Our Arizona/California Vacation - Day 1

Last year, Jake, Jackson, Myself and my Mother-In-Law went to visit a family friend of ours that lives in Phoenix, AZ. Our friend Jim used to live here and work with my MIL, but transferred to Phoenix back in the late 90's. Jim and my MIL stayed very close friends even though they live so far from one another. He comes here for a visit or she visits him at least once a year. He was here for our wedding and Jake's brothers' weddings as well. 

Jim works in the travel business and was able to get free tickets to the Phoenix Open golf tournament. Jake is a golfer, so Jim invited Jake to come along last year. We had such a great time last year, that Jim invited us to come back this year, so we started planning our trip to go back months ago. 

This year we planned to stay a whole week and soak up some Arizona sunshine during the cold Winter back in St. Louis. So we had plenty of time to do some site seeing and still get to go to the Phoenix Open. Then back in October or November, Jackson saw a commercial for Disney World on t.v. and instantly wanted to go there and see the castle. It was a few weeks later that I thought, why don't we drive out to California and visit Disneyland while we're in Arizona since we'll have some extra time. So Jake agreed and we talked our friend Jim and my MIL into going along too.

So Wednesday morning, (January 28th) we flew into Phoenix, stayed the night there and then drove out to California until Saturday. We then drove back to Phoenix Saturday afternoon and stayed until the following Wednesday morning, when we flew back home to St. Louis. It was such a busy, but super fun trip. A trip that I will cherish forever. 

Day 1 had an early start with getting to the airport and flying into Phoenix. This was Jackson's second flight ever and he did amazing! Last year when we flew to Phoenix, I don't think he quite understood what was going on, but this year he really got it and loved it!

Here's a little video of us taking off Wednesday morning. I am so happy I thought to video it so I can re-watch his reaction. It was so cute!

http://instagram.com/p/yagw1uuKHL/?modal=true

Once we landed in Phoenix, we headed over to pick up our rental car and then headed to our friend Jim's house. Once we got there, we decided to all go and eat some Mexican food at a yummy restaurant near his home. 

After lunch, we made a quick stop by the store for dinner, snacks and drinks for the week and then headed back to Jim's house. He has a beautiful back patio and yard where we spent a majority of our time because the weather was mostly sunny and in the 70's... Perfect!!

Jackson loved being able to play in the back yard while we sipped cocktails and talked.

Jim has a small grapefruit tree that gets a few grapefruits on it each year. Last year they were ripe enough to pick while we were there, so he let Jackson pick them for him and he made grapefruit martinis (of which I couldn't have any because I was pregnant with Avery). This year he saved them for Jackson to pick again and later in our trip, we had grapefruit/tangerine martinis, which were very yummy.

That evening, Jim made a yummy pork tenderloin on the grill and we had dinner on the patio.

It was a great first day to our vacation!