Thanksgiving in Arizona part 1

This year for Thanksgiving we planned a trip to Arizona.  My aunt is going on a mission to Guatemala in January so all of my siblings and my cousins on my dad's side of the family were getting together for a reunion.  We had never all been together with all of our kids for a total of 43 people!  Everyone was looking forward to being together.  We left on the Saturday before Thanksgiving (the kids were off school all week).  We drove to Erik and Lisa's new house.  Well, they bought it over a year ago, but we hadn't been there yet.  We went out to pizza and spent the night.  The kids loved swinging on their gymnastics rings and singing songs with their new sound system.  On Sunday morning they all hovered around the ipad to show each other their favorite games.

On the way to Arizona, we went to see the Redlands, California Temple.  The sun was really bright, so the kids were really squinting.  

It is about 6 hours from LA to Mesa, and we were almost there!

The kids were pretty good in the car, but there seemed to be a lot more asking of the dreaded question, "how much longer?"  This, by the way, is Grant's new smile.  He says cheese, but he doesn't actually look anywhere near the camera.

We made it to Mesa and had dinner at my aunt Carol's house.  We had a hotel room that had a separate bedroom where we slept.  We brought the pack and play for Grant which is where he started out.  After the initial excitement of staying in a hotel wore off and they finally went to sleep, this is where I found them all sleeping - on the fold out bed together.  Andrew complained about being uncomfortable the next night and we moved the pack and play away from the bed so that Grant couldn't leap out onto it.

The next day, as we waited for everyone to get into town we went to the Goldfield Ghost town near the Superstition Mountains.  

The kids saw a saguaro cactus for the first time.  They are quite large.  

We walked around the ghost town and explored the buildings.

We had the kids take a western style picture for wanted poster.  They were supposed to look mean like Andrew was, but it was still pretty cute.

Claire and Grant waited on tractor seats that were mounted to milk cans while Danny and Andrew went to a reptile exhibit.  They were too thrilled about seeing spiders and snakes. 

We also went on this train ride and saw great scenery and heard about how the Superstition Mountains got their name.  

After we were done we decided to head up the road "just a little bit" to see Canyon Lake.  However, just a couple of miles up the road, the road became super curvy and we were only able to go to the lookout point and not all the way to the lake.  Now that we know that there is a possibility of them all getting car sick, we don't take any chances.  Nevertheless, the views were great and the kids got to see some desert landscape.

In the car on the way back to the hotel they all passed out.  A win for mom!

The next day we all headed to the Phoenix zoo.  We were greeted near the entrance with a turkey.  

The kids could not seem to grasp how large the turkey was.  They also thought he was quite ugly.

We got there just in time for a show to start.  They had all sorts of animals on the stage and we were in the front row! 

Landon got picked to go up on the stage and hold a snake.  Andrew and Landon thought that was really cool, but all of the girls were not so thrilled.  

The zoo was pretty big and had a lot of different animals on display.  We went to the zoo with some of my cousins, but we didn't seem to get any pictures of them there.  I can't imagine walking that whole zoo in August when it is 115 degrees.   

As they were in Utah, the kids were fascinated by a cow that you could milk.

Goat petting was also popular.  I would not have guessed that Grant would have ever gotten that close to a goat.

There were many, many shots taken to try to get a decent picture of this group.  It may just be an impossibility.  I know it doesn't look like it, but this was one of the better ones.  As a note, Erik and Lisa weren't there yet so they didn't come with us to the zoo.  We headed to lunch after this at our new favorite - Chick-fil-A and then went swimming at the hotel.

I am pretty sure that we could just book a hotel somewhere warm that has a pool and call it a vacation. Although the weather was in the low 70's while we were there I personally didn't think it was warm enough to swim.  The kids had another idea though.  The pool was heated and that is all they needed.  They went swimming three times and we had to drag them out of the pool each time.