So I haven’t posted in a while, but this time I actually have a good excuse! Sara, Evie, my mom and I spent a week in Arizona, and we have the pictures to prove it. Sara was attending a conference for the 2nd half of the week.

The first struggle was getting out the door on time…especially since the time changed overnight! Sara realized as we were falling asleep so I jumped up and changed every clock I could think of. I didn’t want to forget to change one that I would then look at in the morning and mess us up. I also almost accidentally changed the clock in the wrong direction before Sara corrected me.

Evie did pretty good on the plane ride out. She slept for a lot of it and didn’t cry at all. We convinced my mom to check both of her bags so she could help us with carry-ons and she promptly paid the price by having the airline lose her bag she wanted to carry on. We got it that night though around 9 so it wasn’t so bad.

First up was Montezuma’s Castle and Tuzigoot, two Indian ruins. The weather was super nice and everybody immediately fell in love with Evie and her sunglasses. Everybody falls in love with Evie immediately, but she had never been exposed to so many people, so I had never seen the phenomenon on this scale. Some random lady even took her her picture! Some lady also told me she looked like Shiloh Pitt, and I thought she was just being nice, but there is some resemblance, especially in the father area.

Me and Evie:

Anyway, we went to the Grand Canyon and it was certainly as Grand as I remembered it, but not as breathtaking seeing it the second time. I think my mom was suitably impressed though. This time we hiked some on the rim and that was pretty cool. On the way back down to Phoenix we went through Sedona and that was actually really neat. I wouldn’t mind stopping back there sometime. As Sara said, it isn’t as amazing as the Grand Canyon, but in a way it is prettier.

After that Sara started her conference and we mostly just hung around Phoenix. Evie took her first swim in a pool, we saw the world’s largest pipe organ, the Arizona Science Center, the Desert Botanical Garden, and the Phoenix Zoo. I have to say, I enjoyed the botanical gardens more than I thought I would. I never knew there were so many kinds of cactus!

One of the crazier things that we did was to hike Squaw Peak. Sara’s roommate from college suggested we do it one day. She said it is very busy and people run up and down every day for exercise and she didn’t think it would be too hard with the baby. Well! The trail goes up to the summit of a mountain overlooking Phoenix and is VERY steep. You gain 1200 feet of elevation in 1.2 miles. I know there is no way to properly describe it here to make you appreciate how steep that is, so you are going to have to take my word that you do not want to have a > 20 lbs. baby strapped to your back as you ascend! It may have had steps or something at some point, but they are long gone. It took us a little longer than expected to get to the top which meant we got there just in time for sunset. Some lady at the top told her that I inspired her, because if I could do it with that baby on my back, she wasn’t going to quit! The bad news was that we weren’t able to get back down before dark. The especially bad news was that I was wearing my prescription sun glasses! It ended up being okay though; nobody turned an ankle. All in all it was an extremely exhausting, but extremely satisfying experience overall. And Amy was right, there were many people doing the trail and some people were carrying weights!! So some people do apparently just go up there for the exercise.

Just as an interesting side note, we bought a CD of children’s songs for Evie before we left and when we were listening to it I realized that we had the exact same CD when I was little (well, we called them “tapes” back in those days). That was an extremely odd coincidence, we didn’t buy it for that reason! The CD was labeled as a “Classic”. I don’t think I am that old!

On the way back we accidentally left a bag at the security checkpoint! We had a lot of bags and the baby and then one bag got pulled out to be searched, so there was a lot of chaos. We didn’t realize it for like an hour or so until we were getting ready to board the plane. I had to sprint back through the airport to get it, and sure enough, there it was. They had to search it, which I understand, but I was anxious to get back before we missed the plane. The suitcase was full to the brim with toys for Evie, but it also had 2 containers of applesauce for her in there, which is a no-no. I said, “Throw it away, I don’t care.” but the lady was like, “No, no. You obviously have a kid. Where is she, why don’t you have her?” I tried to explain that she was with my wife back at the gate which was half way around the world, but regardless, “Just throw it away. We don’t need it.” Then she had to call the supervisor over and ask him about it. I was like, “Seriously, just throw it away!” Finally they “allowed” me to take the applesauce. So nice of them. Anyway, the plane was delayed, so we didn’t miss it.

So I think that was more or less the trip. The end.