Phoenix Children's Museum

Our Sunday in Phoenix began bright and early when we dropped Edward off for his medical course. After doing that, the kids and I had to make a stop at the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru. We don't have Dunkin Donuts in Yuma, I've never seen it in California, and hey, it's a donut shop. My parents next-door-neighbors own a bunch of Dunkin Donuts, and they are always so sweet to bring a bunch by when we visit.

Anyways, after our donuts, we felt refreshed for a few errands. We started by going to Sprouts Market, which was a cool grocery store. They sell popcorn kernels in bulk bins, and this family loves popcorn! That was our first trip to the store, and I'll definitely visit again when we go to Phoenix.

The "surprise" of the day for the kids came next. I took them to the Phoenix Children's Museum. It was a really cool place; none of us had been there before. The kids really enjoyed themselves, but a word to the wise...if you go, go first thing in the morning. By the time we left at lunchtime, the place was packed.

The Noodle Maze

This area was by far our favorite. It was a play grocery store, and the kids LOVED it. We spent a lot of time here, played on more stuff, and then we came back again. It was really cute, and I especially got a kick out of both Madison and Luke giving each other "coupons" to buy their stuff...yes!!

The checkout was very realistic. The scanner even beeped as stuff went down the conveyor belt.

"Do you have any coupons?"

"Thank you for shopping at the Commissary!"

Alex, just a sweet, relaxed kid, had fun just taking it all in.

You can see the place isn't that busy, but by the time we stopped back in this room on our way out, you could barely move around.

Luke really liked this area. They had a bunch of ramps setup for cars to race on. Madison wanted to race Luke, but she ended up nursing her bloody nose for quite awhile. It kept bleeding! That's a product of living in a VERY dry climate here, frequent bloody noses.

Luke is holding the cars designed for the ramps.

And, the last stop was the makeshift ice cream stand.

We had lunch at Pizza Hut. I really wanted to try a local favorite, Spinato's Pizza, but it didn't open until 4:00 on Sunday :( We ran a few more errands, checked out a mall I won't visit again (can we say sketchy!!!), and then we picked up Edward. We had a few more places we needed to stop, so we went to the Tempe Marketplace, which was new to us. It was a super cool outdoor shopping area with entertainment, cool stores, and a lot of restaurants. After that FULL day, we loaded up, and began our three-hour drive home. Thankfully, the kids fell asleep, as we didn't pull in until 10:00.