Our First Big Family Vacation

We took our first real family vacation last September. Destination: Arizona. We planned it our the Raider game in Phoenix against the Cardinals which was on the 26th. We DROVE all the way there with two 20 month old twin boys. The drive was actually fun, sort of. We stopped for a short day and half visit in El Paso. Here is our El Paso Photo Album. Visited with the parents, grandparents and check out my lil sis's volleyball game. The boys had their first encounter with popcorn there and loved it. On Saturday the 25th we packed up and headed for a much shorter drive from El Paso to Scottsdale. We made a quick stop in Tucson to see my big bro and his family. We would see them again on Sunday for the Raider game. Made it to our resort in Scottsdale with no probs and relaxed.

Sunday was a fun, long day of tailgating and the Raider game. My bro and a neighbor of his grilled up some tasty food for us then we got to see a great game with a disappointing ending as Janikowski missed a FG in the last seconds. Raiders should have won that game, but gave away too many penalties...not to mention the opening kickoff they allowed the Cards to return for a TD.

We set out to Arizona with a week and a half to spend on our trip and had only one thing planned...the Raider game. The rest of the time was just do whatever we felt like doing once we got there. On Monday we chillaxed at the pool and pretty much did nothing. It was awesome. Tuesday we were psyched to go check out the Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium Holly found online. The zoo was tons of fun with the boys. Got a crazy number of pics too...there was this one really cool bird. Reminded me of one of the Skeksis from the Dark Crystal! It wasn't ugly looking like a skeksis, but it reminded of them...not sure why. Holly had a blast taking pictures of a osterich that was smiling at her. Reminiscent of the scene of Spencer and the ostrich in the opening credits of iCarly. What?? Here are our Raider Tailgate and Wildlife Zoo photo album. We left around lunch for a bite to eat. Boys got a short nap on the road and then back to the zoo to check out their aquarium. Really neat place...but it was crazy record breaking heat the weekend we were there.

The rest of the week was a lot more of nothing. Time at the pool and kiddie fountains and a morning hike at Echo Canyon Park. There were tons of people there on a weekday walking/jogging up this pretty big mountain. Good thing was there was a lot of shade for most the morning, bad thing was it was still pretty warm, but oh so pretty. This is our Final Days photo album for the trip. We had too much fun...it is gonna be tough to top it. These vids are from breakfast one of our lazy days and one from Echo Canyon Park where Jordan all of a sudden decide it would try to repel down the stairs.