Flagstaff fun

My goal for the trip was to be outside as much as possible and one thing I love about Flagstaff is it's abundance of activities to do just that.  We started the day at the park.

We played tag and had a race; Colin wanted to prove to the family that he is indeed the fastest.  Then we were climbing on a firetruck structure and Colin got pretty high.  We asked if he needed help down and he said in a very serious tone, "No.  I got myself into this mess, I can get myself out of it."  A theme of this trip was Colin saying the most hilarious things.

Then we went to Lava River Cave.

We had to climb down into the cave through these big boulders.  It was about 30° colder in the cave and the kids hands quickly got very cold as they braced themselves on the rock.  If I was writing a travel blog, I would definitely want to share to other parents to take gloves.  We just stopped every once in awhile and warmed our hands in our pockets and they were fine.

This time, it was Eli who didn't want to stop exploring and would have walked that cave for many more hours.  We saw a group of kids (maybe a field trip or camp) leaving as we were just getting in the cave and then we were all alone in there.  It made it nice to be able to just take our time, but also a little creepy.  We stopped here, all held hands and turned off our lights.  Ben made a good point that it's very rare in your life to experience total darkness.  It's amazing how disorienting and frightening darkness is.

It wasn't until I was watching them climb out of the cave that I thought, "This is crazy."

Then we went to dinner at a local brewery.  Any time Colin puts his face next to Ben's it just amazes me how much they look the same.

Apparently I tell the kids to "soak it up" a little too much, because I heard each of them say it during this trip.  We soaked up being cold in a cave, splashing in a river and wearing pants at the park.  Before heading home the next day, we found a trail to hike and stopped halfway through to soak up the mountains.  Honestly, Ben and I had a hard time leaving and we were stalling.  The boys started playing with the logs and sticks and could have stayed in that spot all day.  I love that about boys.

We drove through a crazy thunderstorm on the way home.  Seeing rain hit the desert (I wonder how many times I've accidentally typed dessert) is a unique site.  I wish I could say it cooled things off, but we came home to a very hot house and several more days of temps around 110°.