Arizona Centennial (V-Day)

I love AZ.

Tons.

Therefore it's only appropriate that this sweetheart state celebrates its birthday on Valentine's day.

I've been trying to instill a love for AZ in the kids too.

So we've been talking for at least the last couple of months about Arizona's 100th birthday.

They've been super excited for it.

Gwen went with me down to the state capital for the big celebration.

Arizona is the nation's largest provider of copper.

And this copper chopper was commissioned for the celebration.

Gwen got down with the Marines and cranked out 10 pushups to get an "army guy" poster for Drake.

What a sweet sister.

This was a mini USS Arizona.

You know, the ship that was attacked during Pearl Harbor, and you can still see parts of it sticking out of the water there.

Arizona had some key parts in WWII, like the sinking of the USS Arizona with tons of service men on board, and then the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the US communicate with their unbreakable code (the Navajo language).

By far though, Gwen's favorite part was panning for gold.

Here she is with her treasures.

I didn't tell her it's fake though.

Should I?

She thinks she's rich!

Then on the 14th, we had a bunch of people over for Navajo Tacos, cake and ice cream.

I slacked on the pictures, but we had so much fun.

And learned a lot about Arizona too.

Good job on the quiz mom and Tawnya!

How would you do? Can you name the 5 C's of AZ's economy? (sorry Holly, courage is not one of them... but it should be right?)

Or do you know how many Interstate Highways are in AZ and can you name them?

What about AZ's highest elevation?

AZ's nickname?

Oh, and here's a shout out and thank you to Jack and Aubrey for the valentines!

Can you tell the kids are straight out of bed?

Don't hate me because my friends are cool!

Seriously cool. They planned a trip to Hollywood, and FORCED me to go. But really, who wouldn't want to go have a girls weekend and pretend like there are no chores to be done, or cases to be read, or papers to write, or responsibilities to be tended to.

So off to Holly wood we went, like little kids running around the hotel, so excited to have somebody else make our beds. Beds that we get to sleep in on!!

The first thing we did the next day was cruise down to Hollywood to seen all the wonders that Hollywood has to offer. Like a Michael look-a-like.

We couldn't tell if Michael was a boy or a girl, but what ever he was, I love how this Michael didn't stop smiling the whole time. Even hours later when we saw him again, he had his perma-grin on.

Oh and then there were other people who were dressed up and would come up to you and ask if they could take their picture with you, and then they would say that you'd need to tip them for it. So I told these Spidermen that I wasn't going to tip them, and I didn't need a picture. They didn't believe me. But my friend snapped a picture as they were trying to beg money out of me.

1. You can barely make out the Holllywood sign in the back ground.

2. Don't you just love squint into the sun kinds of pictures?

Oh, and when we were walking down Rodeo Drive, we saw a crowd of people gathered around snapping pictures. Was it a celebrity!??! We were so excited to see what it was....

Oh, it was this.

A Bugatti.

A Bugwhatii? That's what I thought.

Apparently this car is worth somewhere between $1.7-2.8 Million dollars. And somebody left it just sitting on the side of the street. Crazy. People were taking all kinds of pictures and even touching it. If I had a car worth that much a) I'd be too scared to drive it, b) I'd be too scared to leave it parked somewhere, c) I'd better have at least 10x that much put away in savings, or that'd be just plain stupid. Well, it's just plain stupid anyway.

Oh, and of course the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

That's where Pretty Woman was filmed.

We had several Pretty Woman moments there...

like fixing our boots on the seat in the elevator.

Oh, and let's talk about the calories consumed over this weekend.

We decided early on that calories didn't count on Saturday and Sunday, and we took advantage of that!

But it's not a good vacation if you don't come home a few pounds heavier, right??

Oh, and this was the lone celebrity spotting we had.
It's Lisa Leslie and her husband. They were adorable!

My hurryandgetyourphoneoutandunlockitandturnonyourcamera pictures have a lot to be desired.

We also tried to soak up so sun at Santa Monica.

And we had so much fun people watching.

People watching is the most fun when you have dark glasses on so you can stare, and phones so you can text and maybe sneak a crazy picture. I won't post the picture of the crazy guy with super short shorts who happened to be everywhere we went, incase he's somebody's uncle.

And then, the weekend had to end.

The car ride home was spent talking about dreams (like winning the HGTV dream home), embarrassments, fears, laughing, and all around good girl bonding.

Thanks to my amazing friends for whisking me away for a much needed respite.

But I was super excited to come home and hug my babies.

And look what they made.

Thanks babies!!

xoxo