Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a very eventful Thanksgiving weekend this year.  I was going to break each days’ event down into three posts, but after thinking about it, I think I’ll just put the whole thing in one.  Sorry it’s a little lengthy!

The first thing this weekend was that my friend Dayna and her husband came from Vegas to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.  It was awesome!  They are so smart to have come south rather than north to spend some time with us in our gorgeous weather (this is a commercial to persuade anyone reading this to come visit us in the winter, early spring or late fall…our weather is much milder if you want to get out of the snow or cold...wink, wink, nudge, nudge…).

Dayna and I cooked in the kitchen pretty much all morning long, then we took naps, or rested (I had some “me” time) and then we came back to the kitchen to finish shaping and baking rolls and warming up everything else that had already been prepared while Jared and Jeff carved the turkey.  Then us girls took showers went and freshened up right before we sat down to dinner.Kiss the Cooks! We’re all sweaty and disgusting but we’re having fun!

Lucky Jared got to spend most of his Thanksgiving hanging out with the kids (except when he was playing Turkey Bowl with the Elders).

Christian playing on PBS Kids…since he did take a nap.

Vivian letting Dayna hold her.  

Me and Jared as I made the gravy with my scraggly straight wet hair (I didn’t find my hairdryer until yesterday so I had dumb hair after my showers for a couple of weeks). This is a photo of Dayna and Jeff while he tries to find the “oysters” on the Turkey.Jared, plating the turkey. Christian, checking out all the yummy food. Everyone at our feast (except for me, the photographer).

    Vivian was getting a little bored with all of our talk after dinner and started playing Peek-A-Boo with her bib.  It was very funny.  Here’s a little clip Jeff took (I ran out of tape, dang it).

The next day was pretty much spend at the  Phoenix Zoo with Jeff and Dayna.

   

Dayna kept trying to get Christian to wear his hat backwards.

Vivian was enjoying wearing Jeff’s hat.

Dayna and Jeff enjoying the beautiful weather! One of the cute monkeys in monkey village.Dayna’s family…

My Family…     Dayna and I.

After the Zoo, Dayna and Jeff left to get a glimpse of the Grand Canyon.  I was really sad to see them go but I’m glad that they spent the time they did with us.  It was so much fun to be able to spend even a short amount of time with one of my best friends again. Thanks you two for coming!  Please, come again soon!

My Saturday was spent throwing a baby shower for my friend Sherrada.  Her sister Kalei and I threw it at my house (now that it’s the bigger of the two). I made a bear cake and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out though it’s wasn’t as perfect as I was hoping it would be.

Jared took Christian to Tangled during the shower and Vivian hung out with me.  She was actually surprisingly happy the whole time and not too clingy…she seemed happy to be checking out everything……like people’s water bottles and keys and other things. :)

Here’s a cute photo of Kalei and her new baby and Sherrada with her belly.  Such cute sisters!

It was a crazy weekend but I’m a little sad it’s over. *sniff* I love visitors.

Giving Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving.  I have so much to be thankful for.  We closed on the house on the 10th of November after the bank that owned it decided to go ahead and split the repair costs with us and had those fixed.  We moved in the 13th with the awesome help of my parents, our “Mesa (adopted) family” and some great ward members.

Our old ward was really helpful to get everything on the truck in a timely manner so that we could meet up with our new ward at the appointed time and so many people showed up from our new ward that we were unloaded in an hour!

We still have some work to do on the house to make it totally livable (since the home-owners took most of the light fixtures).  My dad and mom were really sweet the first 4 days we were here and helped us with childcare and my dad put in a new sink and disposer (the other one was rotten and leaking), and hooked up the dishwasher, as well as putting in some doors for me and teaching Jared how to put up light fixtures and doing some himself.  Man, am I lucky to have such a handy dad.  My mom was lots of help too with cleaning, packing, unpacking and watching the kids so I could paint the walls of the worst room.  Thanks mom and dad.  You are such a blessing in our lives!

We are so happy to finally have a yard for Christian!  I don’t know if it was just the stress from the buying process or what, but Christian and I had been butting heads A LOT before the move.  It seems like all we needed was a little extra space and he’s been so much better.  There is nothing like being able to be outside to help a child’s temperament!

I am so grateful for the blessing to have a house!  It’s wonderful to do the laundry at my own home, put more than one 9x13 pan in the oven, wash dishes, have a disposer, have a sprayer, have my own garbage can that I don’t have to go down the steps and through a complex into the creepy alley to throw things away, have my own recycling bin, have a view of the Mountains from my bedroom, have a tub to take a bath in, and park in my own garage and unload things at my leisure.  I also love our neighborhood which has walking paths and parks and the elementary school behind our house.  I’ve already met a few really nice neighbors who conveniently have children around Christian’s age so we’ve been able to chat and have some play-dates already.  It’s amazing the liberty this house has given me!  I’m so so thankful.

Even though I’m happy to have a beautiful house, I am more thankful for my beautiful family.  My sweet husband who works so hard for us and is my true best friend and my two darling children are the best blessings in my life.  I am also so thankful for my extended family and the wonderful friends that I am so blessed to have.  These are the people that keep me sane.  I’m am so grateful that Heavenly Father has blessed my life so richly.

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving full of thoughts to the wonderful blessings we all have especially each other.

Sunday Afternoon Picnic

The Sunday before we moved to our new house, we decided to visit our new ward and ask for help and then take a picnic past the Temple on the way home since it wasn’t that far away from our new house (Hooray for that!).   I stole the idea from my cousin Jessica to have a picnic there.  It was a good idea.  We had a mini lesson as well about making our home like a temple and how we could do that.  Here are some funny and cute photos we took that day.  Sorry if it’s boring to look through these.  I got a little carried away with how many photos I put in this post but it was such a nice day, I just wanted to share it for those who care.

Vivian was so funny with wanting a taste of everything.  She was really excited about crawling around on the grass.  This has actually been one of the few occasions she has had to play in the grass since we lived in a cement city until recently and it was really too hot to go out much before then. Christian was trying so hard to get Vivian to pose with him.  It was hilarious watching him chase her and then sitting as fast as he could and then yelling to us to “take a picture quick” before she crawled off.  This is pretty much the only one where they are both in the same frame all the way.  I really like how this photo of Christian turned out.  Christian kept using his dad’s head as a pillow (it’s not very soft) but it was cute so I wanted a photo. Jared took this crazy one of me trying to be somewhat modest while relaxing in my knee-length skirt.  Vivian just did not want to hold still for a photo.  She’s really mad in this one for me grabbing her and trying to get her in the picture.  Can’t you see her plan for escape in her eyes?    Here’s my cute husband all smiles…

I LOVE this photo of Christian enjoy his apple.  So handsome!

 

I think  Christian may be a budding photographer, he wanted to take pictures of us and kept telling us different ways to pose.  His favorite was “now kiss!….not like that romantically”.  Maybe he’s been to one too many weddings! LOL.

      It might be because we’re always taking pictures of Vivian (at least in Christian’s opinion) but he really wanted us to take a lot of pictures of him in front of various things such as the Temple, the Christos, the fountain…etc he’s such a sweet boy!

Zoo Day

Today the ward mom’s group met up at the zoo.  We had a good time and I got to know a cute new girl in the ward a little bit better which was fun.  I know that I have posted zoo pictures a LOT in the past.  Some of the “locations” of these are the same as others I have but I love to have pictures that I can compare with each other that are from different dates.  It makes me much more aware of my children's’ growth.  So sorry if some of these look redundant to you. I realized today how tall Christian is getting.  He’s now in 5T shirts!  How did this happen?  He almost is too big for the Little People playground for kids 4 feet and under.  I’m so amazed at how fast this he has grown.   Vivian was pretty good the whole time…unless I wanted to take her picture.  She wanted the camera!

Proof of Christian’s growth:

Here’s Christian last year in September…

Today:   Where did my little guy go?  He’s gotten so big!    Here’s my girl sleeping angelically.         Today we ended mostly hanging out with Heidi, a new girl in our ward and her two girls.  Christian has really taken to her daughter Emily.  She’s a shy little two-year-old with darling hair.  It was really fun watching him flirt with her.            Christian cracks me up…all of these statues are his “friends”.  At each one we came to he would go into the history of how he met these various friends, their temperaments and some kind of adventure together.  It was very fun.  He is so imaginative.  I love it!    What is with boys and sticks?

Cute little Emily  posing for the camera.  So precious.   I just thought this picture was priceless…