Family Vacation - Arizona

We went on our family vacation this year April 4-8 (instead of the fall because this year we will have a new baby) to Arizona - Glendale, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon.

We left Wednesday night when Brad got off work and drove as far as Vegas (about 6 hrs) to stay the night.  We rolled into Vegas at about midnight and Connor was asleep in the back.  As we were driving down the strip to get to our hotel Connor woke up, sleepily gasped and said, "Beautiful" at all the Vegas lights.  We laughed.  Then walking through the casino to get to the hotel front desk (way in the back, of course) Connor, seeing all the flashing lights and hearing the bells from the casino games said, "Let's play Skee Ball!"  (his favorite game at Chuck E. Cheese).  We told him if he could find a Skee Ball machine, we would definitely play.  Obviously, we didn't get to play that night. :)

We drove to Glendale, AZ Thursday morning (about 5 hrs), stopping at the Hoover Dam on the way.  I've seen pictures, but it was really cool to see it in person!  (What can I say, I'm a civil engineer. :) )

Driving across Hoover Dam. 

Side view.

Looking straight down.

The new bridge to get across Hoover Dam.  Hoover Dam is now a side-stop, not part of the main hwy.

It was really windy at the top!

Lake Mead side of Hoover Dam.

Giant spillway.

We stayed in Glendale, AZ with our friends Jared and Aubrey (and their cute kids Addie and Dallin).  Jared and I were in the Civil Engineering program together at BYU and they used to live in Huntington Beach when we were living in El Segundo before they moved away.  We miss you guys!  It was so fun just hanging out Thursday night and most of Friday.  We also got to do lunch on Friday in Phoenix with our friends John and Becky (friends from El Segundo that moved shortly after us), but we didn't get any pictures with them!  Bummer.  We are glad we got to spend some time with all our friends.  

Friday night we drove 2 hrs up to our hotel in Sedona and stayed there 2 nights.  (Our hotel was free because we signed up for one of those time-share presentations for an hour on Saturday.  Worth it!)  From there, we toured around Sedona a little, visited the Grand Canyon, and then drove 11 hrs home on Sunday.  It was a lot of driving, but Connor was a CHAMP in the car the entire time, reading books with me, watching movies, eating snacks, singing songs.  We left at 3 a.m. Sunday morning so he would sleep a lot of the time, stopped for breakfast around 7:30 a.m. and got home around 4 p.m. with the time change.  It was a fun trip to just get away!  

Connor loved climbing on all the rocks.

It was unexpectedly COLD at the Grand Canyon (about 45 degrees)!  We thought "hey, it's Arizona, it's hot."  Wrong.  Fortunately, I put coats in for Connor and I before we left (Brad declined) thinking "just in case."  Good thing!

It was really beautiful!

Connor's favorite thing the entire trip was throwing rocks over the edge.  A week after we got home he was still asking me if we could go throw rocks in the Grand Canyon.  Love him.