Matsuri Festival

 After the excitement of the soccer game Kali and I went downtown for the Matsuri festival. Kali loves going every year and it was nice to just have time together one on one. We had a fun time walking around, making oragami, there were some interesting people there all dressed up as Japanese cartoon characters and the weather was perfect. If you've never been I highly recommend it.

Verizon Super Bowl Central

I wanted to take the kids down to the Verizon Super Bowl Central since we had to tell Kai that we can't afford a $3,000 Superbowl ticket for him. (poor, poor Kai) 

We drove downtown after an early release day and brought Kali's friend Lauren with us. 

Here we are in the AZ Republic Photo booth.

Outside of the Sun's arena

 watching some cool dancers warm up

 One of the stages

 downtown Phoenix looked SOOOO different

 watching the filming of some Superbowl thing with some former football players that are now commentators, Hines Ward and Jason Taylor. 

 The big 49 sign

 There was live music and dance performances

 Kora was dancing to a band warming up

 Getting ready to walk back to the car

We went back on Saturday night but it was WAY too crowded. Luckily, we left Kora home with my parents.  Here are a few pics we took before it just got too overwhelming. 

 some cool sand castles

 Then we turned the corner and it was SO crowded. We could not even get into the restaurants to eat. We walked in this crowd for about 2 miles and it never got smaller. I did not even know there were this many people in Phoenix!

We drove to Chili's by our house and had a nice dinner.

Downtown

We went downtown yesterday to visit the AZ Science Center. I would definitely say this place is for older kids but Kali and Kai had an okay time and Kali always love going to "the city"...that is what she call downtown. Kai was happy to see the lighrail in action and on the way home we stopped at our favorite candy store, "Smeeks". I have to agree with Kali, "the city" is soooo fun!