Welcome to Az

We are in Arizona, on our annual Spohr Family Trip. Mike, Annie, and I drove out on Friday. Annie did surprisingly well on the seven hour drive – much better than I did on my seven hour drives to and from San Francisco a few weeks ago. She was able to watch videos and play games, while I said a lot of, “In my day, we had to look out the window” and other things she didn’t care about. I get bored, I get car sick, where is that Star Trek beam-thing? I would really like one.

The road between California and Arizona is lonely.

Annie did have one of those, “Are we there yet?” type questions during our drive. Every few minutes she’d say, “Go see KAAAAAYLA!” Kayla is what she calls my niece Michaela, and she knew that Michaela and her brothers would be in Arizona. Never mind that we live twenty minutes away from each other in California – seeing each other in another state, in a hotel no less, was too exciting for words. When Annie, Michaela, and Danny found out we had adjoining rooms, their heads exploded (Spencer is now a jaded, seen-it-all seven-year-old who is unimpressed by adjoining rooms and other such things).

the girls

The kids have had a lot of fun walking between the rooms, entertaining each other and playing with new toys. They’ve also had some epic bed jumping/pillow fighting, lead by the bad example of a certain adult:

setting a bad example
look Monica, I can still flip onto the bed like old times!

Luckily the only one that got hurt was the adult.

Danny, my five year old nephew, has discovered that the girls will follow him around like ducklings, and is loving it. The three of them are together constantly, it’s pretty cute. Danny is also very interested in my camera, so I let him take some pictures with it.

photo lessons

Of course, this set off the, “It’s my turn! It’s my turn!” chain reaction…

photo lessons

Later today will be lots of swimming, and the ten of us will also attempt going to a baseball game. That’s going to be pretty interesting…especially since yesterday Annie and Michaela didn’t want to get out of the pool at ALL. I don’t think they will care that their parents want to watch baseball – they just want to swim, swim, swim. Or as Annie said yesterday, “Mama, Annie and Kayla go in pooool and swim and be mermaids.”

vacation is tiring

The best thing about being a mermaid is that it’s extremely exhausting.