My sister hosted Thanksgiving this year in Arizona. We were not able to leave for the 15 hour drive until Wednesday before Thanksgiving when we got off work. Luckily I got off early and we were able to leave at 3ish. With it getting dark so early in the Winter though it made the drive seem so long! I was looking at the clock at 8 thinking it was much later.

By the time we were an hour from Vegas and 5 from my sisters I couldn’t handle being in the car anymore. I needed a break and sleep. We decided to drive the hour to Vegas, making it 10 hours in the car thus far. It was about 1 in the morning by the time we got to Vegas. I found a cheap hotel for the night. We got to and checked into our hotel. I was feeling really hungry and wanted to drive passed Fremont St. I had been to Vegas 3 times before and never been there so I thought since we were there we could at least drive by. On our drive to Freemont St. we saw the Gold & Silver pawn shop from Pawn Stars. We pulled in and unfortunately it was closed but we took a pic by it anyway.

We drove passed Fremont St. it looked pretty cool, I’ll have to go there and actually spend sometime there next time. Anyway after that we stopped and got some quick burgers and then it was back to the hotel for some sleep.

The next morning we got up early, we wanted to get back on the road and get to Brandi’s for Thanksgiving dinner. We made a quick stop at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign.

After that quick stop we got on the road. We decided to make another quick stop though at the Hoover Dam. We were so close, so might as well. The kids and I had been there this summer but Greg and my brother hadn’t. Greg really enjoyed it and would love to go back and tour it when we have more time.

I had told Greg about this section of the road that we drive through where there were a lot of Joshua Trees. When we got there he wanted to pull over and look at one up close. We found a great spot to pull over to see a lot of the Arizona desert vegetation.

We got back on the road and had a little less than an hour to Brandi’s. When we got there all the food was ready to eat. We got there at the perfect time. There was so much food, Brandi & Ryan did a great job! They had ham and turkey and all the fixings. I was so ready to eat by the time we got there that we just jumped right in. I didn’t get any pictures.

Jaelee had been dying to jump into Brandi’s swimming pool. It was hot there, in the mid 80’s but their pool was kinda chili. Jaelee was the only one that braved it and got in.

That evening I went with my siblings to do some shopping. It was a bit crazy, the stores were packed with people. It’s like that in Boise but I think it was more intense in AZ.

When we got back my brother, his girlfriend and the kids went for a night swim. Burr. The rest of us hung out in the back by the fire. Couldn’t of asked for a better way to spend Thanksgiving. It was a bit weird being somewhere so warm but just as amazing with family.

Friday we just spent the day doing some black Friday shopping and hanging out. The kids stayed home with Grandma and made Gingerbread houses.

Saturday we went to downtown Phoenix. They were having a Winter festival, they put in a ice skating rink and they had singing. The rink had a pretty long line and if I’m being honest the singing was a bit horrible so we decided to leave the area and walk around. We went by the basketball and baseball stadiums. Then we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Afterward we tried to go to a drive through Christmas light display but the line was also huge, we decided to just head back to the house. It was fun getting to see Phoenix. I was surprised that there wasn’t more of a active night life in downtown, it seemed pretty dead for a Saturday night.