Grand Canyon | Thanksgiving Break 2017

Okay, here comes the first installment of posts from our Thanksgiving Break last week! In continuing our quest to make the most of our time stationed at Nellis & living out west, we wanted to make the trip to visit the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. {I'm not as National Park-saavy as Derek is, but the West Rim is only maybe 90min from us, but the South Rim is supposed to be the one you can't miss.} We opted to stay in Williams, AZ at the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel, which is about about 3-3.5hrs from us. Williams is a little old Western town located on historic Route 66, and they have daily train rides that take you into the Grand Canyon for a visit. They also do a fun Polar Express train ride during the holiday season, so we tacked that onto our visit, too!

Still can't believe we got to see the Grand Canyon & have this amazing experience with our kids at such a young age! Derek and I were laughing on this trip trying to list off all of the adventures sweet little Brady has already been on in his short 16 months of life--the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Zion, Mount Charleston, San Diego, Disney Land, Utah, Georgia, Florida, and I'm sure we're probably missing a couple! ;)

{on the train & ready for the Grand Canyon!!}

We were worried it was going to be super cold on this trip, and I scrambled to get Brady a winter coat, hat, and mittens before we left but we totally lucked out and had the most gorgeous weather for the entire trip!! Now for a plethora of pictures, it was truly a sight to behold! The pictures do NOT do it justice!!!

This next picture below is one of my favorites from the whole trip--we bring our kids to the Grand Canyon--a place people long to see and have on their Bucket Lists--and here are our kids playing in the dirt. ;)

{love this one of the girls looking out over the canyon}

{waiting to board the train back to Williams}

 

 

It was a long and tiring day with 3 kids, but it was so worth it! Such an amazing experience that we will never forget! And I'm just thankful we all lived to tell about it! ;)  I'm not super nervous with heights, but heights with small children are NOT my thing at all. My kids trip and and fall just walking down the sidewalk, then you want to throw in rocky terrain & drop-offs? Good grief! I was already nervous to begin with and we'd only been at the Grand Canyon for about five minutes & hadn't even made it anywhere close to the edge yet, and Hadley was walking along a little ledge near the bathrooms that was maybe 6-12inches off the ground & fell flat on her face. It made me all the more nervous for the rest of the day! Our kids were by far the youngest we saw there that day, but we just kept laughing b/c every single parent {even the parents of teens!} were all saying the exact same things. Hold my hand! Don't go any further! Stop right there! Be careful! ;)

 

On our drive home after our trip, I told Derek I really want to go to the West Rim before our time in Las Vegas is up, and he told me he wasn't sure I could handle it. ;)  Apparently the West Rim is on Navajo land, and they have a glass walkway that goes out over the Canyon so you can see straight down. I'm pretty sure Derek is right--the whole time I would be thinking one of my kids would jump and break the glass and we would plummet to our death somehow. ;)  I told him maybe we'll make a date day out of it sometime and go sans-kids! This military life has granted us some pretty cool experiences, and Derek is slowly but surely getting me on the National Park Bandwagon. ;)

Two Bike Riders!

We officially have two bike riders in our house & no training wheels! Hadley started riding her bike right before our Thanksgiving trip, and she's got it down pat now!!! Below are two videos--the first was taken on Thanksgiving Day right after we'd gotten back from our trip, and the second one was taken yesterday.








The girls are both loving riding their bikes now! And I will say, I love living right across the street from the girls' school every day {walking to school is the best EVER!}, but I have been especially loving it now b/c the empty parking lot is the best place to practice their bike riding!!

Lots of pics & recaps to come later this week from our recent trip! :)  Hope you're having the best Monday!

Gobble, Gobble!

Happy Thanksgiving from Hadley & Joe the Turkey!!!

{photo taken at Bearizona in Williams, AZ}

Timehop

I don't know about you, but I absolutely love the Timehop app & Facebook "memories" where pictures pop up from that same day in previous years. This one in particular jumped out at me this week. Here are the girls on November 15th back in 2013 in their matching turkey shirts:

 

 

 

Did you catch the caption I put with the picture back in 2013? About how much we were enjoying the matchy-matchy outfits but not being sure how long it would last? Well, fast forward to November 15th of 2017, and you can see the answer to that question for yourself:

It's pretty clear that matchy-matchy outfits are still going strong in this house, ha! As soon as that picture from 2013 popped up on my phone, and I saw the girls sitting on the couch in matching dresses I couldn't snap their picture fast enough! It's so true what "they" say--the days are long, but the years are short.

Donuts with Dad

This morning was our school's annual Donuts with Dad event. This year was extra fun b/c now Hadley gets to be in on the action, too!

And the best part of the whole morning was Derek texting me from school to tell me that there were only two other dads in uniform there, and that Hadley mistook one of those dads in uniform for Derek and spanked him! To provide some context, the girls both love to lovingly/in a teasing manner hit/spank Derek at home. {Why do "inside" family things/habits/rituals sound so bizarre when described to other people?!} Apparently, Hadley was running past this other dad in uniform on the playground and just gave him a swift smack across the bottom as she went by. I mean, you just can't make this stuff up!!!

Bye-Bye, Training Wheels!

Our Shelby-girl learned how to ride her bike without training wheels this weekend!!! I still can't believe she did it! The girls really haven't really ridden their bikes much at all since Santa brought them new scooters last Christmas, so weaning Shelby from training wheels was far from the forefront of our minds. We just decided to take the training wheels off a couple of weeks ago, and then we'd briefly practiced with her twice since then. Yesterday morning, I suggested we walk over to the parking lot of the girls' school to let her give it a whirl where it was flat and open. We hadn't been there more than two minutes when this happened:

 

Then we walked back over later that afternoon to give it another whirl after Brady's nap, and she was practically a pro!! It all just clicked for her!!!

 

 

 

 

It was a big day in our house!!! 

Life Lately

This past week was kind of wonky for us to say the least. The girls were out of school on Monday for Parent/Teacher conferences, and schools were closed again on Friday for Veterans Day. Throw in the time change with Daylight Savings ending and two late nights for Derek dealing with flu vaccines, and we were just all out of whack around here. This little meme summed up my feelings about the time change pretty accurately.

The girls are so good, and even if they wake up early they just stay in their beds and read. Brady, on the other hand, now thinks 4:15 is an acceptable time to start his day..which really came as a huge surprise to us b/c prior to the time change he was waking up between 5:30 and 6ish. So why 4:15, what gives?! All I know is that by the time I got home from dropping the girls off at school and put Brady down for his morning nap, it felt like it should be lunchtime already!!!

Other than being tired as all get out, life has been good! It's hard to believe this is the girls' last week of school, and then they'll be off for the week of Thanksgiving! Here's a few pictures from the past week or so.

 

{The girls were working hard on digging holes, and much to their dismay Brady thought the holes were built just for him, ha!} 

{The one upside to a 4:15am wakeup call is Derek had ample time to make us a nice breakfast before he left for work for the day.}

 

Hope you had a wonderful weekend! Here's to hoping this next week is more restful at our house!