March

I don't know if we were trying to make up for how boring we were in February, but March was sure a busy month for us!

It started with Erik and Sharli supervising while Ethan fixed our front steps. It's so nice to walk in and out of the house with getting bucked off the steps!

 We did a fun Pirates themed date night, but we let the kids get in on the fun for dinner. After they went to bed we had a Pirates of the Caribbean movie party without them, poor things.

 Since spending an evening playing pirates wasn't enough adventure for us, we decided to head over to Tucson and see what we could find to do. The first day we tried to focus on free activities. One of our stops was the (free) Transportation Museum. They have a huge steam locomotive outside that you can go into, as well as some interesting displays about the history of Tucson and its transportation. And a train table for the the little guys, SCORE!

Outside the museum was this statue of Wyatt Earp (and somebody, Doc Holiday?). Erik did his best to look as tough as these two, do you think he was successful? 

 Right outside the museum, we hopped onto the Turquoise Trail, a walking path through downtown Tucson that takes you past many of the important historic features of the oldest part of town. You can pick up guide brochures at the museum, which we did, and read about the places you're walking past. By the time we got started it was late enough in the afternoon that most places were closed, someday we'll have to go back and see the insides of all these neat places.

 You can see the turquoise colored line on the sidewalk here. This marks the entire walking path so you don't have to think about navigating and can just enjoy the sights.

 The weather was pretty nice, but even in March Tucson still gets hot in the afternoons. We took advantage of the cool shade around this fountain to take a break for a while. We were mostly dry still when we moved on. :)

 Tucson has a neat monument to the Mormon Battalion, who stopped here and peacefully occupied the Spanish-owned fort for a short time.

 Day two of our Tucson trip found us at the Pima Air and Space Museum. Not free, or even cheap, but a lot of fun!

 "Flying" the different display models they had set up was a lot of fun!

 Erik's main focus was finding all the planes from the Pixar Planes movies. This is Dipper, just one of many beloved characters.

 We got to meet up with Kate, Blaine, and Neil for a few hours at the museum and afterwords for lunch. It's so fun to live somewhat close to them again!

 We also got to enjoy some of our other extended family this month as well. Sharli and Darrow are best buds...

 ...as are Uncle Heber and Erik.

 Somewhere in all that craziness, Ethan and I got to enjoy two trips to Phoenix, without kids! It was really fun to get to see some new things and have some time to ourselves. Here we are at the Japanese Memorial Garden in downtown Phoenix.