A boy and his Tonka.

Vacation Part 3

Our last day we went to Out of Africa in Camp Verde.  During the month of your birthday you get in free so we only had to pay for Mikayla!  Maren and Jake met up with us for the day and we had a lot of fun.  Out of Africa is really fun, but pretty homemade.  There are a TON of animals there-you just have to walk a ways to find them all.  My favorite part of the day was the Tiger Splash show.  

Supposedly Buffy the bird would dance if you told it to, but it wasn't performing so Mikayla and Maren demonstrated this lovely dance for Buffy while chanting "Dance, Buffy, Dance!"  Buffy never danced, but watching these lovely ladies dance was worth the price of admission!

Tired kids!

Our last stop was Montezuma's Castle. For some reason, I really like that monument. Mikayla was very stressed she couldn't go inside the castle.  Perhaps "castle" was the wrong name for it!

Vacation Part 2

It's amazing how many things you can cram into a 3 day weekend!  In between our little adventures on Saturday and Monday we had lots of fun at Grammy and Papa's house.  The kids cuddled with their grandparents like crazy, read lots of books with the kids, walked around the lake, we did some packing, celebrated my birthday, played outside, and enjoyed every minute of being together!

I can't believe I didn't get any other pictures of them together, but Daxton just adores Papa.  He goes straight to Papa and wants picked up as soon as he sees him, then just cuddles with Papa for forever.  Daxton was fussy on the way home one evening and Papa started playing with him and he seriously laughed the whole way home with Papa (even though this picture doesn't look like it!).

Mikayla found a treasure while we were packing.  It is a wooden Christmas tree with all of Papa's Mom's jewelry on it.  It was supposed to go to Uncle Derick, but when he saw a picture of Mikayla with it he kindly gave it to her.  I honestly don't know if anyone could love this gem any more than Mikayla does.  She is SO excited about it and spends lots of time looking at it, admiring all the fanciness.  We are deciding on the perfect spot to hang it in her room.

Vacation Part 1

This past weekend we took a trip up to visit Grammy and Papa in Prescott before they move.  We've been wanting to do the Grand Canyon for a while so thought we had better not miss our chance!   We weren't sure what the kids would think about it, but Mikayla's first comment was "Wow!  It's even better than I ever thought!"  Mikayla says her favorite part of the Grand Canyon was having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on our picnic.  It's the little things, right?!  Daxton was ready to go mountain climbing over every edge and railing he could find. 

 On our last shuttle ride Maylee ended up sitting next to a random lady because there weren't enough seats for us to all sit.  I looked back and she had totally fallen asleep on the lady!  Luckily the lady didn't seem to mind and Maylee enjoyed her little power nap!

After the Grand Canyon we decided last minute to go to Bearizona.  It ended up being super fun and all the kids loved it.  The animals would come right up to our car and Daxton would get so excited.  I'm really glad we decided to go!