Isn't life GRAND!

Well, I am back from my trip and it was full of many wonderful adventures. I was very blessed by having my mom fly out from Florida to accompany me on the trip. I couldn't have done it without her! Although I am sure she is going to need another vacation to recover from this one! My kids sure have more energy then the both of us times 10!

A little of background....my Nana is a beautiful, wonderful woman. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed years back with Alzheimers. This disease has put her in a Alzheimers home with no memory left at all. The last time I saw here was 7 years ago when my family was moving from California to Florida. I have many fun memories of her at this time. She already had Alzheimers but at a much earlier stage. She lived at home at this time and she was very curious about different things. One thing she was curious about was the house down the hill from them. She wanted to know if they had a pool. She told me that I was invited into the all girls club and we must not tell grandpa but we were going to climb their high wall to look over. Obviously, I told her that this probably wasn't a good idea and that she would for sure need a ladder. I then quickly snuck inside to see what everyone else was doing. Anyway, not even 5 minutes later here comes Nana, sneaking out of the garage carrying a ladder. I found this a great time to inform my Grandpa about the all girls club and what Nana was up to!

Unfortunately, that was the last time I had seen her. Now, seven years later I decided that this is something that I really wanted to do. My mom was very kind and agreed to fly to LA and then take the drive to Albequerque with me and the kids. I am so glad that she did because that 12 hour drive would have been quite miserable alone!!

We decided to take our drive in two days to make it as enjoyable as possible. On the way out, we stopped in Arizona and had the great opportunity to see the Grand Canyon. This was amazing and quite stressful at the same time. If any of you have been to the Grand Canyon then you'll know how deep it is and that its not fenced all the way around. Lauren is quite the independent daredevil and many times thought it was funny to take of running toward the canyon. Sigh!

Here are some pictures of the Grand Canyon.


While there, I also discovered a really neat planet. Here is a picture of it.
I've decided to call it planet Au-some. I hope I make millions with my discovery of this planet. (Okay, okay, this is really just a picture of the Colorado River by putting my camera to the eye of a telescope. Don't tell anyone though.)

While in Albequerque we did lots a fun activities like visiting the temple, going to the minor league baseball game (which got rained out in the third inning with a HUGE storm), spending time with my grandpa, spending time my aunt Pam and family, visiting Old Town, going to an aquarium...oh, and of course...Seeing shrek 3, surf's up, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, Underdog!! :) Here are a few pictures of some of those things.




We also spent a lot of time visiting my Nana. My grandpa would visit her at 10, 2, and 7 every day to feed her snacks. We went every day with him. The kids starting getting kind of bored so my mom and I started rotating times. Here are some pictures we took with my Nana.


We had a wonderful time visiting but time came to come home. We were going to take one quick trip to the petrafied forest but then try to make it home quickly. Although, when my mom and I get together, we like to see and do. So, lo and behold, our 12 hour drive took us 38 hours. We had been driving for about an hour and saw a sign for a Pueblo on a Mesa. (City on a flat mountain ;) ) I decided that we should for sure stop and three hours later we had completed a wonderful tour and were back on the road again. Here is the Pueblo.
The tour lasted just under 2 hours and took us all around the village and in the mission. There are about 40 people that still live up here with no electricity. Some of the houses were built around 900 AD. One lady was selling Navajo fry bread. MMM MMMM MMM. My dad served his mission in this area and learned the Navajo language so I really wished he could have been there with us. We had so much fun, but this place was probably one of the most foreign countries I'd ever been to. :) Here are some more pictures.
I LOVED this pottery. I wanted to buy one SOOO bad, but to give you an example, a piece about the size of a lime was around $50. The big ones were quite expensive!!

Kissing Rock. :)
Hard to see, but the city is on the top of that hill!

On the road again....we drove a little longer but decided to stop at the painted mountian and the Petrified forest. I wasn't quite as impressed by the painted mountain but the forest was really neat.
Not at all what I expected! I guess long ago these trees got covered in water and then sand. The sand got inside the trees and turned them to rock. Its really neat. They look like trees but when you get close you see that they are rock! This was a great 1 mile hike. More pictures.....



Our shadows. :)

We didn't make it as far as we wanted to on our drive because of our extra detours. The next day we were going to drive the whole way without stopping anywhere so we would get home nice and early.

But...a METEOR CRATER???!?!? How cool is that...who knows if we would ever drive the road to see one again...so or course, we had to stop!! This crater was more than 2 1/2 miles around and was hit by a 150 foot meteor.

Place of impact from meteor.

Amazingly, at this meteor crater, you guessed it....I discovered another planet. This is a zoomed in view of the place of impact.
I loved seeing this. I thought it was very interesting.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip! And now I posted such a long blog that you can all feel like you went on the trip with me. Poor Robbie. We were in the car and he said "no more side trips please, mom!"