Craigmile Crew: Arizona Day 1

We decided to take the girls on another Spring Break Trip. We had done some brainstorming when we were in Destin last year about possible locations for a future trip.

Reid worked crazy hard during peek season for work and in the midst declared, YEP! We're going on Spring Break, let's get it booked :)

We decided on Arizona.

1. The girls have never seen the Mountains before
2. At this age all they need is warm weather and a pool
3. Pretty easy to fly there
4. Relatively reasonable price-wise

Mason did not make the cut, for one more year. Emma was 3 when she went on her first trip. Mason is a great little boy, but 2 is a hard age to change up schedules and go with the flow. Nana and Grandpa graciously accepted our ask if they would hang with our little man.

We surprised the girls with the news during Christmas break. We didn't want it to be a Christmas present, as we didn't want it to become expected each year. They made it easier to surprise because not once did they ask if we'd go on another trip. Love that! We also debated not telling them and surprising them the morning of. But, we decided against that, because we feel part of the excitement of a trip is the planning and anticipation. Sally talked about in the future that she agreed it's fun to be excited and count down, but we could always keep the location a surprise :)

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It was definitely harder this year to leave Mason behind as I knew he would have fun with parts of it, and he kind of understood that we were all leaving. I also love me some pictures and hate that he's not included. Oh well, one more year :)

A similar timeframe as last year, we flew out on a Sunday morning and came home on a Thursday evening. Glad this year it wasn't Holy Week when we were traveling.

Last year the security line was crazy long so we wanted to be sure we were to the airport a full two hours before our flight. We breezed through checking our bags in and security and had time to hang out. Thank you Gramps for waking up early to drop us off at the airport!

Poor Sally had a bit of PTSD from the last time she flew....coming home from Destin with the stomach flu. When we walked in the doors to the airport she declared, "Mom, I don't feel so good, I might throw up." Thankfully it passed and was a mix of needing some breakfast, nerves and excitement. I prayed too many prayers to hopefully not have any sickness during the trip. (Thankfully God waited until after to have Mason's Febrile Seizure :))

Miss Emma testing out the carseat bag while we were packing

I may be looking a bit tan...I took my sister's trick and got a spray tan so that I wasn't so MN skinned when wearing my suit or summer clothes. Mixed reviews on it...

Ready to rock!

Elizabeth brought along her Flat Stanley and he met a friend at the airport :)

Checking out our plane. We're not loyal to one Airline and that helps us save a little bit when buying tickets. I often buy two one way tickets, sometimes with different airlines. We flew Southwest on the way out and American Airlines to return. Both went perfectly!

Seat Buddies

Ready for Takeoff!

at the Craigmile Crew you're not allowed to have gum until you're five. Emma was excited that I made an exception for her while she was flying, she's only 6 months away!

Love that we don't allow much screentime, so when we do use it, it works!

Back home, Mason was enjoying his two on one attention. He and Gramps helped shovel away all the snow!

Most hotel/resort websites make it seem a bit better than it is. With our resort, I felt the website didn't do it justice. We really loved where we stayed. I would highly recommend it!! Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliffs

[VIDEO] of us driving in to our resort and getting in to our room...this was after being there a few days

They were excited to see all of the Cacti and touch a few!

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You know how we love our TripAdvisor, Reid picked a great pizza place for our first meal out. It was delicious, Spinato's Pizza. We were ready for bed early, AZ is 2 hours behind MN time. Knowing we would like stay operating on MN time for one more day, we planned to Hike the next morning to catch the sunrise at 6:30am (Which felt like 8:30am MN time)