Chris had a phone meeting Thursday morning. Because of that, we didn't make it out for breakfast until 10:30 am our time. We drove to a nearby Village Inn--not quite the buffet of yesterday, but the food was good. Chris worked after returning to the hotel while I packed things up. I'm pretty sure the dirty clothes were taking over. Once I was finished, I took my camera and ventured around the resort taking pictures and enjoying the 80 plus weather. The grass was green, flowers were blooming, and trees were covered in leaves. I knew Colorado wasn't close to this stage of Spring, so I enjoyed the beautiful morning.
I was on my way back to our room when I came upon Amy and Kristen. Kristen had made a little book of pictures for her Great Grandma and wanted to find staples at the front desk to bind it all together. They had declined my previous offer of posing for pictures, but now that they were out of the room, they were happy to oblige.
Chris was just finishing up work as we returned to the room, and we quickly loaded up our rental. We drove about 30 minutes to the Outlet Mall at Anthem and spent a couple of hours shopping. Chris met up with one of his co-workers who brought him a nice little surprise (an iPad 3), and later he had a little fun at the Bose outlet store. My purchases were nowhere near as exciting, in fact, mine were all for the girls.
We had a quick, late lunch from Subway and then started back toward Mesa to meet up with Chris' Great Grandma. She's a witty, eighty-eight year old lady who's still sharp as a tack. We enjoyed the beautiful afternoon in the courtyard of her apartment building. Chris brought ice cream from DQ and I showed her some of the downloaded pictures from our vacation. It got really funny when the girls took pictures of Grandma on the iPad and then started morphing the pictures. When Grandma saw the pictures she laughed at the crazy faces the girls had made. Pretty funny. Misha showed her the Starwalk app on her iPod which totally amazed Grandma. I'm sure she could be savvy with technology if given the opportunity.
We arrived a little later than planned at Bev and Quentin W's, but felt it important to spend as much time with Grandma as possible without wearing her out too much. As we were driving over to Gilbert, we saw a small car with "Cheese and Princess" in big letters on the rear window. Obviously they loved their aliases. Kristen remarked, "I would not eat a Princess with Cheese! Who does that?" Silly kid. After a few mishaps reading a map (that was all me), we finally arrived at W's home. Just in time for dinner. We ordered dinner for the adults from....Pita Jungle and pizza for the kids from Pizza Hut. No complaints from anyone.
Our trip was coming to an end. We had a late flight out of Phoenix at 11 pm our time (9:55 pm local). Good thing the girls had a couple of days to recover. We said our goodbyes to the W's and were on our way. We made good time to the airport after gassing up and had plenty of time after dropping off the rental car, riding the bus back to the airport, and checking in. It was a full flight with twenty plus young men from a baseball team filling many of the seats. Luckily we sat far enough back in the plane that they didn't bother us. All of the girls slept. Misha sat in the middle and then stretched out on Chris and I while we also dozed a bit, and Kristen and Amy slept on each other in the seats in front of us. We had a near miss with Misha and her drink as she flailed around a bit. No sense saving it for her.
As we arrived in Denver, Chris sped ahead of us in order to retrieve our car, but we caught up to him as he boarded the train to the terminal. Unfortunately, Amy was the only able to get on the train before the doors slid shut. Kristen had a horror-stricken look on her face as she felt we were being left behind and immediately started crying. It was well after midnight and beyond any point of reasoning. As we stood waiting for the train to come back, she started dancing around. I asked her if she could wait, but knew it would just be crazy to make her try and hold it. I told Misha to stay by the train, but not to get on if it came while we were gone and rushed Kristen to the bathroom. Luckily, we made it back in plenty of time to board the train together. It was packed and even more so when a pregnant lady and her husband pushed their way on. I braced myself with my feet, hung on to my girls, and we were off.
As we exited the train, Amy was waiting for us in the terminal. Chris had gone to get the car. With the time it took for us to get to the terminal, our baggage was arriving on the carousels as we came up. One, two, three, four, five, six bags, and a car seat. It was pretty slick. We took the elevator up to the sixth floor where Chris picked us up. The girls slept all the way home and quickly found their way to their own beds. Oh the fun we had....