The last day of school was Dec.20, 2013 before the winter break. Both kids and myself will have a winter break after that. My daughter is Ruth and she is 9. My son is Paul and he is 7. My husband Joseph decided to visit his brother and his family in Phoenix for 2 days, we reserved a hotel at Grand Canyon for one night, and hotel at Monte Carlo at Las Vegas the following night.

On Dec 18, 2013, I drove the mini-van to the San Diego Bus and Auto Repair Inc. mechanic shop to do the maintenance that would ensure the car would be in a good condition when we would drive it for a long trip. Besides the regular service ($65.00), Jose, the mechanic technician, asked me to change to a new front brake. It cost me about $200.00. It was about 8:30pm, Jose called me to pick up the car. It gave me a peaceful mind to do the service before we take a long trip.

Dec 23, 2013 5:00am
Both kids woke up by 5:00am and went to my room to ask me when we would leave. They were very excited for the trip. I let them snuggle with me for about 2 hours and got up at 7:00am. I prepared the oatmeal, fried eggs and fruit for breakfast . After the meal, we packed our mini-van and hit the road at 9:00am. One minute later, I suddenly realized that we did not have our passports. We came home and got the passports and left again.

12:00pm. Joseph drove from home to Yuma to fill up the gas tank and we stopped at Carls Jr. for lunch. Ruth loves to eat the fresh tomato salsa with her burger. Joseph ate some apples with his lunch. Paul had his burger with water. I ate left over of fried eggs from the breakfast and some apples.

1:00pm. After lunch, I started to drive the mini-van toward to the east. On the way to Phoenix, some windmills stand on the desert, cows and horses browsed the dry grass, cactus and other desert plants scattered around, and mountains covered by stones, sands and plants. Ruth took some pictures when she saw something interesting to her.

3:30pm. We arrived safely to the front yard of Daniel's  house. Both husband Daniel and wife Sara were at work. The 18 year old daughter Hannah was home alone. She answered the door and let us in. Hannah and I had a conversation regarding how to help Ruth and Paul to be a better learner. Hannah came to the U.S. from China when she was 5 years old without any English. Now she is going to college in the fall of year 2014. She studies very hard and achieves the great learning progress. 2400 SAT score proves her strive and effort.

5:30pm. Sara got home and we started to fix dinner together. We had many delicious dishes for dinner.
11:00pm Joseph and Ruth slept on the couches, one for each. Paul and I slept in a guest room.

3:00am Dec. 24. Christmas Eve
I woke up by the heater and could not fall asleep. I started to read the book "Gone with the wind" from the Internet.
9:00am We all walked to a grocery store to buy ground pork together. I felt cold. We made Chinese dumplings for lunch.
1:00pm Daniel got home from work. Daniel and Joseph mounted the mirror on the wall for Sara in their master bathroom. They tried to return a lawn mower to Home Depot and did not succeed. I found that I got cold and drank a lot of ginger water.
7:00pm Daniel is a good cook and he cooked many yummy dishes for dinner. Daniel, Sara, Joseph and myself played cards together after the meal.

9:00am Dec. 25. Christmas day
We all took pictures together before we left. Hannah had played with Ruth and Paul for the last one and half days. She is very mature and full of love to her younger cousins.

Joseph drove all the way from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon because I was sick. On the way, we stopped by at Sedona. We did a little hiking for about 25 minutes and came back to the car to continue the journey. We got the Grand Canyon at 3:30pm. The sunset is 5:20pm. The sun was setting. We took the blue route sightseeing bus to Blue Angel point. We got off and saw two wild deer staring at us. We walked around and took a 40 minutes hiking to climb the higher place.

5:30pm. We took the bus back to the Grand Canyon vistor center to got our mini-van. It was twilight and getting dark very quickly. We went to the Yavapi Lodge registration desk to get our room keys and ate our dinner at the dinning hall. Ruth ordered Chicken Pot Pie, Paul ordered spagatti with tomato sauce, Joseph had one quarter roast Chicken, and I ate fresh fish meal with macroni and cheese.

7:00pm. We got to our hotel room and rested. The 3 of them watched TV. I rested on the bed.

7:30am Dec. 26.
We checked out the hotel and had breakfast at the dinning hall. Both Joseph and I had oatmeal and milk. Ruth had 2 pancakes and Paul had 3 pancakes.

This time, we took the orange bus route and asked the bus driver where we should go for the best sight seeing. He told us that we should drive to the west wing to check out the sight seeing points by ourselves. We took his suggestion and drove our mini-van to check out the places on the west wing.

It was windy and cold. I could not stand the coldness and only got off from the van for a couple of places. Joseph brought Ruth and Paul to check out each stop after that.

11:00am. We left the Grand Canyon and drove to the Las Vegas.
On the way from Grand Canyon to Las Vegas, we met Joseph's cousin and his family. We took a picture to remember our gathering on the desert.

We stopped a McDonalds for our lunch. Ruth had Chicken Nuggets, both Joseph and Paul had a club burger. I had a fish fillet burger.

Joseph drove the mini-van all the way to the Las Vegas. We booked a V Variety show at 7:00pm. I got very sick and it felt so hard to walk. Joseph took care of the kids and myself. He is a very considerate and thoughtful husband. Praise God!

The juggler named Wally Eastwood impressed me by his skills and humor. He can juggle with his hands and mouth with different objects. At the end, he threw balls to play the key board.

8:30pm, we went back to our hotel Monte Carlo to rest. 3 of them had one pretzel from Auntie Anne's.

12-27-2013 Friday

8:00am
We went to a mall in Las Vegas to have our breakfast. I ordered some Mexican soup. Everyone found something they liked in the grocery store.

After the breakfast, Joseph drove the car back all the way from Las Vegas to San Diego since I was still sick. We stopped by at Mac Donald to have our lunch. By 4:00pm, we safely arrived home at San Diego, CA. My husband took two kids out at Souplantation for dinner. I wanted to eat some oat meal at home. I did not go with them, but ate at home.

Go east, go west, go home best!