Lovin' life, Lovin' you: Road Trip

After surviving finals I blasted off into a 2 week roadtrip in the Burb with my favorite family in the world (mine, of course).

Our first stop was the Grand Canyon, which was ever-so-grand in all it's fogginess.

We hit up Prescott to spend a day or two with one set of grandparents, and continued on to spend some time with another set in Phoenix for a few days.

We visited the gravesite of the spectacular woman after whom I am named.
And in Phoenix we took advantage of some free time in the studio...

We also hit up our favorite Mexican restaurant, Los Compadres, 3 times in the 2 days we were there. We are devoted fans, all the way from Idaho/Utah.

Next we continued on to our next destination: Sunny San Diego. It is amazing how fast the kids have grown up and was so good to see the Bramwell clan.

What a stud.

We hiked to a big tree of lights on top of a near foothill, sea kayaked, played at a park, rode the Elliptigo's, had an epic Christmas, and spent some quality time at the beach!

I luff him.

And I luff her.

This was one of my favorite things of the whole vacation. "I HAVE BIG EYES!!!" ... followed by this face. Epic.

Christmas morning anticipation was wild (as you can see in Caden's facial expression). However, it was a little weird for me to be on the parent side of Christmas, helping wrap last minute presents and setting everything out in the santa-esque way. Sometimes being the youngest gets me cheated out of things, but life goes on.

Soleil loves to play dress up. We had a dance party the first night we were there (more like she and Caden danced while we filmed and laughed our heads off) and she disappeared for about 42 seconds and came back in an entire new ensemble. I was legitimately impressed. So Christmas morning rolls around and Soleil gets some cool presents, including a bike and 3 new princess dresses. When she makes her entrance into the room Christmas morning, she climbs over the bike screaming, "I GOT DRESSES! PRINCESS DRESSES!" She climbed over the bike 3 times, picked up one dress at a time and laid each of them out nicely across the floor. After that, she looks over and says, "I got a bike!" Hilarious.

Another interesting thing about the family growing up is I am starting to feel like my mom when she says that she isn't in years of pictures because she was the only one taking them. I handed off my camera so I could be in some of the pictures. Here is the one picture of me from Christmas morning... and it's blurry. Alas, such is adulthood. But I am very excited about that shirt I am holding in my hand in the picture.

We hit up the beach in time to get some good pictures of the sunset. Star, Forest, and I set out to get some good pictures of us. It took us quite a while to get the timing down, with some hilarious pictures in the meantime, but eventually we got it. Here are some of the best...