Fiesta Bowl Parade

A few months ago at Sunday dinner Kathleen announced she had a great idea. At the Gardner house this usually means something crazy that we've never done before. The Fiesta Bowl Parade had a spot open for a float and APS said they would foot the bill if Holbrook wanted to put a float in. She thought it would be awesome if Kyle's Swing Thing would dance along side the float to give it a little something extra. After running it past his principal, they jumped right in. They danced to the famous "Route 66" song and "Life if A Highway". This year they are doing a musical instead of going on tour, so Kyle took the opportunity to do a few fun things with them and get some good "choir bonding" time in. 

I really wanted to go and watch the Parade but we weren't sure if Bentley was going to be able to go on the bus or not. Since my parents were already up for Christmas, we talked them into taking Bentley down for two nights and then Kathleen would bring him back up since she was already down for the parade. Everything fell right into place and off we went. The girls LOVED the bus ride and still talk about going on the bus. We left fairly early to have an action packed day.

 We started off at the Ice Skating rink. This was the girls first time ice skating and we will probably wait awhile before we try again. They had lots of fun when I would hold one hand and Kyle would hold the other- that way they would just slide across the ice, but any other way we tried and it was pretty rough. They really liked watching all the other kids skate- but after an hour or so they were pretty much done. Kyle needed to stay with the kids and ours were pretty bored so I took them over to the pet store to look at the hamsters and birds and such- they loved it! Why go to a zoo when you have a pet store?!

Me, London, Macy, and Kyle

 Swing Thing

 After Ice-Skating we went over to Arizona Mills for dinner and then hit Golfland! The girls loved going mini-golfing. London was so funny to watch, she would just keep putting the ball over and over again until it went into the hole. She was pretty determined for awhile and then decided it was much easier to just put the ball into the hole with her hands and then move on.

 Everyone had a pass for unlimited goofy golfing, unlimited go-karts, and then a round or two of laser tag. We didn't think the girls would have any fun on the laser tag so we headed over to the go-karts. London was barely tall enough to ride (I really don't think she was even tall enough, but they let her on anyway) and the whole time we were waiting to go they were getting so excited. I rode with Macy and London joined Kyle. Macy and I got a super fast car and we lapped everyone the whole time.

 After the go-karts the girls were pretty tired and getting a little grouchy but with all the school kids and a bus we were pretty much stuck there. It dawned on me that my brother Steven only lives 10-20 minutes away from Golf-land so I asked him if he would be willing to come pick us up and take us to the hotel a little early. He's amazing and came and gave us a ride. While we were waiting we hit up the arcade. With our passes we had a few dollars in the arcade. The girls had a hard time with some games so Kyle and I jumped in to get the girls some tickets to get a prize with.

 We got back to the hotel and the girls totally crashed- which was good since we had such a busy day ahead of us. We woke up, all got ready, and then headed off to Phoenix to line up for the parade. The float turned out really good- all the highlights of Holbrook were hit. Kathleen and David did a great job building it.

 The even won the Spirit of the Southwest award- how cool is that?!

 I didn't really know where the girls and I were going to do during the parade. At first we thought maybe the girls could ride on the float- but a 4 and 3 year old's attention spans aren't very long so we weren't sure how long they would last. I finally decided we would just go find a spot to watch the parade and then hopefully find them later. We waited at the lineup spot for awhile and decided to go find a place to sit. As the kids and I were walking to the actual parade route I got a phone call from Kyle that his niece just posted a picture on instagram of them waiting for the parade to start, I'm so grateful that they posted that picture- I found them fairly quickly and we got an awesome place to sit. The girls had a blast with their older cousins Megan, Ryan, and Cameron and I was grateful I didn't have to sit on the road since I couldn't carry two kids and chairs. After the parade ended I was even more grateful we found them; I was getting up to leave and they offered to drive us to where ever we needed to go. We got ahold of Kyle and route ended a good 3-4 miles away from where we were. Can you imagine walking 3-4 miles in a crowd of 100,000 people with two little kids?! Heavenly Father was definitely looking out for us. We had a blast and Kyle and Kathleen are already planning for next years float. Crazy kids.

The biggest football players and bag of chips I've ever seen.


The big bag of chips handed out little bags of nasty chips and salsa to everyone! They were trying to share their new flavor and I was not a fan. Ryan was a fan though!

Did you know Phoenix has a club of Super Heros?! We saw them. Pretty legit.


By far the best part of the parade. These are all ladies from Sun City that haven't lost that lovin' feelin'. They are awesome! They had a dance routine and everything. There are probably 30-40 of these ladies in their group!

Here are some pictures of Swing Thing. These kids deserve big kudos. They danced and sang for 2 hours- straight!