This year, we sandwiched Camp Nana in between my brothers' family's visit and our trip to the Grand Canyon. Our summer got busy at the end, but we couldn't miss out on Camp Nana! Although since my dad has retired, it's probably more appropriately called Camp Nana and Bubba, but that's a mouthful so I usually stick with Camp Nana.

My mom always likes to have fun crafts for the kids to do, especially the girls. The girls love it because they do not have a crafty mom. Although, to be fair, I didn't have a crafty mom either, so maybe I'll turn into a crafty grandma!

This year my mom bought supplies for the girls to make earrings.

It involved cutting wire, so my dad even got involved. 

They also went to a charm store in Carlsbad, and the girls picked out charms for necklaces. Ellie picked out these because they were the closest to George and Milo that she could find.

Painting rocks is always a big thing at Camp Nana.

Rainbow sprinkles pancakes? Another thing I was NOT served as a child. Grandparents sure are fun!

They always go out to eat one night during Camp Nana. Usually they pick BJs, as it's a favorite of the kids.

The kids love going out to eat, but they REALLY love dinner on the Raclette grill. That is a Camp Nana must.

Another huge part of Camp Nana is the beach. They go everyday.

Other than those activities, the kids really like the downtime to play cards, 

read, and do puzzles. I love that the kids are 15, 13, and 10 now but still love Camp Nana just as much as ever!

The day after the Grand Canyon, we spent the whole day in Williams doing all sorts of fun things. Our first stop was the Canyon Coaster Adventure Park. The Canyon Coaster was a mix between an alpine slide and a roller coaster. It was so fun!

Then we went "Summer Mountain Tubing." Also a huge hit with everyone!

After the Canyon Coaster Adventure Park, we drove about eight miles away to a little lake. The Meisters had been there years before when they visited Williams. It was a pretty drive, and we had a sing along on the way with songs like "American Pie" and "Sweet Caroline."

It was beautiful at the lake, and we had fun skipping rocks. 

There were also lots of pretty spots for photo ops.

When we had explored the lake a little, we headed back to our Airbnb. We walked to lunch in downtown Williams, and then hung out at our house. The girls enjoyed reading out on the balcony.

My kids taught the Meisters how to play our favorite game, Cthulhu. They couldn't pronounce it, but they picked it up quickly. I've never heard Cthulhu get so loud. It was really funny to hear them all laughing and yelling at each other about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

Later that afternoon we drove over to a zoo called "Bearizona." We had heard from so many people about how great the zoo was, and we were not disappointed.

The first part of the zoo that we did was the drive-through part. 

Most of the animals paid us no attention as we drove through, but this guy lumbered right towards us.

It was really neat just driving around and seeing all of these different animals close up.

When you drove through the bears and wolves area, you had to have the windows rolled up, but again, they didn't seem too interested in any of the cars.

This bear cracked us up. He was a pretty large fellow and decided to go to the very top of a pretty skinny tree. Somehow the tree survived.

After we drove through once, we got out for the walking part of the zoo.

It wasn't huge, but we saw lots of great animals.

The wolf pups were our favorite. There were four of them, and they were just so cute and fuzzy. They loved wrestling and playing with each other.

We had to get a picture of these two because their school mascot is the badger. You can tell they are both in middle school because they were appropriately mortified when we said that we might send this picture to their school. Ha! Go Badgers!

This grizzly bear popped out of the water right when we were walking by. He was a big guy and looked like he wanted to jump over the moat to join us.

We had some fun in the gift shop. After we walked through the zoo, we drove through one more time, and then even went back and walked a little more just to see a few more animals. It was a great trip.

When we got back to our place, the kids threw a football and frisbee around for a while. Then we headed to dinner.

Since it was monsoon season, we did keep our eye on the clouds a lot. We got to see so much fun lightning and thunder, but we really didn't get much rain. It was like the Lord had us in a protected bubble. We ate outside our last night in Williams, and this is what the radar looked like. Storms all around, but not a drop fell on us at dinner.

The next morning, we basically packed up to leave.

Although on our way out of town, we did stop by this little zip line in downtown Williams. It was a quick little ride, but it was fun. The best part was that they had this deal called, "Buy three, moms ride free," so because I bought three tickets I got to ride for free!

Our drive home was nice and uneventful. We had candy, snacks, movies and music. It was basically the ideal road trip. We stopped for a bite to eat near Palm Springs, and made it home right at 6:00, so we got to spend the evening catching up with Andy and the kittens!