My husband’s father and step mother live in Arizona part-time. We spent one of our family vacations with them earlier this fall. I used to hate the idea of Arizona. However, as my love for photography has bloomed, I have fallen in love with the unique landscape. Seriously, it’s gorgeous! The pops of color against the neutral backdrop of the desert are breathtaking. And those greens- I’m pretty sure there are no other greens as beautiful anywhere in the world. The part of Arizona where they live is also graced with gorgeous mountains.

My kids loved spending their days swimming in the backyard pool. What better way to spend a vacation than relaxing and making memories. While there, grandma and grandpa babysat so that Sean and I could go hiking. We had so much fun! I’m pretty sure we almost melted, and that we are most definitely extremely out of shape, but we still had a blast. It was wonderful to have that quiet, beautiful time together. Adventure is something that I love! Any time I get the chance to hike an area I have never been the little girl inside of me comes alive. If I could go on a new hike every day for the rest of my life, I would be one happy girl! Unfortunately, that’s not a possibility, so I take them when I can get them.

My son loves photography. I caught this silhouette of him taking a photo on the golf course behind the house.

The kids loved playing with grandma! Meeting our adorable niece for the first time

While there we also got to visit the zoo, the butterfly garden, and a super fun mirror maze…well, it was super fun for my boys, grandma, and me…not so much for my little girl. She was pretty convinced we would never make it out of there and was hysterical and clinging to me for dear life for the majority of it. Needless to say, I didn’t get any photos of the maze.

The butterflies really liked grandpa’s shirt. They kept landing on him.

The boys and I also went through a laser maze. You know, one like you see in the movies when a stealthy thief has to make it through the laser alarm system and they look super awesome doing it. I am ashamed to admit that I did not do well with that. In my mind I looked just as awesome as  this guy:

But in reality I probably looked more like this baby elephant:

I found out later that, as I was going in, the guy in charge told everyone that moms usually do amazingly well on the challenge…yeah, well, I have nothing to say to that other than I have never claimed to be stealthy or graceful. :/ My boys did really well though, so at least my offspring have a chance at those things.

Our vacation was a lot of fun and extremely refreshing, which is all I really wanted. I would consider it a success!