the grands

I have very few complaints about Arizona but one teeny tiny detail that I don't love is that we are now pretty far from both of our families. Luckily, there is this really great invention by the name of air travel that we owe for successfully bringing our family to us on several occasions since we've moved here. Two weekends ago Jake's mom was able to come down from Oregon for the first time since we moved to the new house and the kids were in grandparent heaven.

I didn't do an awesome job getting pictures but I'll throw you what I've got, as usual.

We took Grandma to pretty much our favorite place to take visitors in the AZ summer...the mall. Grandma indulged the boys by letting them enjoy all the mall bonus activities (ie the ones that cost $$)  and heaven help my wallet next time we go to the there because I don't think there's any way I'll ever emulate (afford) anything 1/2 as fun.

 ^^^ let's all appreciate Rad's face for 8 seconds.

^^^the funnest adult of the month goes to grandma

Rhett, Rad and Beck got on the kiddy rides with the pint sized modes of transportation that go around in a circle and go up and down. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about from that fantastic and detailed description.

Okay, here's some quality photos...

They were JAZZED.

Up next on the tour-o-fun, bowling. (I stayed home with Beck, because even babies with bowling ball sized heads still are not fun to hit the lanes with.) So everyone sans us arrived at the bowling alley to discover it was actually DISCO bowling day. Blacklights, thumping music, strobe lights, and all. Kind of like being in a club, except it was 2 in the afternoon and no one was wearing a mini-skirt or dancing inappropriately.

Highlights:

- The boys showed great proficiency for bowling by squatting down and rolling that ball between their legs and scoring a record high of four pins. #bowlingwizards
- No one clocked anyone in the head when flinging the ball backwards.
- One time Rad's ball just...stopped rolling. Right in the middle of the lane.
- Before you could say king pin, Rhett hurtled his ball down the lane and managed to graze Rad's ball enough to get it to the pins.

And then my mother in law shot herself into automatic sainthood when she secretly booked a night at a hotel for us and kicked us out of the house. In our six years of parenthood this is the third night that we've ever been away from the kids together and it was so good. So freaking good.

 We hit our favorite sushi place for their happy hour and our inner fat kids ordered like there was no such thing as calories.

Before the food comma hit we made our way to one of those ultra-mega furniture stores...you know the type, everything is always on the sale of the century, because we had heard that they had rows of deee-lux massage chairs open to customer use. 

Indeed. They did.

Jake asked if we had hit romantic rock bottom. #maybe

But no regrets. Zilch.

We spent the night at the hotel with no kids sleeping in the bathroom and didn't wake up to anyone asking if they could play games on our phones. Paradise.

Sadly for all parties, Grandma had to return her house. These visits never feel long enough and Rad is still waking up in the morning looking past my smiling face and asking for, "Grandma?!" while I offer him a plate of chopped mother liver for breakfast. So it's safe to say no one can wait for the next visit.

In fact, tomorrow would be perfect. Thanks grandma. ;)