Our little vacation

Our vacation this year was short, but sweet. We did a road trip to the Grand Canyon (or the Gran Cranis as we lovingly call it now b/c that's how Devin pronounced it for the first couple of days) and then Las Vegas. I always said I would never take my kids to Vegas because it's so slimy, but the last few times I've gone I kept thinking Justin would love this or Avery would think that is so cool, so we decided to go and just not walk the strip and hope their innocent little eyes wouldn't be drawn to the yucky billboards too much. We started the trip on Friday arriving at the Grand Canyon around 4:00 and checked into our hotel then immediately went to the park to check it out. I've been there twice before, but Kirk has never been. Kirk cracked me up with how nervous he was with Devin. It made him a bit paranoid that Devin might fall off. It was kind of nice not be the frantic one for a change and being able to relax a little knowing someone else was a bit more nervous than me. The kids had a great time that evening and the next day hiking around and climbing trees. We ended up seeing deer, elk, squirrels (yes, that does appear to be a mommy squirrel in the picture below), coyote and mule deer. Is there a difference between deer and mule deer? They do look a little different. We even got a quick burst of thunder and a few flashes of lightning with some rain for a bit on Friday evening while we had dinner, but it didn't last, but maybe a half hour. Nice and short. The weather was perfect and it was a fun time. Here are some pictures from this part of our trip. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here goes about a million words! Scroll down further for the Vegas and rest of our trip.

As we headed over to Vegas, we got a nice look at the Hoover Dam.

We arrived in Vegas on Saturday afternoon and quickly made our way to Justin's favorite store, Outdoor World, Bass Pro Shops. The kids had fun playing on the boats and dreaming of having one of their own.

For the next few days we went to a few hotels along the strip, went bowling in our hotel, rode many escalators and pushed many elevator buttons (much to Devin's delight), the M&M Factory, watched the water show at the Bellagio, stopped to see the temple, went to the top of the Stratosphere at night and stopped at Calico Ghost Town on our way home. It was 111 degrees in Vegas and 'cooled' down to a cool 95 degrees at night. Yikes! Needless to say there was a lot of complaining and I'm not just talking about the kids. :-) We did have a nice time, but the nicest time, I'm a bit sorry to say is shown in the last picture. He was pretty difficult this trip and it was nice to get the break.

These pictures crack me up. It was so hot and Avery was complaining away (along with everyone else), but when I told her to smile she posed great. The second picture shows the truth, though. Ha!