This One's For You, Mom

Really, it's for everyone, because I haven't posted in forever.  Sorry about that.  We've been up to a lot.  We've taken a few roadtrips, had a couple birthdays, and Amy and I have been having fun analyzing the impossibility of the Cars universe since Michael is obsessed with the movie and we get to watch it so often (Amy is babysitting Michael for me while I go to school).  

In order to play catch up, I've had to split up everything into multiple posts.  

First, the Veronin Road Trip.  My parents got a lot of free tickets to amusement parks from the Make a Wish Foundation for Ki and decided we needed to use them before they expired, so they planned a trip that would let us use as many as possible in one go:  we'd drive down through AZ to see family, then across to CA to see Legoland, the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park, and circle back up to UT for Lagoon and possibly Cherry Creek.

This post will just cover the first portion of the trip, AZ.  I didn't take as many pictures as I should have here.  We were really just having way too much fun hanging out with family.  

Katie, Michael and I (Jeff and Amy couldn't make it) rented a minivan and drove the 12 hours to Mesa, AZ to visit our Granny Veronin and Uncle Matt.  Michael was surprisingly good during the drive but, then again, he did have poor Katie in the back seat with him to cater to his every need.  We also had Signing Time and McDonald playplaces available to us.  It would have been nice if he had slept a bit more than a bare hour, but it all worked out.  

We met Mom, Dad, Ki, Tess, and Mary in AZ and invaded Granny's house.  Uncle Matt invited us over to swim in his pool, which everyone loved... except for Michael.  He cried and cried when I tried to get him into the pool, and refused to take off his long sleeve truck shirt.  Eventually he discovered he enjoyed splashing in the water with his hands and feet:

Also, Uncle Matt had dogs.  Michael was in heaven.  Ki and Tess were a little less pleased.

The kids had a lot of fun running around Matt's house in their dry clothes (Michael agreed to take off his wet truck shirt, if I gave him the truck pants):

And petting dogs, of course:

While in AZ, we also visited our Uncle Clay and Aunt Tracy- some of the coolest people ever.  Here's a picture of their "game room" (Get it? It's got animals and pool!):

Michael really, really liked Uncle Clay.  And his truck.  Here he in in the back of the truck, signing "truck" and making horn noises:

We also got to take a drive in their Rhino.  Mary and Uncle Clay led the way into the desert on the ATV.  It was amazingly fun.  Michael spent the first half yelling "Go Go Go!" and "Truck!" into the wind.  I even got to drive the Rhino back... and then I broke it.  Disclaimer: my Dad was sitting next to me, egging me on to see how fast we could go, and then we smelled burning and it wouldn't get into gear.  Thankfully, we were practically at Clay's house, because we had to push it the rest of the way there.  I hope they were able to figure out what happened and that it was easily fixed.  I felt really awful.

It was really great to see so many Veronins at one time.  I don't get to see that side of my family very often.

The drive to CA was pretty uneventful, besides passing checkpoints to make sure we weren't hiding any illegals in our car, and getting a look at the very creepy and imposing Mexican Border fence (You can barely see it here, but it's that big black line on the horizon.  It was really disturbing):

A checkpoint sign:

We got to see a lot of desert and interesting landscapes.  Katie and I even saw some really cool birds flying around and had a lot of fun pointing them out to each other.  Mary later told us they were vultures.  Awesome.

Next post, California!