Saturday, April 4, 2009

Southwest Spring Break, Part 1


We love Spring Break. We especially loved this one. The destination was Albuquerque to visit the Bell Family, and on our way, we got to see a few of the Southwest's treasures. Our first few days: Phoenix and palm trees, Sedona and red rock, Flagstaff and high desert altitudes, the Grand Canyon and FREEZING WEATHER. This first post shows just this first leg of our trip before we trekked across Arizona to the state of New Mexico. (stay tuned for future posts with cute Bell and Lochhead babies!)





Sedona's red rock was a great background for many pictures. We were ITCHING to hike some red dirt trails, but we found that vacationing with a 10-month-old causes parents to vacation differently than ever before...





The Grand Canyon was bigger than pictures allow. We drove the rim road and stopped at several of the dozen viewpoints--one of us stayed in the car with Sleeping Gracie while the other ran to check it out, take pics, and bring the report back to the other. (Didn't I say this was a different way to vacation?) Again we wanted to hike, but Grace only lasted TEN MINUTES in her pack before she caused us to turn back. It was incredibly cold that day, so we viewed the canyon through a museum window while feeding Gracie her bottle on a bench.


How many times must Dad stop the car for a baby in need of new digs? Jeff was quite good natured about it--he even started documenting each randomly placed stop on film. There are many more of these in our collection...


And after the big day of seeing National Landmarks, Gracie is happiest in the hotel's bathtub.

3 comments:

Craig and Bethany said...

Hahaha! Love the new vacationing style, oh, can't we TOTALLY relate to that. :) Gracie sure makes a great mascot in all the pic though! Can't wait for part two...

Colleen said...

Okay, Jeff, I have sweaty palms just looking at you standing on that cliff with Gracie in the backpack. Obviously you still get a special kick out of tormenting your mom! HA! I'm so glad my prayers were answered and that all three of you got back safe and sound. (spoken like a true mom - right?) HA! Fabulous pix, though!

LAURA said...

Love the diaper changing in the car scenario, us Mommies can't even count how many of those we rack up. So glad you guys are seeing the world with Gracie, she's a lucky little girl to have such awesome parents. Miss you guys!