Farewell Arizona

On the eve of our departure, I wanted to note some of the highlights for future memories, so here goes.

William's nightly ritual of falling asleep in front of the TV. I think he fell asleep on every person's lap at least once, and tonight the final night, he fell asleep next to Mary Grace on the floor watching Happy Feet. He seemed to really enjoy going to sleep in this way, but sadly, it won't continue once we return home.

Mary Grace's "thing" was playing with Nate. He teased her daily, and the loved every minute of it. She asked me to help her hide her lovie and blankie one afternoon because she didn't want Nate to get it. They played and played and wrestled and teased and played some more. It was wonderful to see.

The kids loved seeing all the pretty Christmas lights in the desert, and they also loved echoing Anne's early observation "that snowman looks silly in the desert", and applying that to everything; "Christmas lights look silly in the desert!"

They got to play with Jon's huge Lego collection, dominos, Uno, checkers, hot wheels racetrack, Connect-4 and finally Monopoly. Monopoly was a bust, but Uno was a big winner.

We saw beautiful sunsets every evening, swam in toasty hot tubs, shopped, ate out and saw beautiful sights. But for the last few days, Mary Grace has been telling us that she wanted to go home because she missed school. She's drawn some beautiful pictures of her getting on the school bus and I think she got a little Teary-eyed wishing she was back home.

One last long day of travel tomorrow and we'll be back to snow and cold and home. Hold on kids, here we go!