Phoenix escape Day 1: Scottsdale

After picking up what might be our next family car last night

(The Expedition is pretty cool),

We headed to what is the COOLEST Airbnb we’ve ever had

And stayed up later than we meant to

Playing pool and darts and shuffleboard (on a very sloped table)

And foosball and putting practice.

Like we said, it’s a cool house.

Despite the late night,

We managed to drag ourselves out of bed at a reasonable time

Because we have a lot to cram in to our 3 days!

First up—

Breakfast at Hash Kitchen,

This funky restaurant with some tasty Mexican-mix-up breakfast food

And a DJ splicing the tunes.

Definitely a good start to the weekend!

All fueled up,

We hit Camelback Mountain,

The must-do hike in Phoenix.

The first view of the city

This 1300 foot elevation gain is no joke!

But it’s worth the view!

Bird’s eye view of Phoenix

One last look

Before we head back down the Cholla trail

Now that we got our 3 miles in,

We need to refuel.

We headed into Old Town for so shopping

We wandered through a lot of stores and

bought some spices and honey, a hilarious book, some candy and a few cups of tea

And then wandered down the street to an awesome

Pizza and brewery—

Craft 64.

5 stars, highly recommend.

It was a delightful afternoon

Looked a little different than last time we were here

In 2014

Then it was back to the house

For some bocce

And pool time

Wait for it…

We didn’t pay for the pool heat this time—

We needed to warm up in the hot tub!

We finished out our night

With a fancy dinner at Culinary Dropout—

Yep, yet another restaurant name drop.

Mom and Dad are splurging.

We gotta remember this.

Fleeing the cold

With a long weekend ahead of us,

We’re skipping a day of school and jetting out of town…

Getting in that screen time while we can.

On the plane now!

Headed west,

Over Great Sand Dunes National Park…

But where will we land?

 

Connection

Mom's New Year's resolution

is to be more present

and connect more with friends and family.

She's keeping with it,

going on the Downtown LS Wine Walk with the girls

And keeping up with her monthly

"Neo meetings" with her work friends

Well, we're only 2 months into 2026

but so far so good! 

Baskets

Tucker's team has had a pretty great season--

and he's been able to contribute a couple of points so far!

Git it, Tuck!

Our Jazz Man

The ETMS Jazz Band hit the road today

for a "gig" tour of the elementary schools

Band is quickly becoming Beckett's favorite jam

 

Competing with the big dogs

Despite being a novice,

Jackson was selected to travel with the debate team

To the CoMo tournament.

He didn’t come home with a medal,

But he placed top 1/3 to top 1/2

Versus novices AND varsity…

Not a bad showing, Jackson!

 

Because why not have a Valentine’s pop-up?

We were just looking for some good pizza

But we’ll take a festive, heart-filled dinner any day! 

 

Dropping more time

Beckett had another swim meet tonight

Which meant another opportunity to work on his times.

He dropped nearly 0.3 seconds in freestyle

For a new PR of 30.73.

Despite looking fierce on the blocks,

He slipped on his start for backstroke and added some time.

But he looked strong with a great flipturn!

Wait until it all comes together…

And he swam fly for the first time since July,

Taking off 4 seconds for a new PR of 38.77.

Love your drive, Beckett!

 

Harvesting our inner Minnesotan

 We were supposed to have an epic snowstorm

With upwards of 8-9 inches of snow…

But we ended up with 3-4.

It is well below freezing

But we couldn’t pass that snow up.

So we put on all the gear

And headed out to the neighborhood sled hill

It’s not that cold!

“Granted” 4 years in a row!

Jackson applied for the LSEF grant

For Broncobots again this year.

He helped apply his freshman year 

And then completed the grant application solo the last 3 years.

He clearly knows what he’s doing…

Broncobots were honored again!

Great job, Jackson!

 

Club swim pays off

Beckett decided to “dive” in to competitive swimming this winter

And has been training on Surge for the last month or two.

Coach Ryan promised to push him hard and help him cut time

And tonight, we were excited to see what Beck could do.

Coach put him in the 13 and over group—

He’s 3rd from the left…

Clearly not really 13 and over.

Not intimidated.

He hit the blocks for the 50 free

And swam his heart out

He took 2 full seconds off his freestyle PR,

Coming in at 31.05s.

Good thing he was in the 13 and over group—

He blew the 11-12 group out of the water.

The other stroke tonight was backstroke.

He was off the blocks fast

(He’s second from the top)

He took a few tenths off his old PR

With a time of 40.67s

(And again, blew up to 11-12 group).

Can’t wait to see where a few more weeks of training will get him!

Weekend Shenanigans

 A little cold weather won’t keep us from having fun!

Tucker was up and dressed earlier than usual

And happy to go tromping with Mom down the path and through the woods

Check out his ice scythe

We played some keno and pool at the VFW

Which always make for a rowdy time

The Council of Coffeewalkers braved the cold

And we all walked up and down CC collecting trash

(And checking out the frozen lake)

We love playing poker into the wee hours of the morning

(Mom cleaned up this time!)

But the hit of the weekend was the burning of the pile…

A look from the window

And a look closer up—

We must have had flames 80 feet high!

Dad and Pappo are almost 50 yards away from the fire!

A nice spot for happy hour

See?

Lots of shenanigans.

Happy 76th, Mema!

A fancy dinner

To celebrate a fancy lady—

Happy birthday, Grandma Janice!

 

Working the court

The Kings are back in season,

Working hard on the basketball court.

There’s been some ups and downs to the season so far,

But our skills are definitely improving.

Tucker scored today!

(It doesn’t happen often)

And his team won 20-19–

Keep working, boys!

 

Top 40, baby!

He wasn’t quite as high on the list as he had hoped

But he did it—

Wes made the top 40 competition team!

How about a new personal best of 268 in bullseye?

Now if 3D can follow the trend…

Day 8: But first…croissants

Today we started our trek home.

But we decided it shouldn’t just be a driving day…

We needed one more sunrise.

A quick walk to the beach was totally worth it

The Sunrisers

Glad we didn’t miss this one.

We decided we needed another round of croissants

To celebrate our last morning in Port A—

They even made us a special hazelnut one!

We made it to OKC

In time to check into our TWO BEDROOM SUITE…

That Mom and Dad forgot they booked.

Oh, yeah…they didn’t want someone to have to sleep on the couch our last night.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

We had dinner,

Swam in the not-so-warm pool

(Missing the house already)

And then topped it off with Stranger Things,

The obsession of the trip.

We made it home, safe and sound the next day.

Over 2000 miles under our belts

And a lot more memories in the bank.

Day 7: Turning lemons into lemonade

Today was supposed to be our big

Nearshore fishing trip,

Full of snapper and all the other tasty fish.

But the sea is not in our favor,

With big waves and wind offshore.

So we’re grounded.

But in true Reed Family Spirit—

We shifted to Plan B.

While Wes and Tucker spent their morning catching up on beauty sleep,

The rest of us piled into the golf cart

To find the best donut on the island.

But, turns out, the ONLY donut shop on the island

Was closed for the holiday week.

Yelp led us to Island Bakery…

And boy are we glad it did!

We had the MOST delicious chocolate croissant, 

hazelnut croissant, and cinnamon rolls.

Thanks you, closed donut store!

Then we did some souvenir shopping,

Grabbed another coffee at the shop from day 1,

And headed home to wake up the brothers. 

Because we are headed to the beach!

There were lots of kites the last few days

So we bought a few in town and took our turn.

Who knew kites were so much fun?

There was a lot of digging

And we finally braved the chilly sea

It’s not tooooooo bad!

Tuck struggled to catch one

But Wes made bodyboarding look easy

Look out for the waves!

We had so much fun eating seaside earlier this week,

We headed back into town for another lunchtime stop.

We were going to go to Grumbles which got pretty good reviews

But we were not nearly as dressed up as the people walking out.

So we decided to brave Virginia’s next door

(It had some pretty sad reviews on Yelp).

But guess what?

Another win!

It was AWESOME!

Mom and Dad had the best beer of the trip

And, if you ever stop in, Beck and Mom highly recommend

The shrimp dump.

We were all begging for bites of their spicy seafood boil.

On our way back to the beach,

We saw a huge jetty…

So we got out to walk it.

Beckett stopped to fish (again)

But the rest of us walked the 3/4 mile

Alllll the way to the end.

It was very scenic

And there were pods of dolphins EVERYWHERE!

We must have seen 20 of them!

And SEA TURTLES!

Mom was so excited.

The pelicans made for some cool pictures

We eventually made it back to our spot on the beach

Where digging

And building

Ensued.

A pretty great afternoon…

But do you know what it needs?

A beach bonfire!!!

We’d never done this before!

With our sandcastle complete

We waited for the big event…

The rising of the full moon.

How about that??

It was so bright,

Everything was cast in shadows.

What a day!

Hard to capture the family selfie

By the light of the moon

Well, that’s a pretty full day.

But you know us—

We’re just getting started.

We hit the pool (I mean, it’s just so warm!),

Changed into our evening “best,”

And took the golf cart into town for our most anticipated meal of the week.

We headed to La Playa,

Highly recommended by Captain Brian

As the best place in town to have prepared our fresh fish.

But…

At a little after 8:00,

As Mom got to the hostess stand,

They weren’t taking any more names on the waitlist.

Something about a broken dishwasher?

But Mom worked her magic—

It’s our last night, we were so excited, 

we’ll sit wherever, we brought our fish…—

And Yaya, the owner, took pity on us.

Now WE were the last ones on the list!

And again, boy did we luck out.

We got some prime seats on the front porch.

As we were settling in,

We overheard what will be an EPIC family story for years to come—

The couple one table over shared that it was their first night in town

And told the waitress they’d be around all week.

The waitress, being friendly, introduced herself and asked their names.

The lady said her name was Sarah.

The man leaned back in his chair, paused for dramatic effect and said

“They call me Stingray.”

The lady then said, “Oh, we’re doing that? Well then, I’m Starfish.”

We all somehow managed to keep it together

Until they left the table

And then ERUPTED into laughs.

Did that just happen???

When we tried to share the hilarity with our waitress Sally,

She gave us the FAKEST laugh…and then asked

“Do you want water?”

Guess the story doesn’t translate well

But it was the funniest thing any of us had heard in a long time.

The night just kept getting better—

Not only did we get all the amazing food we ordered

(And the fish was everything Brian promised),

But then the owner’s husband kept stopping by and asking if we wanted things—

“You want tamales?”…and then brought steak (and called it tamales)

Then he asked if we wanted oatmeal…and then brought more steak and a crema.

Everything was SO good.

We left so full.

Well, it wasn’t a day of fishing

But it was a darn good day!