A stay-what?

I'm pretty sure that was my first response when someone told me about the idea of a stay-cation. "Who in their right mind would pay good money to stay in a hotel in their very own town?" I believe I said.

Apparently... we would.

Paige floated the idea on Wednesday of going camping this weekend. By ourselves. With four kids. In a tent. For one night. I like camping and all, but it is supposed to be relaxing. And the thought of a last minute camping trip and the massive amount of work entailed in just spending a single night in the woods, and my head nearly exploded.

So when she came up with a backup plan of spending a night at a local hotel with a waterpark, I was all over it, former mockery of staycations not withstanding.

We headed over to the Arizona Grand Resort on Saturday afternoon and spent the afternoon swimming and watersliding with grandma, Gina, and Asher. Dinner at Rustler's Rooste (mmmmm, rattlesnake appetizer!) Giant sleepover in the hotel with grandma. More swimming in the morning. And then home to crash.

And now, gagillions of photos of our kids on a blog (which I am glad to see Jon now gets :) ...

Ella promptly sunk into the bed upon arriving. As Paige said... "it was like sleeping on a cloud."


The never-full eating machine. "I hon-gry!"


Noah "played" the entire movie. He spotted that controller no more than 5 seconds after walking in the door, and was convinced that if there was a game controller attached to the TV, there must be games to play.


We would never jump on hotel beds.


That ended promptly when Luke wandered into the valley of death, and was immediately crushed by Levi (see bottom right photo.)

We mostly had a good time, minus a few minor hunger and heat exhaustion fueled meltdowns.




Three years of swimming lessons are finally paying off, and our kids can actually swim...










I thought the waterpark at the hotel would be less crowded, but the place was packed on Saturday. Still not as crazy as I would imaging Sunsplash was, but still busy.

The lazy river...


Ella was brave enough to try the waterslide, even if she did have to stand on her toes to clear the 48" height limit. She went about 4 times, and would have gone more if she could have without the boys having meltdowns because they weren't tall enough.


The wave pool...




The kiddy pool...


And the kiddy...