New Year's in the Desert

To take full advantage of our 2-week Christmas Vacation (OK 3/4 of us had a 2 week vacation, but who's counting...) we planned a trip down to Phoenix to spend some time with family and relax.  We were able to do both.  We even had some fun...

This is a (not-so-good) picture of the beautiful sunset that greeted us in Denver on our way to the hotel.

Getting some reading in before bed and an early flight...Sam thought that since Mason was reading a Magic Tree house book that he needed to as well. 

Grandpa Steve has his horses down in Phoenix right now.

Mason helped feed them

On the first visit, Sam didn't want to get closer than 10 feet.  After that, he thought we needed to be out with them ALL the time when we were home. 

We took advantage of some down time to go see a couple of movies.  The boys stayed with Grandpa and Grandma and we had a wild New Year's Eve out with dinner and a movie.  We went to the Yard House. Some of you might have been there before, but if you haven't been to one, we would recommend it to you.  The food was great and the drink menu was unbelievable!

Just one of the 3 page menu of  microbrews-on-tap

It was about 50 degrees most of the time while we were there, so of course, we had to roast S'mores to keep warm. 

We found ways to occupy our time:

Sam loved cleaning

Working on our golf game at Jambo Park.

They had plastic clubs for the little ones...brilliant!

Dinner and Ice Cream at the Sugar Bowl. Ironically, we ate here the night of the actual Sugar Bowl game.

Hmm...maybe he should cut back on sugar with the two missing teeth...

We decided to head off to the PHX ZOO for some Zoo Lights.  They were awesome!  We even were the recipient of a Random Act of Kindness when someone gave us a free ticket to get in.  There are over 3.2 million lights that 4 people put up starting in July! There are full-time year-round jobs that deal specifically with this production.  Sounds like fun to me!!

The K-State band was there to play, and the boys loved it!  The video is very dark, but you can get a small picture of how much fun they had. 

The picture doesn't do this justice, but these are a bunch of saguaros covered in lights.  Beautiful!

Lights around the lake

Here is a video of the light show.

One of our other stops was to the Musical Instrument Museum.  It was not the cheapest museum, but it was so cool!!  There were instruments from all over the world, and many were very old. It was fun to look around, but even more fun when we got to the "experience room" where we could play some of the new and old instruments. 

One of the two rooms dedicated to guitars

Experience room

Bryan found some of the instruments that he saw locals use when he was in the Baltic States.

We got to spend some time with the boys' Great-Grandma and Grandpa Hanson (Laura's Dad's parents) while we were down there.  Mason loved their putting green and Sam couldn't get enough of them. 

Books with Great-Grandpa Max

Tickles from Great-Grandma Loraine

After a wonderful week, we packed up our bags and headed home.  It is back to reality.  We will get by on great memories of one of our favorite places to visit.