He's saying "timber!" every time he hits one in.

That night the girls went right to sleep, and Ryan was asleep much more quickly than the night before. Saturday morning we packed up and checked out of the hotel and headed to the children's museum. It was a blast. The first activity was a 3 story tall playground that was completely enclosed, so the kids could climb where ever they wanted safely.

After the children's museum we went to a Pizza Place downtown. The pizza was good, but not great, but it was gluten-free, so we were happy.

After pizza we jumped on the freeway to head back toward Tucson. We stopped on the way at Rooster Cogburn's Ostrich Farm that we've driven past a million times. It was tons of fun.

Then we got home Saturday evening in time for dinner. It was a short, but great vacation.  More pictures to come...