AZ Trip

We recently had an awesome trip to Arizona! Derek and I were pretty nervous about the very long drive (13 hours with stops) with 2 small boys, but they both did great! We stopped every 2 hours to let them stretch and take potty breaks. Letting the boys watch movies really helped too. We have a DVD player in the van, but because Ryan is still rear facing in his car seat we borrowed a portable DVD player for him to watch Baby Einstein videos. He'd never watched them before, but they kept him occupied!

We realized that we are no longer used to the AZ heat. While it was only 99-100 degrees the week we visited (not bad for this time of the year in AZ), we still thought it was hot! We spent some fun time in the pool to cool off which was really nice. When we got home, it was only 44 degrees! The weather has been pretty cool for this time of the year.

We spent most of the time hanging out with family and, of course, eating. We were also able to get in some shopping time and eat at a few of our favorite places. My mom (who lives in Florida) also came to visit my sister and I got to visit with my mom at the same time which was great to have the girl time together. My sister had a baby at the end of March and that is the adorable baby that you see in the pictures. It was pretty chaotic at times with 5 kids running around, but it was fun.

Sean really enjoyed spending time with his cousins Billy and Lilly. They played nearly everyday and even had sleepovers. Ryan was surprisingly very flexible being out of his normal routine and schedule. The best part of all was that he started sleeping through the night while we were on our trip! Don't ask me why (believe me, we have been analyzing the reasons why!) he started to do it on the trip, but I felt like a new person getting 5-6 hours of continuous sleep. He would sleep from bedtime until about 4:00-4:30 and would wake up to eat and sleep for another 3 hours. Since we've been home this past week, he has continued this sleep pattern most nights.

When it was time to leave Arizona, Sean really had a hard time saying goodbye. I never imagined that it would be so hard for him. He started bawling when he had to say goodbye to his cousins and then Lilly and Billy started crying and soon nearly all of us were in tears. It was so sad to see the kids cry so hard and for so long. It was really precious. They were all pretty sad most of the night and Sean continues to tell me that he misses them. They're already sending each other cards in the mail. In fact, we're preparing a package for them to send out this week.

Next trip - Illinois!