Friday

Friday morning, the slider on our RV broke, so Jarrett ran to the Camping World superstore that was a couple of blocks from our campsite. (The word 'superstore' should have tipped me off that it was going to be a long morning!)

The kids and I stayed in the RV for a while. Riley read to James, he's enjoying her American Girl books almost as much as she is. 

Can you tell where Riley spends most of her time?

It was amazingly hot, I guess we're not used to the desert. The kids and I went to the RV park pool to cool down. Considering it felt like it was 100 degrees in the shade, we were expecting a fairly warm pool.

Wow, were we wrong! The pool was freezing. The kids rescued ladybugs while I got up the courage to climb in. Once you got used to the water, it warmed up a bit but it was still pretty cold. We had a great time playing sharks and mermaids and convincing Kelly to come in, he's not much of a water kid!

I knew the kids had seen a couple of ladybugs in the pool but I had no idea how many there really were, one entire corner of the pool was full of them. The kids kept going back there to work on their rescue mission. Riley worked on her swimming, James pretended to nap and Kelly climbed in and out- over and over! I tried to teach them Marco Polo but only Riley understood.

After a while, I realized all of the kids' lips had turned purple and Kelly's purple was spreading to the rest of his face, so we decided to head back. It was amazingly cold! I have no idea how they could even keep it that cold in the middle of the desert!

Jarrett had found quite a few things he needed at Camping World and had come back to start fixing things. We ended up finally leaving Albuquerque around 3:00, hopefully, that's not going to become a pattern!

The scenery that we were able to see before dark wasn't very impressive, lots of desert, some interesting rocks but I never grabbed my phone in time. We passed the Arizona State sign and did our picture.

The kids also added Arizona to the really cool US map Jarrett bought at Camping World. I love this thing! We started reading Little House on the Prairie and the kids had fun tracking where Laura and her family were.

We stopped in Flagstaff, AZ for the night. It reminded me a lot of Colorado mountains. It's less colorful there but they have the same big pines.

Woohoo, Grand Canyon tomorrow! We're all so excited!