Visitor

So after our amazingly wonderful two weeks in Maryland it was time to head home but the girls and I didn't travel alone. My brother Jordan came with us! He came out for a week visit and we LOVED having here. The last time Jordan stayed with us was when we lived in Idaho and he was going to BYU-I which was like 3 years ago. The girls were so excited to have someone else around the house and they loved all the attention Uncle Jordan gave them. Our days were pretty routine just because Savannah was back in Preschool and Olivia had therapy appointments but we packed our Friday and Saturday with two super fun day trips.

Since Jacob has Friday's off over summer break we decided to head to Phoenix and go to the zoo, I love the Phoenix zoo! Its ranked as one of the top 5 zoos in the nation for children and I can see why because my girls have a total blast when we're there.

The girls wanted to get their pictures taken on this statue of some animal which I cannot remember the name of. When we went to the zoo with their cousins over Thanksgiving we piled all of them on it so it was a fun tradition of sorts to get a picture again.

Both the girls did a great job at spotting the animals and loved looking at everything!

The two highlights of our trip were first the girls got to ride a camel! Savannah was in love and was beyond excited. Olivia soon became jealous and also wanted a ride so Jordan volunteered to go with her since he kind of wanted to ride too. The sad part is I totally deleted the picture of them riding, boo!

Their second favorite thing was the petting zoo area. I was shocked at how brave both girls were to brush the goats and go right up to them, especially Savannah. They loved seeing all the different farm animals and they even milked a cow! They had this awesome fake cow that you could try and milk, the utters totally felt real but instead of milk water would come out. Savannah did a really good job and Olivia needed a little help which she made clear she didn't want. We made it threw the whole zoo in 3 hours and we were booking it the whole time, needless to say I was exhausted by the end of the day.
On Saturday we headed in the opposite direction and made our way to the Grand Canyon! It was beautiful.

None of us had ever been, although Jacob said he may have gone as a little kid but he doesn't remember. It was really fun and the girls loved it! We were boring and just hiked around the rim but that was plenty for us since our girls are 2 and 4 and I'm 6 months pregnant. I'd love to do something a bit more adventurous when our family is a little older but for now we had a perfect experience. Jordan was thrilled that we went and Jacob liked it a lot more once we realized the drive up wouldn't take as long as we originally thought.

We didn't' take the stroller at all for our trip so both girls walked all day, it really ended up being a good choice because they both wanted to walk out of the rocks and the places where you could look out over the canyon would have been a bit tricky to get to with a stroller. Savannah surprised me with how brave she was and she wanted to get right on the edge of most lookout spots. She pretty much gave us a heart attack the whole time but she was usually pretty good at holding hands on the rocks. Olivia loved the freedom of walking around like her big sister and loved pointing out different things. On the way back to the car both the girls were pooped and at one point Jacob was carrying both girls, they were pretty much fighting over him all day and he was usually the one holding their hands because both girls wanted their daddy.

We had such a great time having Jordan visit and we couldn't believe how fast the week went by, hopefully we didn't scare him off and he'll come visit again.