Easter weekend in Arizona (lots of pics)

Easter this year was to be spent in Arizona at Uncle Jim and Aunt Felicia's lovely home. Mapquest tells us the distance is 500 miles and approximately 7+ hours drive. Our plan was to hit the road around midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning. Ha! At about 9pm on Friday night, we had Annabelle swaddled and in her swing (hoping she'd let up on the fussing). I walked past her right as she spit up a tiny bit. In the 2 seconds it took for Dana tossed me a rag to wipe her chin, she did this:

it cleared her toes and hit the floor. I've never seen her throw up so much and it got me nervous that she wasn't feeling too well. Had an uneasy feeling about getting on the road in the middle of the night with a sick infant. What to do? I went upstairs to try to lay down for a couple hours at about 9:30pm, and instantly noticed that my own stomach was not feeling well at all either.

At 9:45 I hear Annabelle screaming to be fed. After that I decided it was best to delay our leaving since I still felt crappy. I took some Pepto and headed to bed with an alarm set for 3:30am.

Annabelle woke me up prior to my alarm at 3:20am. After feeding her, I got Dana up at 4am and said "lets get going". By the time we got the car fully loaded, Bug up and dressed and ourselves ready - it was 5:45am. Gave my parents a quick call and found that they were also just leaving (although they were starting out 60 miles closer to AZ).

Since my plan was to travel at night, I had jammies set out for Bug to wear for the road trip. Even though it was pushing daylight, I went ahead with the jammies anyway for the comfort factor.

Bug ready to go:

We met up at 8:30am with my parents in Blythe for breakfast at Denny's. We called my sister and Mike to meet us there for some grub. Bug, however, decided that Denny's is not somewhere she wanted to be. She threw a fit and wouldn't go in for about 30mins. Nana walked with her around and around the building. When she did finally get it together and came in, she ate a really good breakfast. My dad even ordered her her own side of avocado to add to her breakfast.



The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. I had to stop 3 additional times to feed Annabelle (beyond the feeding at the table in Denny's). We arrived at Jim and Felicia's home at 4pm. Got settled and had a yummy BBQ dinner. Dana enjoyed that he constantly had a frosty mug of ice-cold beer in hand once he arrived (LOL!)


Sunday morning I woke at 3:30 when I heard Annabelle squirm, but she didn't wake. At 4 I was up to pump a little bit, and she was still asleep. At 4:30 there was more squirming. I finally woke her up to eat just after 5am. So essentially I was up on Sunday from 3:30 on. Ugh.

Here is a pic I took out their back door at 5am. So pretty:

Sunday morning, we were all up and ready for 7am Easter mass. Afterwards it was time for a traditional breakfast and lots of pictures.

a nice pic of our little family of 4:

Me and my favorite girls:

Nana and her favorite 2 month old:

Buggy with her DziaDzia:

Oooooooh!

she's super jazzed about plastic eggs that open:

such a doll (at the moment...):

Miss Annabelle hanging out in her Rock-N-Play and her swaddle wrap:

this pic was super dark and was difficult to make lighter, but I had to try because this look just kills me:

Mimosa and screaming baby. LOL.

outside to run around in the sunshine:

hanging with cousin Mike and Daddy:

sitting in a big-people chair (with her little lizard friend beside her):

Shadow:

(excuse the "mommy bun")

Mommy went in to take a nap, and Bug went with Daddy, Nana, Mike, and uncle Jim to the horse stables and the playground. Bug was not happy with the horses:

swinging:

ready to go down the slide with Mike:

climbing back up:

Easter basket:

she was quick to remove all the grass:

found the Cadbury Egg:

Her first easter treat (and her last LOL - more on that later)

view from back patio:

uncle Jim, Mike, and I went on a hike all around the property and beyond. Here are some pics from that adventure:

view of their house from across the way

Aunt Felicia prepared a very lovely Easter dinner. Pretty much the moment it was ready, Bug had the post-Cadbury Egg meltdown of the century. I took her ouside and just held her and let her thrash and scream and scream and scream and scream. I didn't want to ruin everyone else's dinner (although we may have ruined the neighbors dinner who seemed to be having a get-together outside on their patio). She was finally calming a bit when cousin Mike came out to take over so Dana and I could go in and eat.

here is Bug after her meltdown:

Monday morning. Time to pack up our massive load and hit the road:

Annabelle supervises:

Baby smiles:

Bug all snuggly and comfy in her seat:

at our stop somewhere in the middle of Arizona near the Gila Bend turn off. We hit up a Carl's Jr. for some grub. It was nice and air conditioned so I fed Belle there - rather than in the car once again.

After stopping at the border at Aunt Steffy's place to feed both Bug and Belle, we hit the road again, however, Belle decided she was hungry again only 40 miles down the road.

Screaming baby = pulling off the freeway in the most random/desolate places.

Here we are in the middle of the desert with the only other person around - a big semi truck:

Speaking of semi's.... Bug yelled "Big Duck" at every single one we saw or passed. All trip long. Big Duck. Big Duck!

Our return trip took us over 13 hours from when we left the house (although probably almost 2 hours were spent having breakfast at "The Good Egg" with Mike and Nana, then feeding Belle in the car before going again)

Bug did really surprisingly well for such a long trip. Just a few whiney moments when she'd drop her sippy (which we got smart at Carl's and filled up 2 back-up sippies - just in case). Bug would not take a nap, though - but she did fall asleep not too much later than her usual bedtime at about 7:40pm.

I was so excited to see our "trip" total flip over to 1000. At 999.6 I thought about grabbing my camera, but we were on the freeway moving quickly and I really wouldn't have dug it out in time, so I thought, we'll take a pic of the total once we get home. At 999.9 miles it next flipped over to 0. Seriously?! What a let down.

So our trip total only looks like 30 miles: