Heading East to the "Old West"

2:30 am Tuesday morning.  That's what time I woke up due to a random coughing fit.  Knowing my alarm was set to go off 50 minutes later, I opted not to fall back asleep only to hit REM and then be startled back awake.  It would be a long, long day, though!

The family ended up leaving the house at 4:20 - 10 minutes later than we'd planned, but not bad at all considering we had a last-minute panic scenario when John realized he couldn't find his driver's license.  Very important when flying and driving a rental car!  We ended up finding it in the pocket of swim trunks he'd already packed....

The view of the crescent moon from the airport parking lot.

And, the customary carpet picture taken at the airport.  Usually its a Portland airport thing - but we thought we'd get in the spirit even if we were flying out of the smaller Eugene one.

Beautiful morning.  However, the weather was due to change to rain for the week in Oregon, giving us a smug sense of satisfaction that we'd chosen this week to fly to the desert.

Cool pics as the dawn sun came streaming in.  The caption on the Instagram post says it all about how I feel about what Mikayla looked like.

We had a layover at the Salt Lake City Airport.  When we stopped off at Auntie Anne's for pretzels, they had a cooler of sodas - and there, facing me, was this drink.  I thought for a second I was being punked, seeing my name of all names on a Diet Coke bottle....CRAZY!!!!  I guess it's part of their #shareacoke campaign to put names on bottles.  I was loving it though.   No question on which soda is mine!

Finally got a little sleep on the flight to Phoenix.  Was feeling a little punch drunk and very cranky there for a bit.  Brayden was feeling very "Hangry" (hunger resulting in anger) upon arriving in Phoenix, so our first stop was a recommended "Streets of New York" for his choice of a pizza lunch.  It was excellent - our whole family loved what they got. 

After a stop off at Target for undoubtedly more food than we'll be able to consume this week, we made it to Marriott's Canyon Villas for our 7 day home-away-from-home.  I could get into unnecessary details here, but this place kind of landed in our feet when we realized we had time-share points that would be expiring in December.  We really couldn't ask for more.  These pictures are just of John and I's share of the place.  The door behind the counter enters into Brayden and Mikayla's lock-off unit with another sofa bed, King Size bed, mini fridge, and bathroom. 

And, this is the pool just steps out of our patios.  

Of course it is blazing hot here, so in attempts to avoid any sort of overheating, I'll be doing lots of this - partaking of the pool water.  And, surprise.... it's salt water purified (vs. chlorine) - even better!!!

We got the "Happy Hour" smoothies before leaving around 7pm - this pic kind of sums up the full extent of my "feeling blessed" to be on vacation.