Father's Day

When I asked Devin what he wanted to do for Father's Day, would you believe he said that he wanted to go shopping at the mall? I know, unlikely story, but it's true! We both have gift cards to spend and we both desperately need new clothes. Unfortunately, we never made it there. After a big breakfast, we were too lazy to go anywhere. So we stayed home, relaxed, played with Kayla, and snacked all day long. Then I told Devin to browse through our collection of cook books and pick ANYTHING he liked and I would make it for dinner. That task was to overwhelming for him so he left it up to me to decide. Of course I chose something simple: Penne pasta with bell peppers and spicy Italian sausage. It was super yummy! I'm so glad I finally got Devin to like pasta!

Kayla LOVES to dance! As soon as she hears music, she starts to shake her hips side to side. But everytime I try to get the camera to record her, she stops! This time I got a good 10 seconds of her rocking out.

Then Devin busted out the guitar to play a tune for us. Kayla likes to help strum the strings.

1st Annual Sisters Trip

All of my life I longed for siblings and thanks to Devin, I now have 5 awesome sisters! So last weekend we all got together for some girl time, NO husbands and NO kids (except for one nursing baby)! It was an inexpensive vacation (even after all the shopping we did). Since Devin's Dad goes up to Utah for the summer, we were able to stay at his Arizona house so we didn't have to pay for a hotel. And since it's only 4 hours away, I drove there so I didn't have to pay for a plane ticket. That meant more spending money in my pocket! It was great! We ate out EVERY night! No cooking or doing dishes when you're on vacation...

We hit up several malls every day. Finding bargains is hard work! So we took a 2 hour break to see a chick flick (Letters to Juliet). Here we are, off to do more shopping...

The weather was so gorgeous we spent alot of time outside. Normally, it's triple digits in June in Arizona, but I bet it didn't even hit 90.

Just chillin', not a care in the world...

Enjoying the sunshine...

Who's Mommy? This was our weekend to be FREE...

I really do hope that we do this every year. I had a GREAT time! The best surprise was after I came home and got on the scale, I had actually lost 2 pounds! It must have been all of the calories we burned shopping for hours.

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I extended my vacation by taking Monday off too so I could just hang out with Kayla. I missed her, but I don't think she even noticed I was gone for 3 days.

May Days

So I'm a little behind on my blogging. May was a busy month for us. Here's a recap of some of our favorite moments...

May 2 - All the years that we've been members of the Living Desert, we've never hiked the Eisenhower Trail. So Michele and I decided to finally go check it out before they closed the trail for the summer when it's too hot. The Wilderness Loop is 3.5 miles (5 miles from the parking lot). This view is about a mile up from the canyon's entrance looking back at the direction we came from.

It was a very nice hike. This picnic bench is at the half-way point, elevation 1000 ft.

May 9 - No, I didn't get the breakfast in bed (or even a card) that I wanted for Mother's Day. But that's okay. Maybe next year Devin will get the hint. I was happy enough to enjoy a beautiful, lazy Sunday with my husband and little girl!

Various dates - Just some misc. pictures of Kayla being cute.

She likes to read the junk mail.

May 18 - Happy 35th Birthday to me! We went to Harry's BBQ and had ribs again. We used the money we both got for our birthdays from my family, plus we had a coupon for buy one get one free!

Then we came home and had cake. Yay!

May 19 - The ice cream truck drives down our street EVERY night! We don't normally buy ice cream, we just like to watch him go by. But this happened to be Kayla's lucky day! I was inside washing dishes while Devin was outside with Kayla and our neighbor got it for her.

May 22 - Another Saturday morning at the park with Connor.

Some ducks walked through the playground and Kayla and Connor immediately started chasing them!

Awh, look at that cute face! After the park, she came home and snacked on some yogurt. As you can see, she's still not very good with her utensils yet.

May 23 - Kayla LOVES to watch and dance to Yo Gabba Gabba!

May 29 - Kayla hasn't played outside much lately so she was excited to find her favorite pet rock!

A doggie, a ball, and a rock-what more could a kid want?

May 30 - Since it was Memorial Day weekend, Michele and I hiked up to the top of the Bump and Grind trail at 5:15am to sprinkle some of Pookie's and Zoey's ashes. We used to hike there alot with the dogs so we had alot of good memories to reminisce on the way up. We found a nice spot off the trail and made rock piles and sprinkled their ashes on top.

By noon we were at Mike and Christian's pool party. This was Kayla's first time in a swimming pool! But she loves the bathtub so I knew she wouldn't be afraid of the water.

She didn't care much for the arm floaties, but she loved riding around the pool in her penguin float!

Taking a break to eat a turkey burger. Yummy!

Okay, all rested and ready to go swimming again.

And of course, CAKE! Happy 36th Birthday Devin!

Camping trip debacle

We had planned to go camping in Joshua Tree National Park with our friends Mike, Christian, Matt, and Hollie the weekend after Easter. It was a distaster before it even started, but us die-hards ignored all the "signs" and insisted on going anyway. First, on Thursday (the day before we were leaving) I woke up with a soar throat. I went to work, but came home shortly after with the body aches and shivers. Yup, the flu bug got me. So I put my on my sweats and went to bed hoping that I would feel better in the morning, and I did. But then we learned Friday morning that Mike got food poisoning and was sick all night. He too insisted he would be better by the afternoon when it was time to go. Finally, it's 6:00 pm and Mike, Christian, Devin and I are taking the 4X4 entrance through Berdoo Canyon. Little did we know that as we're on our way, Matt and Hollie had already arrived at the Joshua Tree main entrance and were told that the park was completely full! (Unfortunately, they don't take reservations and apparently it was still Spring break.) So by the time we got cell phone reception back and heard their message, they were already headed home. Now it's pitch dark out, there are no campsites left, and we are on side of the road wondering what to do next. Then a park ranger pulled over and told us that the only place available for us to camp was on some dirt road just south of the Cottonwood station (which is right off the I-10 freeway back near where we live). We decided it was worth a try at this point. Finally, we find a vacant spot and start pitching our tents.
Of course we just bought a brand new tent and didn't practice putting it together ahead of time so we stumbled around in the dark for a long time, put it together wrong, toar it all down and started over again. Luckily Kayla stayed asleep in the car until we were ready. It was probably close to midnight by the time we were all set up and got the campfire going. Ahhhh! After a long day, we're finally able to relax and enjoy the great outdoors!

I LOVE our new tent (now that we know how it works)! It's tall enough to stand up in and the sleeping area is big enough for our queen size air mattress, Kayla's pack-n-play, and more! It was warm enough that we didn't put on the rain cover so we could stare at the stars while we laid in bed. That was pretty awesome.

Here's our first look of our campsite in the morning.

And our lovely view of the I-10 traffic ahead.

Kayla picking desert flowers.

As we were cooking breakfast, a security guard stopped to tell us that we couldn't camp there and that we had to move to the next site over. Apparently we had set up camp within 65 feet of an underground water canal which isn't allowed. (Too bad they couldn't post a sign to warn us!)The thought of taking down our tents only to set up a few feet away seemed ridiculous, but we weren't ready for our desert adventure to be over yet! So we decided to pack up and take another 4x4 drive for fun. While we were busy loading up the cars, Kayla was inspecting the ants crawling around in the dirt.

We found the trail off of Box Canyon Rd that leads to Hotel California (a cabin some hippie built in the late '70s out in the middle of nowhere). Kayla napped in the car while we got out to check it out.

It was pretty cool to see, but totally gross inside (full of rat poop)!

Here's Mike and Devin thinking about climbing up to that fox hole (which of course they eventually did).

It's a pretty busy tourist attraction, so we continued up to the end of the road that sits on a ledge looking down at the back of Hotel California. We put a tarp across the tops of our cars to make a nice shady spot to hang out. All day long we watched other people drive up to check out Hotel California. It was a beautiful day to be outside. Here's Kayla chillin' on her Disney Princess camping chair waiting for lunch to be served.

Playing kick with the little beach ball she got on Easter.

And picking more desert flowers.

So it wasn't the greatest trip ever, but it turned out to not be so bad either. We made the best of it and at least we got to do what we set out to do: camp (even it was just for one night).

Easter Sunday morning

My friend Nicole's husband works at the Desert Springs Marriot so we got passes to attend their big Easter Event! It was a beautiful day and the front entrance lawn was covered with Easter eggs. The whole place was decorated with cool stuff. Here we are waiting for the Easter Bunny to arrive.

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's the Easter Bunny! As an airplane flew above us, the Easter Bunny jumped out and parachuted down right in front of us! It was the most spectacular thing we'd ever seen!

As soon as the Easter Bunny landed, all the kids made a mad dash for the eggs! It was chaos and Kayla didn't know what to do. So I grabbed some eggs and put them in her basket for her.

She was perfectly happy with just this one pink egg and she held onto it all day.

They had pony rides, but the line was way too long so we skipped them and went straight for Kayla's favorite, the petting zoo! She loved petting the sheep. They also had a goat, piglets, ducks, chicks, and bunnies.

We couldn't leave without taking our picture with the Easter Bunny! Too bad Kayla was terrified and screamed the whole time. I can't blame her though, he was kind of creepy-looking.

They had a bunch of cool displays perfect for taking photos. As I was trying to get Kayla to pose for a picture, she decided to karate kick the prop over. I couldn't help but laugh. It was so funny!

Ahhhhh, this is much better.

This was the best picture I got of Kayla and Connor together. He didn't like the basket and started freaking out. Then Kayla started crying too. That's when we knew it was time to go. But we had so much fun!

When we got home, there was a basket for Kayla from the Easter Bunny!