Are We There Yet??

In the past couple weeks I feel like I have been on road trip city. My sister Brittany is in Physicians Assistant school in Arizona, and she had her white coat ceremony a few weekends ago, so we went down there for that. My Mom figured that we were already going half way, so we might as well go the rest to El Paso, Texas to see my grandparents and aunt and uncle who live there. Then as soon as we got back to California, I made the trip up to Vegas and back to solidify housing and pick up Jake after he finished taking the bar so we could have a little R&R as a family for a week before we move there and he starts work. Let's just say I am so done with road trips for a while! Why do they seem so much longer once you have children??? We had three drivers, but we weren't switching so much to give the driver a break, it was more like driving was the break as opposed to being in charge of the kiddos!

Kelsie showing off her mad driving skills...I still can't believe she is old enough to have a license

On the road trip there was some of this...

and quite a bit of this (asking to get out of their seat and for you to hold them etc)

but fortunately we had a lot of these to distract them (I never realized how many trains are in the Southwest region!)

And of course this... (seriously portable DVD players are the greatest invention ever!!!)

When we got to Mesa to visit Brittany and Leon, we did a day at the Childrens' Museum in Phoenix. The boys loved it (that includes Leon). There was so much cool stuff there like a tricycle car wash

(Leon having a little too much fun at the Childrens' Museum)

There was a whole arts and crafts room where you got to paint the sides of this giant house/castle thing. After the many months of Carder hearing me tell him not on the walls, this was his dream come true.

Brittany and Leon

Carder & Me

There was this sweet sand table which lit up from under...Carder loved it...it kept his attention for quite a while until he decided he needed to climb up on it to stand on the top...yeah, we moved on to the next activity after that

Me & Brittany taking a nice little break while Leon played with the boys

So Carder isn't usually so good at playing by himself (though this summer he is definitely doing a lot better at that) But he did these odd little games for like twenty minutes with out breaking focus...did I maybe check if the gift shop sold a variation of them?...totally did, but no they did not :(

There was this contraption where you drop a ball in this hole and there was a maze thing that went around the whole room that as the ball went along the track it would hit all these bells etc. Leon made it super fun for Carder by putting a ton of balls in at once...Carder was thoroughly amused

Carder is a music man the kid is constantly singing or playing any toy instrument (or when he can sneak his way to Mimi's piano) that he can get his hands on so this little contraption was right up his alley

The fam posing with Brittany sporting her "white coat"

After Arizona we continued on to El Paso. My aunt Jill has two little boys one right between Carder and Jaxon and a seven year old that they all just idolize. It was little boy heaven for them all.

Zac & Carder

The cousins

Tyler and Carder

The boys being some kind of underwear superheroes

Me with my little princess Brookie

Carder & Papa

One day we took the kids to this family fun center... Carder loved riding the Merry-Go-Round

And playing Basketball (the first time I took him to Chuck E Cheese this is the only thing that he wanted to do...odd child) My Uncle Mark played for UTEP so he gave Carder some pointers

Then Carder played on one more his size and actually made some on his own (didn't inherit my sports talent)

and of course he scored some sweet tickets which ended up buying him a sucker...what more could a little boy want

Even though the long car ride wasn't my favorite, it was really fun to be able to see the family and spend time with everyone.