It's so nice not to have cactus on the mountain.

The two week vacation of 2011 has come to an end.  We had a great time in Arizona, and then a great time at home loafing last week.  Well, I loafed.  Jesse worked a few days while I sat at home and mod podged light switch plates and didn't shower.  Good times, good times.

So here is an obnoxious journey through our vacation with pictures and my blathering commentary.  I'm knocking this out in one post, so I apologize for the overabundance of photos and words, unless you just come here for the pictures and only look at those without reading the words on the screen.  Those of you are way ahead of me.

My wonderful parents drove us to the airport at 4 am on Saturday, and on second thought I'm going to show you the emails my parents sent me after I told them the time we had to get to the airport.  My mom had already volunteered them to drive us out there, and I offered to buy them donuts in return for the ride.

Dad said: "Mom was obviously just joking about taking you to the airport at 4:00 in the morning.  She is such a jokester, that mom of yours!  And your crack about buying us a couple of crummy doughnuts was pretty hilarious too."  He then included links for public transit and local taxis.  My mom quickly replied, "IGNORE him."

Also, I think my parents are a riot.

After a layover in San Francisco (we got cheap tickets, hence the layover.  Unfortunately we bought those cheap tickets 5 months ago so by the time the flight actually happened they had changed the layover from 40 minutes to three hours.  True story) we arrived in sunny Phoenix and Amy and Earl showed us around the town and stuffed our faces with delicious food.  

Sunday morning we went couponing with them (you can see the haul here, and by the way, we have gotten into couponing and Jesse and I actually enjoy grocery shopping together.  Just fyi) and then we all went to the GRAND CANYON!  (Enter fireworks and a YEEEAAAHHHH!)

Before seeing the Canyon we were met by a tarantula, like, in the wild.  I didn't even throw up on it or anything!  But I did say, "So are one of you going to squish it, or..." and then I had to remind everyone what a kidder I am and how I was totally kidding.  ("But really, no one's going to take care of that?")

The Grand Canyon was pretty spectacular, and to be honest, seemed fake.  It was very quiet out there and I'm pretty sure I could see a guy touching up the backdrop on some scaffolding.

Then they took us the long way back to Phoenix through Sedona which was absolutely gorgeous, but we didn't get many good pictures of.

Monday morning we decided to have an adventure with public transit to get our rental car which included me (that loser) making us walk for about a mile in 103 degree weather (but it's a dry heat!) and me being so embarrassingly sweaty that as I was standing at the counter and had my forearm resting on it, I left a pool of sweat that I tried to casually wipe away.  Phoenix + Katie = Super Sexy.

After getting the car and hotel all checked into (and setting the temperature in the hotel room to a balmy 65 degrees for the duration of our stay) we went out to lunch with Jesse's cousin Daniel.

I have no pictures of this.  But Daniel is very buff and manly looking, what with being an ex-marine, and I have pictures of him later when we grabbed coffee, just hold your horses.

Tuesday we trekked to Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home, which was pretty interesting, however NOT priced correctly with their website.  In case you were going there and expecting Tuesdays to be considerably cheaper.  And look!  Pictures!

This was probably the most sweaty part of our trip since we had to spend so much time outside.  When we finally got into a room for a while, the guide talked about how normally that room is quite comfortable, but the A/C had gone out.  She kept looking at me and saying, "We'll be going to an air conditioned room soon" even though there were probably 20 more people to look at but I was the only one with sweat dripping down my hair onto my shirt while my bangs were matted to my forehead.

The tour was cool, and Frank Lloyd Wright had some interesting ideas.  His work with acoustics was pretty amazing, so if you're interested in architecture I definitely think the Taliesen West is well worth the visit.

Wednesday we decided to head out to Tombstone, which neither of us knew was in Arizona until Amy and Earl were telling us places to visit a couple days before.

My boobs in real time, Tombstone, AZ.

Tombstone was interesting, but I will say it left a little to be desired.  We probably walked past close to 20 gift shops and we were both admittedly expecting to be wowed and have a little bit more of an experience, almost like a theme park. That may sound ridiculous but I feel the need to inform others who read my blog and are thinking of visiting Tombstone, which is like everyone, right?  We also went on a quiet Wednesday, and maybe it's a little more hoppin' on the weekends.  That aside, we visited the Rose Tree Museum which had some great history, not to mention the freak rose tree in the back that was pretty spectacular.  We then went through the mines, where I got to wear a hard hat!  Well, everyone did.

Then we hung out with a dinosaur that we had seen at a McDonalds on our drive to Tombstone.  There was also a giant grasshopper.

Next up we went to Cracker Barrel where I did something I've always wanted to do.

I saw the people next to us hardly ate their appetizer.  So when they left, I...well, I ate some of it.

Oh, also, we pumped our own gas, which I was unreasonably happy to do.  In case you don't know this, Oregonians do not pump their own gas.  We have gas station attendants, and yes, I love it.  It rains a lot here.  But I do enjoy doing it myself when I'm on a trip.  Actually, the first time I left the state by myself I forgot that I had to pump my own gas and thought the guy sitting in the station was just being a jerk.  I sat in the car so long while we stared at each other and I thought he was going to come out that I drove away to another station when my friend realized we were in Washington and I was too embarrassed to stay there.  I just drove away.

Anyway, on Thursday we had a lazy day where we actually did some laundry at the hotel.  We are normally light packers and we realized that we didn't have enough summer clothes anyway, so we just washed them there.  Then we went in search of a comic book shop for Jesse and a yarn store for me, and Jesse fell in love.

He even contemplated buying a $10 box of comics to then turn into carry on, thereby making it a $35 box of comic books, and that my friends did not happen.  He got a giant Mongol figurine, and I am again talking about superheros and super villains as though I have any idea what is going on.  At the yarn store I purchased some yarn for a table runner (that yarn is crazy town, I'll show it to you when it's finished).

Friday we went to a restaurant called Centurion for our 4th visit that week.  That place was bananas, and you should go there if you are visiting Phoenix.  The chef is a crazy nice guy and he will serve you a great meal.  Amy blogs about that place all the time, and she is not lying about how great it is.  Fabius the centurion was out front, which of course we loved.

Friday afternoon we went to the Phoenix Art Museum where we immediately got in trouble for taking a picture of something we shouldn't (I was mimicking a nude statue) (I was clothed, btw) but the guy was very nice and told us what to look for if we couldn't take a photo.  That place was HUGE.  Definitely a good pick if you normally like art museums and galleries in general.

Then we went to Dutch Bros where Daniel works and got some coffee before we went to the Diamondbacks game.  Enjoy the nice clear shots of his face.

Chase Field was pretty cool, especially when I got to watch the top open up.  I felt a little bad for my dad when the Giants lost (his favorite team), but it was pretty great game.  Says the person who doesn't know anything about sports.

Amy and Earl are pros about hiding from the camera.  I barely got this picture.

The next morning we had some delicious breakfast and then started our 11 hour journey from airport to airport and plane to plane.  The way back was supposed to be an hour and a half layover that became 4 hours.  Another true story of woe and sadness including having to spend almost TEN DOLLARS on the smallest bottle of Aleve in an airport.

It was a pretty great trip.  We were more than happy to be greeted with rain last week after having such a warm vacation in Phoenix.  Oh, and!

We rented a Fiat, which we did not know would be a Fiat, because we were told repeatedly it would be a Chevy Aveo (been there, done that, would you like to buy some other useless thing while you're here at the car rental place and there are more taxes to that than when you got your reservation and I have a bigger car for you to rent for only bla bla bla more and I don't listen and meeee mee MEEEEE).  Anyway.  I am so over car rental places.  But everyone (everyone) loved our Fiat, which we had never heard of, being the car fanatics that we are.

That is the story of vacation tales and lazy days.  To all of those people who notice that I regularly comment on your blog and that I have been very, very absent, my google reader is a scary place right now and it will take me some time, but have no fear of long sentences, I am coming to comment!  It'll just take me a while.  Thank you for tuning in to the latest episode of twelvedaysold, and don't forget to wear sunscreen.