Phoenix

For our latest trip, we headed to see my brother and his daughter in Phoenix. Originally, the "Arizona trip" was focused on doing a rim-to-rim hike across the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, our request for a permit was denied. Still, my grandparents had offered my parents their '86 Bounder-- a huge moterhome--and so my parents needed to make the trip to get it from Arizona to Wisconsin and we had already planned on going to Arizona and particularly on visiting my brother, so we all met up. First, we spent the night at my grandparents' in Flagstaff and on Friday morning made the trip down to the hot, hot valley. The weather was around 101 degrees the whole time, but the family bonding was good even if the weather wasn't my favorite.

Phoenix was Caleb's first experience in a pool. He was a little tentative and thoughtful about it at first, but he seemed to enjoy it after awhile. Here he is hiding from the sun in his floating crab.

Family photo at the home of some of my brother's friends. This family was wonderful and I would like our family to be like theirs. Happily, I love my family as it is too. Aren't we adorable?

Another family photo. This one is at the Mesa Temple.

Grandma and Caleb.

We went to a cool (speaking in slang of course) animal park while in the area. Here's Caleb, Dad, and crocodile.

So far Caleb only has the one cousin. She was wonderful with him and loved to carry him around.

Here's our darling family playing in the pool.

Besides the animal park and the pool, we also enjoyed watching my niece at her Karate class and going out to eat at a cool pizza parlor with an organist playing requests on a raised platform in the room. I'd recommend the pizza parlor to anyone in the area. Though we loved seeing my brother and his daughter, we both agreed that we'd never want to live in Phoenix. So sue us, we're not into oven-baking heat that starts in May. We were content to head back "up the hill" to Flagstaff.