A nice little Saturday

After spending the day painting Kai's room and touching up the hallway. (Kai wants a pirate room now)

We spent the evening watching "Beauty and the Beast", eating yummy chocolate cake (recipe from here: lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com)

and playing in the rain





Doesn't get much better than that!

Keeping busy

It's HOT.
VERY hot.
So to keep busy Kai's been dressing up as a police man.

The kids finished up their last session of swim class. Here they are with Raymond, the BEST teacher ever.

I was in water aerobics too this session so I would not be on the side baking in the sun.

The kids are SUCH good swimmers!

Kai and Kali played with aqua Moon Sand....it's fun for kids but a NIGHTMARE for parents.

Francis took the kids swimming over at Grandma Kathi's. They had never gone swimming at night and they loved it.

Kali was water dancing.

We went to the bookstore and Kali got a book of paper dolls. They are so cute. I loved doing paper dolls when I was young so I was happy that she likes them too.

and we've been doing lots of playdough

We only have two more weeks of summer vacation. Kai and I are sure going to miss having Kali home with us.

Home improvements

Since we've been back from our trip we've been making some changes around our house. We finally after all 8 years of marriage got a brand new couch! It was very exciting and the kids could not wait to go pick it up. Then they were even more excited when Francis made them this awesome house out of the boxes.

He is such a fun Dad!

And here is our awesome SUPER COUCH!

We've also been busy painting our trim on the back of the house (we finished the front earlier this year) and painting the patio. It was this horrible green/turquoise color and now it's more neutral and looks really nice.

I painted the side gate.

Oh and this awful haboob came rolling in earlier this week and made a dusty mess of the patio so we also spent time cleaning/dusting/spraying off the patio.

Nothing like a 22 day vacation to make you want to do house/yard work.

The rest of the way home

After leaving Virginia we were off to Tennessee.

We stayed in downtown Memphis and when we got to our room there were complimentary ear plugs. It was "bike night" in downtown and as soon as it got dark the night was filled with motorcycle noise. We were running low on clean clothes at this point in our trip so we went to a Laundromat where the kids played air hockey while they waited. Then we drove through downtown and saw bike night in action. We like downtown Memphis, and Kali was happy with the diversity there. We ate dinner and watched the bikes out the window and the horse drawn carriages. We went to bed and the bike noise was not too bad and did not go late into the night. GOOD THING because at 3 am the fire alarm went off & we had to carry our tired kids down 7 flights of stairs!! The fire department came and found out there was NO fire just some idiot pulled the alarm. So we got back in bed, could not go to sleep and instead we packed up and went to breakfast. Kali kept staring & smiling at someone sitting at the table
behind us. She was totally putting a little flirty vibe out. I figured it was some little kid and when I turned around I saw a 19 or 20 year old man. She said he was "SOOOOOO cute". Fran had taken Kai to the bathroom and when he got back to the table he said, "that guy plays for the Memphis Grizzlies" so I told him he is also Kali's crush :) Funny girl! She said she likes him because he is tall, dark and has big muscles.....I guess she has a type.

After we finished breakfast we said goodbye to Memphis and crossed the Mississippi River into Arkansas.

We loved all the green ivy that grow over everything!

We stopped to get gas and the kids got some small sticky hands out of a gumball machine that kept them busy for an hour. It was a good break from all the movies they were watching.

Our next stop was Oklahoma City and we even stayed at the same hotel we used on the way to Ohio.

It has the nicest gym and a GREAT pool!!!

Seriously how could you not love it here?!

We walked down to the Bricktown canals for dinner.

We loved downtown Oklahoma City!

Kai did a lot of coloring at dinner.

Kali and Francis ate a TON of crab legs!

After dinner we rode the boats in the canals.

We're on a boat!

It was fun and so pretty and green.

We slept in then went to breakfast and went swimming again before check out time. Here is Kai sitting on the a/c unit. He did this in every single hotel room & kept messing with the buttons.

Then it was off to the longest/most boring/dusty/ stretch of road....the Texas pan handle.
And onto a night in Albuquerque, NM. Not one picture taken because it's just the ugly sister to Phoenix.

On our final day......Kai lost his mind.

For like 20 minutes this kid went nuts!
And then just like that, he was fine and back to watching Hercules.

And after 22 days on the road we were back in Arizona. I thought I would be so happy to get home but I was sad. I LOVED every second of our trip. It was so fun to see so much and make so many memories with my little family. The kids only fought a few times and were such good little travelers. It also made me see that we could live anywhere and be fine as long as we have each other. We're still not done unpacking but we're already planning our next adventure. We are thinking Highway 1 next summer up through California, to Oregon and Washington!