Kevin and Bethany blessed their little baby Anne over Thanksgiving break.  We decided to make a trip out of it and piled into the car to head down to see them.  Take mental note of the before and after shots of the kids in the car.  This turned out to be a lot more of an adventure than we anticipated.

Kathryn was a champ and drove much of the way down.  Due to the storms on the route through Flagstaff, we decided to take the route through Vegas.  As we were driving along, we saw signs for Hoover Dam.  I’ve always wanted to see it, but it’s always too far out of the way.  Well, not today, we were driving right past it.  So we decided to take a quick stop and check it out.  That dam…it was sure impressive.  Quite the engineering and construction feat.

That would be quite the waterslide black hole.

We were thrilled to make it to Mesa after a long day in the car.  Melanie’s brother lent us their house which was super nice.  Thank you so much.

The next day, we packing in some fun activities like a visit to Pioneer Park.

And the Arizona Museum of Natural History.

Then back to Melanie’s parents house for lunch and some nappage.

With our batteries recharged, we went over to Eagle’s Park for some more fun.

And then dinner at the Organ Stop Pizza restaurant.  That is a pretty amazing instrument!

The next day was the special day for baby Anne.  She was lovely.  And Kevin did a great job on the blessing.

Afterwards, we enjoyed a waffle brunch at Bethany’s parents place.  It was superb.  And the bacon steaks were incredible.

Well, the rough part of this whole adventure was that when we decided to come on the trip, we were healthy, but we had been exposed to a nasty bug.  That nasty bug proceed to make its rounds around our family, and then shortly after many of the people we visited 🙁  Due to the general crappiness and barfiness of our situation, we decided to head out a bit early and try and get home a little sooner.  The drive from Mesa to Paige Arizona has to go down in the books as one of the worst ever!  A extra hour of traffic due to a big wreck on the freeway, and Ashley barfing the whole way there in the car (thank goodness that she’s able to use a bag!) and then Landon losing in on Kathryn when we were at the parking lot.  We were one disheveled group heading into the hotel.  The next morning, I totally lost it too.  Let’s just say that we’re all glad that experience is behind us.

The good thing about that big storm that we skirted around on the drive down was it made an incredible winterscape for us to drive through on the way home.  The red rock, junipers, sky, and snow were something else!

We even saw this flock of wild turkeys.  These are survivors.

The rest of the drive home was so long.  Sick, tired, achy… We made the kids watch a “movie” instead of their preferred “shows.”  Ashley had here blanket on her head so she could hide when it got too scary.  The movie was Wreck-It Ralph.  The funny thing was after yelling and begging us to turn it off almost the whole movie, when Penelope turned out to be the princess, they insisted on watching the ending of the movie 3 times.  Hilarious.

Poor little Landon was a zombie.  He was too tired and weak from being sick to do much and pretty much just laid there in a stupor and tried to sleep.  Heartbreaking.

2 Nephi 2:11 “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.”  Sometimes it takes getting sick to remember how blessed we are to be healthy.  And despite all the misery, it was great to see Kevin and Bethany, Stan and Melanie, and Mom and Dad, and be there for baby Anne.  Sorry again for anyone that we got sick.