Crandell Family Vacation Part IV

After the Arizona Sonora Museum...The Franco's, us and Amy and Leon's family decided to go to the International Wildlife Museum. This is a hunter's paradise literally. Andrew and I loved this place. The whole thing from beginning to end, top to bottom is packed with mounted animals. They had pretty much every type or species of every animal. They had insects, beetles, and reptiles all the way up to walruses, and woolly mammoths. The kids had alot of fun because for once it was something they could TOUCH and not get yelled at for. I must admit some of there animals that i have never seen in real life before scared me at how big they were. It was only 7 dollars to get in and worth every penny! Too bad we could not have had the whole family go. I being such an animal lover of course thought of the first thing in mind being in a museum with all dead stuffed animals... Where did they get them? I couldn't imagine that someone would kill a giraffe or a woolly mammoth just to display it! I soon learned though that all the animals were either hit by vehicles, died of a natural cause, or were killed/poached but found or returned and then donated to the museum. The cat den

Josh saving his brother graham from being eaten by the croc.

These things... SCARY huge!~

I tried to get the whole wall in just to get a slight picture of what this place really looks like.

Sweet Josh, he is so cute.

Makes me sad, he looks so cute

Yep they even had the WHOLE giraffe

Alot of the displays had babies as well as the full grown mount. These little piggies are so cute.

Stop and Stare... Andrew says he is Beautiful

Andrew and I in front of the elk

Apparently... Daniel agrees

Huge rack!

So amazing that something so huge can be mounted as such

This thing was so big that from the other angle i could not even take a whole picture of it.

Crandell Family Vacation Part III

We also went to Arizona -Sonora Desert Museum. It was not all that great, but the kids liked it. They had just the Arizona animals and plans and such. The coolest part was the otter. We fed him almonds and he really liked them. There was no buck in with the does and also only one big horn sheep which was a girl also! They didn't have much of variety and we skipped the mile walk to go see the javalina and coyotes because they smell bad anyway. The coolest part was this cute little chipmunk eating our almonds and cooling off in the mud.

little raccoon sleeping with its mouth open.

This otter was not even named! Usually all the animals are named. He/She was sure cute though.

At one of the shows they had a few animals come out including this skunk. The others were birds and a porcupine.

It's a bat. One bat living all by itself. sad

Crandell Family Vacation Part II

So that sums up our trip to Old Tucson. It was nice to see where alot of the old western movies and bee filmed at. I did hear that Old Tucson burnt down a few years ago and they were able to rebuild it almost to its original state. It's a really good family place to take a little fun day trip to. Landy pushing Lyla in the stroller, although you can't see her head. It was cute.

Me and Andrew saw this bird going in and out of the clothes they had hanging on the close line. THe bird was ripping out the cotton from the pockets to make a nest.

Hayden and Luke on the horse in the smoke house.

This adam sandler dude took Landy from me and walked her into the show asking everyone if they were her mom. When he realized that pretty much most of the people in the show were the Crandell family... he started to call us the family of 362 people. He was such a crack up.

Not to mention us spending like 8 or more hours at old tucson seeing eveything, they were also shooting a movie or some type of kids thing for commercials on the disnet channel and alot of the family was in it. The scenes and shows the crew put on were so hillarious.

This was inside the old haunted cave so they say. At the very end they make you go through this tunnel with an iron bridge through it while this cyclone type cyllinder circles around you. It literally makes you feel like you are walking sideways. Just look at Josh's face it explains it all!

Of course you know where to find these two men... no where else other then the taxidermist.

I got the boot from Old Tucson

Marcie with the Adam Sandler look a like being a "volunteer" for the magic show.

Lj dancing with the lady. I think he was enjoying it... :)

So one the second day we went to Old Tucson. This was the saloon where the women were all about the Crandell men. They danced and sang and even got my husband and Colby up on the stage, sat on my father-in-law Chesters lap, and sang and danced with LJ... That's up there ^ This is where the agic happens... or should i say where the girls show the boys where they hang up their garders!

Miss Clementine really had a thing for Andrew. We had so much fun with this show.

Happy birthday to chester. They sang him a nice birthday song for him. Our family was all laughing so hard.

I was not lying when i said miss clementine WANTED Andrew...

All the kids were excited to sit with the saloon girls.

Crandell Family Vacation Part I

So we finally went on out vacation we have been planning on. Amy and Leon planned an amazing trip to good ole Tucson. We first went to the kartchner Cavers State Park. We didnt bring our camera in because we were not allowed to but we got a few pictures of the "museum" part of it. I can't even describe the way the caves actually looked inside. It's hard to even beleive that they are real! So when we pulled up the guy told us no belongings... blah blah blah and he threw in there that it was about 75 degrees in the cave and 99% HUMIDITY! can you say gross? OMGOSH it was nasty! For all of you who know that i have THICK hair... it was not good for my just straightened hair.. Let's just say... Poof! Well after we toured the caverns we waited for the second half of the family... imagine that, a place that can't accomodate all the Crandell's at once... we watched the movie on how the cavers were founded and such, LJ's son Luke decided to pull the fire alarm! It was funny. He ended up a little embarrassed when people were laughing. So that was the first part of our trip, out in the parking lot we were waiting to see where we were going to eat and a HUGE black ant bit my toe! yeah... i killed it:)

It is to be said that this "sloth" was known to live in the caverns at one point in time. I always though Sid the sloth to be a fictional character. This thing CLEARLY scared Andrew. his face is so funny

This is kinda a replica of what is inside the caverns. It all just looks like big walls of wax.

Me and Leon also found the tool that was used the dig the caves...

up close shot... It must have taken them such a long time.....haha