The Young and the Restless

Hometown tourists

For October break we decided to ditch the usual California trip and play the role of tourists here in Arizona and it turned out to be one of our favorite family vacations. So many times through out the trip the kids kept telling us that this was the bestest trip they ever went on. Who needs Disneyland when you've got....Prescott?? Well, Prescott alone didn't hold a chance, but when you throw in Sedona, Flagstaff and Pinetop then we've got ourselves a week of fun family memories. It's going to take me a while to post all these, and since crocheting seems to be taking over my valuable blogging time :) then we'll just take it a day at a time.....

Our first stop was Prescott. It's amazing how we can drive for a couple of hours and feel like we're in a whole different state. Cactus and palm trees were replaced with mountains and pine trees and it was definately a welcomed change. We went straight to Lynx lake for fishing. Jason's trusty, no-fail "Jake's lure" managed to fail and we walked away without a single bite, but we did go for a nice walk around the lake. It's funny how a lake doesn't seem that big...until 2 hours later when you finally finish walking around the entire thing.

(when we were trying to take this picture Maddox kept trying to give the kids loves, it was so cute. He loves to suck on Jayden's head. He usually lets him if we convince him that he's trying to kiss him. I think he just likes the way his hair tastes)

We had fun "discovering nature" (as Kylie calls it) along the way, like those soft "rabbit ear" leaves that I swear the pioneers used to use for toilet paper (and if not the kids thought it was hilarious). We also found slate rocks that you could write on, woodpeckers, squirrels, lizards, the worlds greatest rock collection with the flatest smoothest skipping rocks, the worlds greatest pinecone collection and we even saw a bald eagle. We had it all and it all was fun. The only thing we didn't have was a carrier for Maddox. I don't know what I was thinking when I packed for a week of hiking in the mountains without a baby bjorn (or the knock off since we're cheap like that). Hauling that 25lbs or pure chub proved to be quite a nice little workout. The next day we went to the Heritage Park Zoo. It was small and the majority of the animals were curled up in their holes asleep but it didn't seem to bother the kids and they had a great time. We fit in another hiking trip then Jason took the kids swimming at the hotel and walked around mainstreet and let them pick out books at the cute little corner bookshop while Maddox napped. There was also a redbox close by so both nights that we stayed there we rented movies and watched it on the laptop while we curled up under blankets and ate popcorn. That was my favorite thing. Usually we have the token melt down on every family vacation, but not this one. Maybe it's because they're older or maybe because we didn't have to spend forever in the car, but they seriously got along so great on this trip and that makes everything ten times better.