For our Christmas presents for 2025, Lori and I gifted the family a trip to Tucson. We tried to run it like a full on, all inclusive resort. Despite a few hiccups, I'd say it was one of our better trips.
We left from the Provo airport on Saturday the 4th of April. The Schow family was with a different airline and behind us, the Henderson family left from Salt Lake, and Braden and Michelle drove. With me was Lori, Sally, Traven, Jason and Meagan. We left pretty much on time, which is a miracle for Allegiant. And our bags all arrived, so the trip started strong! Enterprise did not have my mega SUV, so they upgraded us to the MucoMobile, Big Daddy Diesel, a 12 passenger luxury van. It did not disappoint!
"Muchael" comes from the fact that Lori booked my ticket by that name. We had a lot of fun with it, and the nickname will probably returned.
We landed famished, and discovered that In and Out DOES serve food around 10 am. We drove to Tucson, about a 2 hour drive from Mesa. We ended up killing time by eating cheesecake and appetizers at The Cheesecake factory. This kind of set the tone of the trip. Food, food and more food! We ate when we weren't hungry. We ate too much. We snacked. And we went through so much soda.
The highlight for me was just spending time with everyone. I feel like I had quality time with each of my grandkids, and was able to visit with the adults as well. Phil and Dallin are amazing and take a good teasing like champs. We played games, some played Pickleball and we all swam a lot.
We did overbook the house, so Traven had a couch and I had my air mattress. Truth be told, the air mattress was very comfortable. The downside was I was in the way in the laundry room and away from Lori, but we worked around it. And we are at a stage in our family where staying up to 10 pm is really cutting loose and living on the ledge.
Some other highlights:
Celebrating Phil's birthday.
Doing an Easter Egg hunt.
Senora hot dogs and churros. Watching Bella eat guacamole. Slipping the grandkids a treat whenever I could.
Hosting WeatherTalk in the van, where we would all say what our device had as the current temperature.
Learning that when Sally says something is "interesting", that's bad. Really bad.
Avery learning to crawl and wave!!!
Logan interacting more and more!!! We had some long conversations.
Soaking in the hot tub with Jason.
Driving through Saguaro National Park.
Going to the Desert Museum.
Going to the Air and Space Museum. Reading the names of the brave men that flew in the B17 bombers. It looked to me like your odds of survival were slim, and your odds of not being shot down were zero.
TOURING A NUCLEAR WEAPON SILO! Check that off the bucket list.
Going to the zoo. Watching Mason, Park and Bella touch a snake.
Watching Avery and Bella in the morning while Dallin and Alyssa went on runs.
Seeing Dallin's childhood home and hearing his memories of the Tucson area.
Waiting in line for gas at Costco, only to jump out and see the word "DIESEL" printed all around the fuel opening. This led to a somewhat desperate search for a gas station that did sell diesel. We nailed it on the 4th attempt.
Going on Kaylee's "circle" tour, which took us to a Lego minis store, a retro candy shop and to the Tucson LDS temple.
And the attempts at getting a photo of Braden added to this photo. This introduced us to gigantic Braden and mutant family members.
One thing I have to figure out is how to kill time when checkout is at 10 am and the flight isn't until almost 9 pm. Here we sit at the airport......
