Arizona - The Rest of the Story

The second day in Arizona was a little chilly as well but we spent a pretty quiet day hanging out at Great Grandma and Cap's house. Emma and Josh conned my Mom into letting them open one if not two or three presents. Emma received some card games and spent a good part of the morning playing Go Fish and War. She was totally taken with Alex, Lara's son and only wanted to play games with him. He was a completely good sport about it though. That evening we met up with some friends of mine that I hadn't seen in about five years. Since then, we had added six new kids into the mix. Emma and Josh had tons of fun playing with the other kids and Josh just loved all the toys!

On Tuesday, we finally saw the sun; hooray! We had plans to meet up with another friend of mine. Our intention was to go to a museum in downtown Mesa that has been there for literally forever. However, I somehow ended up at this new museum about a block away that was so much more fun. I think it was called the AZ Museum for Youth. They run different exhibits and at the time had a Looney Tunes exhibit. There were also multiple craft stations so Emma was in heaven. It was lots of fun and I would definitely take the kids back. After some naps, we rounded up Uncle Paul and Alex and took the kids out for a bit of a hike. Emma certainly has the makings of a trail runner as she blazed a trail ahead of us. In spite of being hampered by much shorter legs, Josh did great and only had to be carried a short distance on the way back down. That evening after dinner, we opened gifts and with the kids tearing through all the presents, the gift exchange was over in literally 10 minutes. Emma was so excited to go try on a new outfit and when she came out with one on, Josh felt like he had to do the same thing and pulled down his pants just to make sure we got the idea.

Our last morning in Arizona was perfect as well so we again gathered up Uncle Paul and Alex along with Great Grandma and headed off for another short hike. Josh was completely into hiking so he and my Mom hung back while Brad, Emma, Alex and I headed up Silly Mountain. Again, Emma took off like a shot. Unfortunately she had a little accident on the way back down since she wanted to run. I was in the middle of telling her that she needed to be careful for about the third time when she took off sprinting and went down about 2 feet later. Her upper thigh had an unfortunate encounter with a sharp rock but thankfully it wasn't her head. After making sure that she was okay and all bones were in tact, Brad carried her back down the mountain. After we returned to my Mom's she did recover enough to go run around outside for a while before we had to head back to the airport. In spite of the weather the first couple of days, we had a great trip and it is too bad that we weren't able to stay longer.