Phoenix Zoo

The Phoenix Zoo was pretty fun. We got the Wild pass, which let us into Stingray Bay, the Carousel, and the train all day. First stop was Stingray Bay. They have clipped the stinging part off of the stingrays, which they say hurts as much as clipping your fingernails, so they're safe to touch. The kids were a little hesitant to touch them, but I think they all did eventually. Rachel thought they felt a little slimy. Very smooth, a lot like what I think a dolphin would feel like.

After the stingrays we headed over to the Arizona exhibit where they have animals that are all found in Arizona. There were lots of birds, lizards, tortoises, and snakes.

Of course the carousel was a big hit. Rachel rode on the wolf.

Ryan was on a jack rabbit and Annie on a hummingbird.

It felt like we did more playing than animal-seeing, but the kids had fun, and I guess that was the whole point.

We took a ride on the train, which made me feel better about not seeing a ton of animals. At least we saw a lot of them from the train. And the kids got cotton candy, which makes everything good.

Thankful for our sit 'n stand stroller. Half the time we were pushing it empty while the kids ran around, but the other half they ALL wanted to ride together. Uphill.

We went over to the barn/farm animal area. They had a petting zoo with goats, and a few barn exhibits outside, including a tractor

and a cow you could milk. Water actually came out of the udders.

We were on our way out when we came across this ramada that had some must-take-pictures statues that called out to the kids. And Jake.

I was hoping to go to the monkey house, but we were all pretty tired and ready to get off our feet and get Ryan to sleep, so we headed out. We got to see everything else that we had really wanted to. Except that Rachel really wanted to do the zip line. Maybe next time...

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...

Grandma's and Grandpa's house

We got a new point and shoot camera a few weeks ago that fits in my purse nicely and takes video. So we finally remember on occasion to take pictures of the more common fun stuff we do on a regular basis. Like go to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

The kids love playing outside at their house. Most of the time the first place they go after we get there is to the back door. Rachel has taken a liking to baseball lately.

The girls having rootbeer floats, I think.

The hammock is a favorite. Now that it's fixed after an unfortunate, but hilarious breakage over Christmas break that involved Todd and a lot of little kids pushing it to the breaking point.

We love having Grandma and Grandpa Knight close by. Almost every time we get in the car Ryan tells me "Ganpa's house!" as if he gets to decide where we're going. It's his happy place.

March

We've been having a good March. It started with the only rainy day we've had in a while. Which happened to fall on the one day we had outside plans. Jake's work had their annual picnic which was at a soccer tournament here in town. We bundled up and got a little wet, ate some lunch, and luckily by the time we were done eating the rain had let up, so we went and watched the last few minutes of the first half of the game between Salt Lake Real and some other team. Then we went home for hot chocolate.

Rachel got her special castle from Grandpa Campbell in the mail a few weeks back. She had been looking forward to this delivery since she heard about it and it did not disappoint. She was very excited about all the extra stuff they included in the package: stickers, coloring books, crossword puzzles, and more.

Rachel got right to work learning how to draw on a dry erase board that had "how to draw" instructions for various animals. The castle has been put to good use. The girls love to play with their My Little Ponies and their mini princess figurines on it.

Grandma and Grandpa Campbell sent a bonus gift for everyone: their own placemat. The kids all love them and won't eat a meal without them. But Ryan also carries his around the house often and will stop and point out everything that's on it.

Here's a video I caught of him pointing out all the great stuff on his placemat.

When he sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star he always does it the same:
Tinkle tinkle ittle star. Next time, next time, tinkle with me. He gets confused between the ABC song and the Twinkle Little Star song since they have the same tune. It's cute. And the Temple Song is his absolute favorite. He requests it every time he goes down for a nap or at bedtime. And since Twinkle is also a bedtime song, it always reminds him of the Temple Song. :)

More fun from Grandma and Grandpa's package:

They were "taking a bath." After they had their fun once I didn't feel bad throwing it all away. Those peanuts stick to EVERYTHING. Can you say static?

Fun with Daddy:

Mr. Independence wanted a cup. Lucky for him Annie (Ms. Independence) had already pushed the bar stool over to the counter when she helped herself to some Chocolate Chex for a snack.

And at the same time Annie had gotten out this water dispenser I try to keep hidden in a cupboard, filled it with water, and was getting herself a drink out of it.

Independence is great. Except when it makes messes. Which it most of the time does with 2- and 3-year-olds.

Ryan is really into lining things up in a line lately. Especially his cars. Then he'll count them: "One, two, five, four, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Counting! Counting cars!" Here he is lining up his push/riding toys. He was upset because a sister stole the grocery cart.

All better!

Twinners:

Love my handsome men! :)

The Desert Museum

Rodeo Break was towards the end of February. Since my mom got a year membership to the Desert Museum for her and all her grandkids plus one guest at Christmas, she wanted to make sure it got used, so we planned an outing to the Desert Museum over Rodeo Break. This time we dressed in shorts and t-shirts so we wouldn't have overheated grumpy kids like when we went at the beginning of January. This winter has been a non-winter where if we wear long sleeves past 10am it's too hot.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures from our fun outing.

We brought the sit 'n stand stroller and the kids rotated through riding. Peyton and Ryan were happy to share a seat. 

 We stopped for lunch along the path. Annie and Rachel were loving their new hats (Rachel's is a Sofia the First hat, and Annie's is supposed to look like a butterfly), but Ryan's hat stayed on for about 5 minutes. He loved it--it's a duck hat--but he's only got a little patience for stuff on his head. It did last longer than any other hat has lasted, however. And he occasionally asks for it and wears it for 2 or 3 minutes while walking to the bus stop to pick up Rachel before he gives up on it again.

 McKenzie with bat ears:

 This Rattlesnake was trying to smell us. It was right up next to the glass, very curious. And cool.

 Outside the cave there was a place for the kids to dig for fossils that we apparently skipped last time we were there. The kids donned their protective eye gear and got to work brushing away the dirt.

 They were very excited to uncover several fossils that were in the ground.

 Rachel counted 54 frogs hiding partially hidden on the rocks/in the water.

Notice the ground squirrel running around it's little home. 

It was a fun trip. We look forward to visiting again!

Gymnastics

Rachel and Annie started gymnastics in January. Rachel was ready to try something besides dance, but I was still going to sign Annie up for dance since she'd been looking forward to it for so long. But when we took Rachel to her first class, after which I was planning on driving over to the dance studio to register Annie, Annie spent the whole time saying, "I want to do gymnastics." "Can I do that?" "It's time for my gymnastics class." So I signed her up for gymnastics instead. They both are really enjoying themselves. Ryan likes going to gymnastics, too, though thankfully he just associates gymnastics with a play room with toys they keep to occupy siblings. Whenever we're driving anywhere and he sees a building that looks like the gym he'll shout out, "Ryan's 'nastics!" I've thought about taking him and Annie to open gym where they can just play on the equipment for an hour or two, but haven't done it yet. I know he'd love it, but I'm afraid that after that he wouldn't be content with just playing with the toys in the playroom. He'd want to go jump in the pit full of foam blocks every time.

Both girls are enjoying themselves and getting their climbing and balancing and jumping and monkeying energies channeled well. Here's Annie waiting for her turn to jump to the bar:

Here's a video of Rachel on the low bar:

And here's one of Annie on the bars:

The Rodeo

I've lived in Tucson for kindergarten through 12th grade, and ever since I graduated from BYU and I've never been to the rodeo. Even though every year growing up we got two days of Rodeo Vacation every February we never made it down to watch it. This year I decided we'd go check it out. Monday and Tuesday are qualifying days for the real competitions that take place Thurs.-Sun. so the tickets are cheap and the kids get in free, so last Monday we gathered some friends and headed out to see the rodeo.

 We tried sitting in the bleachers but after 5 minutes we were roasting in the hot Tucson February sun. So we went to the shaded platform next to the announcer's box to watch. There were no chairs or benches, but we didn't care much. We watched some team roping for a while.

The kids watched a little.

But most of the time they spent at the back of the platform looking at the horses that were waiting for their turns in little corrals.

Apparently the horses standing there not moving were more exciting than the ones running around the arena with cowboys on their backs chasing down cows.
When the kids were reaching their boredom limit they switched up events and went to steer wrestling, which was very cool to watch. But some of the kids were already at their limit and ready to leave, much to Rachel's dismay. She was really enjoying watching them, but only got to see about 5 before we had to pull her away to go with everyone else.
Overall the rodeo was fun enough for a $5 admission and I'm glad we went once. It probably would be fun to go back and see the junior rodeo and mutton busting sometime, but those are on the full admission days, and $20ish bucks a person just doesn't sound all that appealing.