Monday, April 9, 2012

"Spring Break" pt. 2

The next weekend, we headed up to Escalante to do some work on the house (Ada and I pulled weeds)

and to see people we have been missing.

April happened to be in town from Yosemite and Ada made a new best friend.

She was SO happy when April came down to Flagstaff for a few days to hang out on her way through town.  We went out to Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments, which were great.
When April left, Ada was pretty disappointed to not find someone sleeping on our couch, but the next day, the Hansen family showed up!
Ada is a little younger than two of her cousins, enough that she would get overwhelmed pretty quickly.  But not this time.  She's finally catching up and able to actually interact and have fun with them.  It's been great to watch.
And then there's Grandpa!

And Grandma came prepared with everything to have an Easter egg hunt

 make an Easter cake
and feed us all an Easter dinner!
Another great weekend!

Spring Break!

Ok, spring break was a few weeks ago now, but it feels like it lasted until just recently with visits from family and friends and a trip up to Escalante.  Here's what we've been doing:
For the official spring break, we headed down towards Phoenix and instead of going to Ada's opthalmologist appointment (they cancelled ON OUR WAY DOWN- who does that??), we decided to see a new town in Arizona- Fountain Hills.  You can probably tell why it's named that.  We first discovered this fountain last time we were camping and we saw it in the distance and thought there was a water main break or something.

Then, we went back to our new favorite campground near Phoenix and let Ada loose with her new sand pail and tools while we set up camp for the night. 

Bryan made dinner

and Ada "watered" all of the surrounding shrubs and trees.

The next day we took a short hike and saw some desert flowers,
caught a glimpse of a lake,
and ended somewhat disastrously with Ada now being terrified of any kind of shrub or tree touching her while in the backpack carrier.

The rest of the trip was spent hanging out with the Higbee and Trowbridge families and sightseeing around Phoenix.

We got to ride a train (Ada has been kind of obsessed with trains lately, and everyone was willing to indulge her)

We visited the Mystery Castle (this photo does not do it's eccentricity justice)

and found an overlook of the entire city of Phoenix. 

At the end of the week, we had to rush out of Phoenix to make it home before...
 it snowed 2 feet!  And promptly melted 2 days later.