As we’ve done for the past several years since both my parents and sister’s family are now living in Tucson, we headed out to Arizona for Christmas. Instead of heading straight to my sister’s house after our arrival we all spent the night up in Scottsdale.

My 7 year old niece is now very into American Girl dolls. She had asked Santa for a Samantha doll and had some birthday money she wanted to spend on some outfits, so of course we hit up the American Girl doll store in Scottsdale.

That night we went to some park in Scottsdale where they have a carousel and a little train ride through Christmas decorations. Supposedly the train ride with lights started at 6:30. We wound up getting over there earlier and it’s a good thing we did. My sister immediately got in the train line while we rode the carousel with the kids and played on the playground for awhile. They actually started running the train early around 6 and we were on the 3rd or 4th one. The line when we were done was insane. It would have taken people hours to get through. There’s no way we would have stayed if we had actually gotten there at 6:30. It was cute for the kids, but not something I would recommend if you didn’t have kids with you.

I’ve literally been waiting for years to buy my eldest niece Sorry!. She’s finally old enough for so this year I bought it for her for Christmas. It turns out they already bought two copies of the game when it was on sale on Black Friday, one for my sister’s house and one for my parents house. Needless to say she didn’t need a third copy of Sorry! but my instincts were absolutely correct because the girl was obsessed while I was there. We played at least 100 games of Sorry! while I was there and probably more than that.

That’s mostly what we did for the rest of the week I was there. Play a bunch of games, mostly Sorry! and occasionally something else like dolls or hide and seek. I am very happy for the game loving phase right now because I am not a fan of playing Barbies, which is usually what I’m roped into while I’m there. There was minimal Barbie playing this go round.

The three year old niece is both adorable and a complete jerk in the way three year olds are. She wants to copy everything her big sister is doing and is very good at throwing temper tantrums and pouting when she doesn’t get her way, which is quite often. It’s a good thing she’s so cute.

While the three year old was at preschool on Monday I got roped into taking the 7 year old to see Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. I kind of figured that was going to happen. When I was thinking about kids movies being out at Christmas initially I could only think of Star Wars, which would not be something my nieces would be old enough for or interested in. I said to my husband that I wish there was a movie out we could go to while we’re there. Then I ate my words after I immediately remembered the existence of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t anything I would recommend to anyone who wasn’t trying to entertain small children.

We headed home yesterday. Like last year our flight was delayed while we waited on a flight crew to arrive even though our plane was there. Even though we left an hour late we only arrived about 30 minutes late. Too bad it was another hour and half before we got our luggage. By the time we got home it was almost 2 am.

Aside from the late flight home it was a fun trip.