Brash Family: Trip to AZ

We got back a couple of days ago from our six day trip to Arizona to see Marc's dad and stepmom. We always enjoy visiting there around this time of year when it's so warm there and still not so warm here in Chicago. This was the longest trip that we have taken out there in the last few years, and we had a lot of fun. The only problem with going out there is the time change and the long travel time and Ella gets off of her sleeping schedule. She did pretty well after a couple of days, but those first couple were a little rough.
The trip started out great with great weather (close to 80 degrees) and we went to the zoo. It's a huge zoo, so we only saw a little part of it. It's hard to get around to everything with a tried baby. We did make it to the children's part of the zoo and Ella got to pet some goats.

Mommy had to pet the goats first

Ella finally got up the nerve to touch an ear

At the Phoenix zoo they also have a place called Monkey Village where the monkeys aren't in cages at all, but rather just jumping around in the trees and can go where ever they want. It was pretty neat to see the monkeys so close, one even jumped onto an information sign right in front of some people.

The next day Marc and I were going to leave on our little vacation of our own. We had booked a bed and breakfast room for a night in the mountains so that we could spend a day skiing. We were really looking forward to time to ourselves and Eric and Susan were looking forward to some time with Ella. Marc and I drove the 3 1/2 hours to White Mountain, where the Sunrise Ski Park is. Our trip was great until we were about 10 miles from the B&B. We had been using Eric's GPS to give us the directions to the B&B and it told us to go a certain way up a mountain road to get to the B&B. Well lets just say that it was not right and it lead us up a road that still had snow on it from the last snow storm they had (about a week prior). We were doing fine in the Envoy (with 4 wheel drive) until we hit about the third large area covered in snow. We got stuck!!! I know, we are in Phoenix and we are stuck in the snow.

We had no idea what to do really. We tried digging ourselves out with our skis! After that didn't work we decided to call the owners of the B&B and see what they suggested we do and if they could give us a number of a tow company. To our surprise the owner, Ruth, said that her and her husband would come up and get us out. So, they did and after they got stuck themselves we both managed to get out and we followed them to the B&B. When we got there we realized that we had been only about 5 miles from it when the GPS had told us to turn and go onto the other road!!!
Once there the B&B was a whole different story. It was definitely homey to say the least. Here are a couple of pictures of our room.

We can't complain about the room though, it had the most gorgeous views out the back. They live on this huge ranch and it's right in the base of the mountains.

The owners were very kind and we had an awesome breakfast the next day before we headed out to ski. The ski park was huge and so pretty. We had a great time skiing and it was nice to have a whole day to ourselves. I had never skied in the mountains before so it was a brand new experience to me, but I had a great time.

One of the beautiful views

Getting ready to go home

The only bad thing about our day skiing was that we both got sunburned on our faces. Mine was not so bad, but Marc had pretty severe burns on his whole face and is still healing.

The other big thing we did while on vacation was go to a Cubs spring training game. Although I didn't get to see any of the game (I was playing and running around with Ella), it was a fun day.

Ella and Daddy watching the game