Arizona 2019 Edition (Part 1)

AHHHH! I am looking over my pictures of the last two weeks and I really don't know where to begin.  We spent two weeks in Arizona and packed SO much into everyday, not to mention a major holiday, a wedding, family pictures, and seeing one of the natural wonders of the world.  I think I will have to do individual posts about the wedding, the family pictures, and the Grand Canyon.  It is just too much.  I guess today I will just focus on the smaller events, which were plentiful and still pretty amazing.

While in Arizona we helped Grammy move.  She now lives directly across the street from Jeff and Carolyn and what a blessing that will be for all of them.  They will have her close to help her when she needs it and she will be able to just walk across the street to sleep at their house at nights rather than driving all the way across town.  We spent a fair bit of time loading, unloading, unpacking, cleaning, and organizing.  I didn't take many pictures of the process but one day Grammy and I were out exploring her backyard and were looking at a "lemon" tree.  I came across this monstrosity tucked inside.  It doesn't look like any lemon I have ever seen.  I told her she has to send me a picture when she cuts it open.

Now onto the fun, we went to so many parks over our time in Arizona.  Since we moved away eight years ago they have really done some amazing updates and upgrades on many of the local parks.  Since the weather was so great we tried to visit as many as possible.  It killed Carolyn though that my kids were always in their "summer clothes" since to them it was not cold.

Another really cool thing we did was take a tour of Chase Field (where the Diamondbacks play).  It was so cool to see behind the scenes.  We got to go in the visitor's clubhouse and in the Diamondbacks dugout.  We went onto the edge of the the field, up to the upper decks, and into a private suite.  It was so interesting to experience the park from so many different perspectives.  One day I am going to rent the pool and experience a game from there...

One of the other major events of the trip was getting to meet our sweet new niece/cousin, Betty.  We all took turns snuggling her.  Elsie was even willing to share her mama a bit and let me hold her, which was a big deal, but sometime she insisted that I hold them both at the same time.  She loves her new cousin, let's be honest, we all do.

All that and I still haven't touched on all the shopping, eating, visiting family, paintball shooting, go-cart racing, or even Thanksgiving.  No wonder we have been so tired since we got home...