A little break from winter...

Does anyone else get the winter blahs?  I do--major winter doldrums going on.  Our good friends, Dan and Lindsay, invited us to come down to their house in Scottsdale, Arizona over President's Day weekend.  It was HOT!  Probably around 90 degrees.  It was great--we had plenty of sunshine, got to wear shorts and short sleeves in February.  We went to a car show and saw some awesome cars.  I'm pretty sure Joey is picking his nose...

 There is so much really awesome stuff to do in that area.  It would be a great place to live!  We walked around the old downtown.  The kids loved climbing on the LOVE statue.  I cropped it so you could see the kids better, so now it is just a giant E statue.  The girls' names are Eden and Stella.

 What a great moment captured!  I wonder what they were smiling about?

 There was also several cool parks near them.  One is near the home of the author of the Family Circus cartoon.  I am a big fan, as you can see by the name of my blog, Swenson Family Circus.  Here is a statue of all the kids from the cartoon and all of our kids!

 They had an amazing train museum--a HUGE building completely set up with model trains.  It was amazing.  Whole miniature towns, landscapes, everything you can think of--even a mini-solar farm!  And trains galore!  It was such a blast.  The kids were entranced.

 Our last day we hit a Renaissance Faire.  I know it's a bit kooky, but it is apparently this huge production and one of the biggest faires in the states.  There is actually an entire village built out in the desert, permanently there, and they hold the faire 8 weeks a year I think.

 We saw some fun shows, some vulgar ones (I didn't know how crude some of the humor would be!) and a fun jousting match.  One of the shows was so bad we left after a few minutes.  I was surprised at how lewd it was considering all the kids in the audience.  Apparently we were the only parents "prude" enough to leave.  But my kids don't need to hear about alcohol use, pooping and a love of all things rated XXX by some weirdo in a pirate costume!  It was definitely an exerience!

Maggie's highlight was meeting the forest fairy.  She even gave Maggie a fairy rock!  Which Maggie then proceeded to lose, the she cried, then we went back and had to get another one.

 We had great times sitting and chatting by the firepit.  All the kids slept outside it was so warm!  We had a great time.

On the drive home we came across a bridge that crossed over the Colorado River.  It was pretty high up, a mini-Grand Canyon.  We got out and walked around a while.

 Of course Maggie asked us to take a picture of her...

 And just for posterity's sake Tyler took a snapshot of me and Eric.  At this point we'd been driving for about 8 hours so it felt great to stretch our legs!

It was a great weekend.  Now back to real life again!