A new word that Amy coined was “licolish” aka licorice. Another cute word she said the other day was calepittar for the obvious catepillar. Licolish became the favorite treat of the vacation and was purchased many times.
We were off once again Saturday morning for Phoenix. Another fun day of travel. We were slowed down a bit trying to find some breakfast; Chris opted for donuts from Smith’s Grocery, and I ended up having yogurt, fruit and fig newtons. Had to be better for me than the donuts. We finally left Albuquerque around 8:30 am. Neither Chris nor I were all that impressed with the city or with any of the state for that matter. Kind of bleak.
We stopped in Holbrook, Arizona for lunch at McDonalds. Yep, we caved, but there weren’t all that many options. The girls played on the toys for a bit and then we were off again. We talked to Grandpa Kline while in Holbrook; he suggested we take a scenic route down through Heber and Payson. It was a little more enjoyable than the desert-like scape we had been in, so while the girls slept, Chris and I listened to our book on tape. We finally arrived in Phoenix about 4 pm local time (they are one hour behind) and just as we rounded the corner to Grandpa Kline’s house he called us wondering when we might arrive. I told him we had been lost and were just now back in Payson and would still be about three hours. He didn’t have to say anything, the tone of his voice suggested that I was a sorry excuse for a navigator. He started pulling out his map to give us some direction while I knocked on his front door. He said he would call me back in a couple of minutes and hung up the phone to go answer the door. Well, we played a good joke on Grandpa who was quite surprised to find me standing on the doorstep.
The first thing the girls wanted to see was the swimming pool and they wasted absolutely no time getting into the pool. With temperatures around 100 degrees and hotter than we’d seen in a long time, I slathered on the sun screen and they took the plunge. Misha was a bit more timid and climbed in slowly. Amy had on a new floatie swim suit like Misha’s and quickly plunged into the wonderfully cool water. Grandpa had lots of flotation devices to play with too.
We were finally able to pull the girls away from the swimming pool to have dinner a la Grandpa Kline-turkey burgers, rice, kidney beans. The girls weren’t too thrilled by the selection, but then that is pretty normal around our house too. Misha asked to go to bed during the middle of dinner. It had been a long day for them combined with swimming and both were ready to sleep. Both girls slept in the spare room next to ours on an air mattress. It was soooooooooo hot in Grandpa’s house. The temperature upstairs was 81 degrees and 84 on the main level. Chris had his dad turn the air down to 78 so that we could sleep comfortably!
Sunday morning we woke up early after a sound sleep. We went to Grandpa’s ward at 9 (one hour behind). Amy loved Primary because they sang to her as the visitor and she was the best singer so she got to pick another song to sing. Misha gladly went to nursery. I am grateful that they don’t scream and cry about going to new classes. When we went to pick up Misha, we couldn’t find her shoes anywhere, though the teachers had remembered seeing them. We finally found them hidden in one of the toy kitchen ovens.
Must be something about the heat, or maybe just knowing that we were on vacation and our schedule really demanded little of us, but we all had naps after lunch. The girls were raring to swim after their naps and nothing could keep them out of the pool. Stan, Pam, and Evan Braun came to visit for dinner. They live in Tucson now but were in the Phoenix area visiting family for the Memorial Day holiday. We ordered pizza (the first of many that week) and had salad and watermelon. Grandpa’s friend Eric came over as well with his son Thomas and all of the kids had a great time playing together. Eric brought a fold out fire engine that captured their attention and imagination for an hour or so.
While we were outside visiting, the kids were running around and exploring and all of a sudden we had a run on accidents. All but Thomas fell and scraped something. Misha got quite a few scrapes on her forehead and legs. Amy knocked a pointy metal wall hanging off its hook and it cut her heal on the way down. After that they were ready to go in and settle down, if you can call it that, with the fire engine.
We had planned to spend most of Monday with Stan and Pam. We had told Grandpa repeatedly that we would be doing stuff with them, but he wasn’t too happy with our schedule and wanted us to make changes so that we could go to a waterpark with Eric, Thomas, and some other friends. We decided to stick to our original schedule and let come what may.
We met Braun’s at Chuck E. Cheese for fun in the morning. We were among the first to arrive and had the place mostly to ourselves. We planned not to have dinner there because your choices are greasy pizza, greasy pizza, and greasy pizza. It is not so good. The kids played for well over an hour and had a blast and then we all went to On The Border for lunch. I love Mexican food and crave it often.
Grandpa Kline had wanted to go to water park in the afternoon, but both girls fell asleep on the way home and we really didn’t want to cut their naps short since they seemed so exhausted from all the heat and the fun they were having. Chris and I read and dozed while they slept and just enjoyed a relaxing afternoon. Misha woke up to go to the bathroom, and I figured she was up for good. I told her to climb up on the bed beside Chris and she promptly fell back to sleep. That has never happened before.
Since we had opted out of the water park in the morning, we all decided to just swim and play in Grandpa’s pool with Eric and Thomas again. One of Grandpa’s current girlfriends, Christine, also joined us for dinner. Chris’ Dad barbequed a frozen lasagna on the grill; I didn’t know you could cook them that way. Everyone cooled off and played in the pool, though I did get out a bit early to cut up the watermelon and make a salad. Eric brought “Shrek” to watch and that was just the send off the girls needed to calm them down for bed.
Tuesday morning Grandpa asked us to hang around the house until he left for work at 11:30. He wanted us to spend time with him before he left for a couple of days, but he was so busy doing other things we just sat around waiting. We ate lunch and drove to some malls to shop. We picked up a new stroller at Sears which came in handy for the rest of the trip.
While shopping, Quentin Wilcox, an old mission buddy of Chris’, called and we set up a time to get together on Wednesday night for dinner at TGI Fridays with his wife and girls.
We came to the conclusion that the girls were having too much fun. Literally. They were so overloaded on fun activities and were so far off their schedule that they were becoming ornery and whiney and demanding more and more. We had dinner at a Bakery Company thinking it would be a bit cheaper. Not so. Following dinner we stopped at Walmart and Sams for a few groceries and then headed home to put the girls to bed. I think this was the only day of our vacation when the girls didn’t get to swim at all.
Chris headed off to work at the American Express office in Phoenix. He is a Team Lead on their IBM account and wanted a chance to meet the people that he talks with on the phone and Instant Messenger all of the time. He also conducted some training. Before leaving for Arizona, Chris’ boss and the American Express account approved to pay for part of our gas if he were to work a couple of days. Bonus for us since the price of gas had sky rocketed and the average price in Phoenix was well over $2.00 a gallon.
The girls and I stayed at Grandpa’s house for the day. It was a welcome rest from all the comings and goings and super for having a bit of a routine day. We swam for a couple of hours in the morning. The one toy that I brought for them that I thought they would enjoy was their tea set, and it was a winner. They played with it in the house as well as out by the pool. They would stand on the step of the pool and pour water into their cups and saucers for hours. Misha especially loved it. We came in to have lunch and both girls were ready for a nap and slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I took the opportunity to shower then while they slept. With a more relaxed and quiet day, both girls were much happier and amenable. Just what we all needed.
Grandpa was working from Tuesday afternoon until late Thursday evening and then had another trip scheduled to fly Friday afternoon through Saturday evening. We weren’t complaining about being able to simply relax and be on our own schedule. What more could you want? A nice house to ourselves and a pool. Perfect.
Chris arrived home from work about 6 pm Arizona time; we left shortly after that to meet Wilcoxes for dinner at 6:45. We drove around a bit to check out a water park that we kept driving by but couldn’t see the entrance to and then drove around even more trying to find the restaurant. We had the wrong exit and after exploring all the side streets hoping to find Fridays we drove up one exit and there it was.
Quentin and Bev Wilcox got married about a year after we did if I remember correctly, in the Mount Timpanogos temple. We were able to attend their ceremony. Quentin works in the accounting department of Honeywell and they have a 2 ½ yr old girl Quincy and a 10-month old girl Sage. The kids warmed up to each other after dinner when they started dancing around the tables. We tried to contain them, but that never happens.
We drove back to the water park that we had just discovered and let the girls play in the sand, on the toys, and Chris even stripped our girls down to their underwear and let them run through a sprinkler. They had a blast.
I don’t know what we were thinking by deciding to go to the zoo on Thursday morning with Bev Wilcox and her girls. It was HOT! We walked around for a bit trying to find shady spots and finally ended up in a water play area for the kids to cool off. We stopped for lunch on the way home (more pizza), picked up some groceries and then more naps for the girls. They, of course, headed to the swimming pool when they woke up.
Chris worked at a co-workers house in the morning until 2 pm. Grandpa Kline was home until 1:30 pm and then left for another trip. He jumped into the pool before leaving to play with the girls, and we stayed in the pool for a couple of hours after that. After naps and Chris’ arrival home, we went shopping. One of the first stops was Deseret Book where Amy bought some Bible coloring books and a small Book of Mormon. I purchased a DVD called “Charlie”. Misha had to go to the bathroom while we were waiting to pay, and we just didn’t make it to the bathroom on time before she had a bit of an accident. I only had an extra pair of panties with me so I had Chris drop me off at Ross to get her some clean clothes. A great way to get new clothes. We called Wilcoxes and had them meet us for dinner at Olive Garden instead of making something at Grandpa’s house. We had about an hour to spare and headed over to a great new mall. Chris stayed with the girls at the play area and I was able to look around a bit. We decided to come back the next day since there was so much to see. We had a yummy dinner and then came back to Grandpa’s to swim. After that we put all the girls to bed so that we could watch the DVD I had bought earlier in the day. It was quite a tear jerker and probably would have been for Chris if he wasn’t trying to maintain his manly image among friends.
We had a lot of fun with Wilcoxes and were surprised that we had so many people to do things with on this vacation. It was good.
Saturday morning we hit a few garage sales, but it was really too hot to enjoy it. Chris started on a meandering (it seemed that way anyhow) drive to top of the mountain where all the antennas were. Frankly, it was a long, boring drive that was very winding. We humored him though since it was someplace he had always wanted to explore. Misha and I got carsick which is unusual for both of us. After conquering the mountain, we decided to head back to the mall in Glendale and spend a cool afternoon inside.
It was still so hot outside, most days were well above 110 degrees. Well, the mall was packed; everyone else seemed to have the same idea as we did about beating the heat. Oh well. We had lunch in the food court and then shopped for awhile until we could stand the whining no more. The too-much-fun-syndrome was threatening to emerge again. Amy and Misha promptly fell asleep on the way home. We BBQed hot dogs for dinner and swam in the evening. The pool was a balmy 90 degrees. Grandpa pulled in about 7 pm, decided to hop into the pool with us for a short time and then headed to a party down the street at the Country Club. Without much argument, we put the girls to bed. What am I saying!? Without much argument, we finally split the girls up and put Misha to sleep in our bed since they wouldn’t be quiet and go to sleep. That did the trick and they were asleep in no time. Chris and I watched tv for awhile, but since I was falling asleep, I decided to go to bed.
Sunday dawned bright and, well, hot. We packed everything up to go. Grandpa wished we could stay longer. I once heard an idea that you should leave when you are having fun. Better than leaving when you are tired of each other and aren’t speaking. Plus we had reservations at a Trend West resort in Pine Top, Arizona for the next two nights.
We met Wilcoxes at their church and then had lunch at their home after. The girls were sad to leave a new-found friend, but we still had a three-hour trip ahead of us.
Again the girls slept as we drove (we really like those times). We moved away from the desert, cactus, and heat of Phoenix and into beautiful, mountainous areas with trees. Hard to believe we were still in Arizona. The air was cool and pine-scented and felt a little more like home.
We found the Trend West resort and were highly impressed, as always, by the amenities. We had a two-bedroom condo complete with kitchen, living room, two bathrooms, laundry machines, and bbq. The girls were excited to see the heated swimming pool and the play ground, and I was looking forward to the exercise room Monday morning.
I got up early to exercise and watched the continuing coverage of Ronald Reagan’s death-he had died the previous Saturday. Upon returning to the condo, Misha woke up and shortly thereafter Amy woke up too. We had breakfast and then decided to go for hike around a nearby lake. The girls didn’t enjoy that quite so much as the swings and slides that were located conveniently at the end of the hike. Nice for motivation. We were getting hungry after that and found a nice Mexican Restaurant (my choice). Misha wasn’t feeling too well today, she had a runny nose and seemed as though she was getting a cold. She took a nap while Amy got to go swimming with Chris.
In the afternoon we took the girls to see Shrek 2. They were fairly excited. They sat still for this movie mostly. Amy was just itching to get up and dance to all the fun music. We finally told her she could dance but had intended that she would just dance beside us in the aisle. She had different ideas and started for the front of the theater. We had to call her back and she was definitely NOT happy. She danced beside us though until the movie was over and then we let her go to the front. This child has no fear. When we left Grandpa Kline’s she had progressed so much in her swimming that she was doing cannon balls into the pool.
Tuesday was the dreaded long driving day. We left Pine Top about 8:30 am our time and drove all day until 10:30 pm. The girls were really quite good for such a long day and watched movies most of the way. As we drove into Colorado and toward home a huge thunder and lightning storm lit up the sky. It was pretty cool to watch. The girls were fast asleep when we pulled into our garage, and reminiscent of Grandpa’s house, ours was at 86 degrees. We couldn’t open the windows because it was pouring outside so we opted for the air conditioner. What a great feeling to be home.
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