Babymoon Escape

   Dave hit a point a couple weeks ago where he needed some time off. I jumped at the chance to turn it into a little vacation without the kids. Don't get me wrong, we LOVE taking our kids on our adventures, but with a new baby coming, there won't be much time away from her for awhile. He requested a long weekend off of work and it was my job to find us somewhere not to far or costly to 'run away' to. Our time share has a few northern AZ locations, and we had yet to go to the one in Overgaard AZ. The rooms at Bison Ranch were going at a great rate- we got Sunday and Monday night for less than $100 total! AND they didn't have one bedrooms available, so this was for a condo that sleeps 6 people, so if we couldn't find anywhere for our kids, they could totally of tagged along. BUT we didn't sell it to their Aunt Karen that way... she was happy to take them, and we were grateful to know they would be in great hands. From the moment we told the kids, they kept asking if it was time for them to go to Aunt Karen's house.

   We went to the first two hours of church, and then headed to Aunt Karen's house in Gilbert. Jenna was too busy with her cousins to say goodbye to her mom or dad, and Adam seemed happy as could be. It was less than 3 hours to Overgaard from Gilbert, and we wanted to get there before to late, so we headed out.

   The drive was beautiful as was our room and the resort. There really is NOTHING to do in Overgaard. We had dinner and headed to the hot tub. The water was barely hotter than bath water, but it felt great compared to the near freezing temperatures. It was funny getting to and from our room with our swim suits on, and even funnier when they were wet. The next morning, we had a nice brunch and then went for a long mountain drive.

  It was interesting to see where forest fires had come through in the last few years, but still beautiful views. We got out for a minute, but decided it really was too cold. Aren't we wimps?!  So we ended up reading by the fireplace most of the day- so wonderful. Oh, and check out our awesome romantic dinner:

   Frozen pizza and coke in wine glasses by the fire- perfect! And of course Girl Scout cookies for dessert :)

   The next morning, we set the alarm so that we could head over for an early session at the Snowflake Temple. It was mapped out as a 40 minute drive, so we weren't too worried, but we woke up to this:

   Burrrrr! The roads were only dusted with powder so it wasn't a tricky drive, but David and I were both excited. We weren't expecting snow! I had not packed accordingly!

   We made it to the Temple just in time for our session, and had a wonderful time. A great way to spend Valentines Day! It's fun to attend different Temples, and the Snowflake Temple is lovely.

  It's tough to photograph- but it has a water feature in the front that goes under the road and continues down to the parking lot. Maybe if I had a bigger coat, or even pants on, I could have gotten a better picture.
I wasn't even 11 am yet, so we figured we would head to Globe for lunch. We wanted to take a different route home, and it only added about 40-60 minutes to the drive to alter the route, so we headed off.

   It wasn't 30 minutes into the journey when this started:

there's the plow!

  So what should have been a 2 hour drive through the Salt River Canyon, turned into a 3.5 hour drive. We were both starving and this pregnant girl REALLY needed a bathroom. Thankfully, Dave is very comfortable driving in the snow, but we did see many cars and trucks that couldn't handle it that had pulled over.  It cleared up just outside of Globe, and we found a super yummy Mexican Restaurant to have lunch. We also got cell phone reception for the first time in 2 days too- I had about 14 text messages to catch up with during lunch.

   The drive back to our kiddo's was uneventful, but because we were late, their cousins were already home from school and they weren't really interested in coming with us. We were home to Tucson before dark. Overall, it was a GREAT break. A big thanks to Karen for adding two little kids to her 4 big kids all while her husband was on a business trip on the other side of the world. Thanks Karen!