A Much Needed Vacation

(This is Ricky's little brother's car.)
The last two weeks Ricky and I were able to go on a much needed vacation. Ricky went three weeks without a weekend before we left so he was exhausted when we left, but he was able to relax and enjoy not having to work. We had a ton of fun together driving and getting to know family neither of us has really met, catching up with family that we do know, talking with friends that we haven't talked with in what feels like forever, and all the sight seeing.

It started very early, we drove to Yuma, Arizona, which is 14 hours away. It was actually a really good drive. We laughed at all the random signs, like one that said WARNING PRISON AREA DO NOT PICK UP HITCH HIKERS. I have never seen one of those signs before and we just had to laugh.
We laughed at border patrol.

We even got stopped by border patrol, and asked if we're citizens. It was pretty funny.
 I got to see Mexico. The GPS shows just how close we got to the border.

We drove through El Paso. It was kind of crazy to see these brand new hotels on the US side, and across the fence there was what I can really only describe as the slums.
We really didn't do a very good job of taking pictures but we did get a few good ones, like this next one.

This is Ricky's Uncle Jeff. He's the only guy in a cowboy hat, if you couldn't guess. Ricky says he looks like Garth Brooks. I couldn't tell you, not knowing what Garth Brooks looks like.

The reason why we drove to Yuma is because Ricky's cousin Alex was graduating from high school. 

The picture above isn't very clear but it's the best one we got of the three of us, plus it seems to be the only one with Ricky's Aunt Marisela. She's the one on the left looking at the camera.

Ricky and his cousin getting along. 

We had a lot of fun getting to know this side of the family. Most nights were spent talking and telling stories. It was nice. 

From Yuma we flew to Salt Lake, and it was very eventful. By eventful I mean that the computers were down in Yuma so we couldn't check our bags all the way to Salt Lake. So when we got to Phoenix, we had to recheck our bags. The line was ridiculous. It took us almost an hour to get through it. Then we found out that they had overbooked our flight. We almost didn't get tickets, but some people came up and volunteered to wait for the next flight. 

Ricky's Mom, stepdad and new little brother came to pick us up. We hadn't seen this kid since he was about 2 months old, and boy has he grown.

This is Gunner. He's about 9 months old now but he's growing out of 2T baby clothing. He's such a happy kid too. He never really fussed or cried while we were there. Ricky fell in love. This is the first baby that he has ever really connected with, which gives me hope that he may start thinking more about having our own kids in a few years.

Anyways, while we were in Idaho, we got to go out on a boat in the River. Granted it was only about 65  degrees and the water was still very cold but it was nice. 

Once again not many good pictures.  Ricky looks angry.

We didn't do a ton of actual things in Idaho, cause we were only there for about a week so not a lot of time to do anything but visit with friends and family, so that's what we did. It was nice to reconnect with everybody. I already miss it there, and am so ready to go back.
Ricky's family drove us back to Salt Lake so we could catch our plane back to Yuma. On the way we stopped at Promontory Point. It was interesting to see.

When we got back to Yuma we were really sad to say goodbye to the cooler 50-60 degree weather, and hello to the 100's.

This is how hot it got on our way back home.

We stopped at a Cabela's on the way home too. Ricky was so excited. I was actually impressed. If you don't know what a Cabela's is, it's basically a Sportsman Warehouse on steroids. 2 stories with escalators and a restaurant. It was crazy. So in memory of that we got matching-ish hats.

Mine is the red one.
Ricky wanted to go to flagstaff (since we were so close) cause that is where sledneck headquarters is. While we where there we saw this.

It's an official nascar. Ricky was pretty excited about that too.
So that is basically our trip. It was nice and it made me really ready to get out of here. Who knows, maybe after Ricky deploys? Maybe...