We rented a car for the week and then drove to Joce's house. We got there around 9, but her kids stayed up to greet us, and then we put all the kids to bed in the guest house. Leo got his own room and we drug the kids mattresses out to the tv area for them to sleep. In my opinion the baby should always get first dibs! The next day was Sunday and we were still sick so we stayed home from church and worked on getting ourselves better.
By Monday, we were starting to feel good enough to go out and play. Joce's kids had the day off so we decided to try out this place called Goldfield Ghost Town. When we got there we realized we had way under-dressed for the weather and we were freezing! It was so windy and not that warm. Luckily I had at least brought hoodies, and Joce had a blanket for her kids. We braved it and decided to ride the train and pan for gold. Jeff loves the show Gold Rush, so this was the one thing he really wanted to do. Unfortunately it was pretty fake and we didn't find any real gold in our pan as we picked through it with tweezers. The kids had a lot of fun finding jewels and fools gold though! It was a really cute place to see.
During the week we did a lot of fun things! We went to the Children's Museum and Uptown Jungle (a bouncing play place), which were both quite fun. We also went to Enchanted Island amusement park, which was a really big hit for our kids. It's a place meant for little ones so there's a carousel, bumper boats, a small roller coaster, and lots of other little rides. Deacon could go on all but one ride! The best part about it was that it was not busy. We could just choose whatever ride we wanted and the workers would open it up for us. They rode everything 2 or more times, it was great!
On Friday and Saturday it was "Gilbert Days," which meant there was a glow run, parade, and rodeo! Bentley and I signed up for the run, along with Joce and all her kids except Mabel and the Jeff's were nice enough to come cheer us on and watch the little kids. It was such a cute run! About 2 miles, so nice and short, and there were things all along the way to look forward to. Different colors of glow powder were thrown at us (I got a pretty good shot in the face), there were lasers, black lights, bubbles, a DJ, and a bunch of foam at the end! I was worried Bentley wouldn't keep up, but she did pretty good. She would run really fast for a while and then want to stop and walk, and she did complain about being thirsty. I carried her a little bit, but we made it, and Holli and Alise stuck with us the whole time so it was really fun! We stuck around after to check out all the vendors and free stuff before going home to bed.
The parade was awesome, the kids really enjoyed sitting on the curb collecting as much free stuff they could get. We checked out the rodeo, but realized it was a little long and boring for our little kids. It would've been great for just us adults and older kids, but still fun for a bit, we just decided to leave early.
We also went to the Riparian Preserve (I think it's called) and took Eli with us while Joce's other kids were at school. We brought some corn and the kids loved feeding the ducks! They also have a dino dig there, so they dug for dinosaur bones while Leo enjoyed eating the sand.
The food is always a highlight as well, especially in Arizona. We did In-N-Out, Cafe Rio, Bahama Bucks, Joe's BBQ, Yogourtland, etc. We did cook at home as well because it gets exhausting eating out with kids. We went to the grocery store the first day so we had our breakfast food and other basics. I cooked one day, Joce cooked, and we did spaghetti one night!
We also fit in a date night! Holli and Alise watched all the kids and the adults went out for dinner to an Italian place, and then headed to Top Golf and gelato for dessert. Once again, I'm brutal at golfing, but Jeff rocked it and it was a really fun night out!
We really enjoyed hanging out with Joce and Jeff for a whole week and the kids had so much fun too! It was such a nice change of pace, and also great to be in some nice warm weather (besides the first cold windy day). We also wore out the kids pretty good with all our activities so most days we could come home from our morning activity and all have naps, including us! It was great. Naps became a wonderful part of this vacation. Bentley keeps asking if we're gonna go back and so I tell her of course we will! Joce's kids are so nice to all of us and it's so fun to catch up every time we see them. On Sunday, we went to church, cleaned up the guest house and headed to the airport. The flight went pretty well again and we were glad to get back to our beds.
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