The Boy Cousins

In April, I took the girls and headed out to AZ. My brother Tim was opening his dental practice and asked me to come out to help set it up. I spend most the day in his office training his staff and getting his software setup. While I was working, the girls spend the day with Cindy, Ethan and Janae. They know Tom's brothers kids as the girl cousins and since Tim has 4 boys and just one girl they just called them "The Boy Cousins". On Friday we took the kids to the Pheonix Zoo. The zoo has this water area for the kids to play and everyone loved it.

The girls don't get to spend much time with Tim's family so it was good for them to have some one on one bonding time with them. And I think Janae loved having more girls around too.

This and That

We had our friends, the Hansen's kids one night and the girls were having a ball with them because they even out the odd number they usually play with. Earlier that day Audrey was using a chair as a slide and she ended up getting rug burn on her face...not fun.

This year for General Conference, I tried to get the girls more involved in watching and listening. We made candy buckets and since the girls can't read I printed pictures of things like a Temple, Prophet, Family, etc. Whenever they heard that word, they got to have a piece of that candy. We had to start limit it to once a talk. The girls had fun and they actually listened.......somewhat.

We started our first garden this year. So far tomatoes have been great, the peas were divine. Even the neighbors liked them.

80's Prom

Our friends that always host the Christmas party decided this year to hold an 80's Prom. It was a ton of fun to get dressed up and boogie on down!

Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we did some of our traditional things, like go to see the Bears at Birkdale, but I didn't get any pictures of that this year. This year one of our friends, the Boles invited us to their house to make Gingerbread houses. Travis had made all the walls/roofs homemade and put them together before we got there so all we needed to do was decorate. The kids had a great time. We came home and let the girls open one present, their PJs. They LOVED them.

That night after the girls were asleep Santa brought us a super special gift. Grandma and Gramps! We got them settled in and went to bed. In the morning the girls got up and woke up me and Tom. Before we let the girls leave Tom snuck a knock on the spare bedroom door. As we were almost to the stairs with the girls the spare room door opened. Ella backed up about half a foot pretty nervous because you couldn't see anyone. The she heard "Hey Punky-Poos" and ran into the room knowing it was Gramps. They were so surprised! The girls loved all their gifts but just having Grandma and Gramps here really was the BEST present we could ask for. We even made THEM breakfast this year.

We ended up having a late day White Christmas! It snowed and actually stuck for a few days. We let the girls go out and play in it. Grandma and Gramps even helped us make a snowman. We had to cut the fun short when we realized Daisy had enjoyed our fun too and took off on her own adventure. A neighbor called to tell us she was in the adjoining neighborhood. We found her and she didn't get to go out with us again for a while.

While Grandma was here, she fixed some of the girls costumes they had torn. I LOVE this picture. If you want to know what it is like when Grandma visits, here it is. Wherever Grandma is you will find my girls pretty much attached.

Not sure how this video will turn out. This is the first time I have tried to attach a video to the blog. On Christmas Eve Tom decide to learn a few Christmas songs and the girls were enjoying every minute of it.

Early December

My lack of blogging is starting to take its toll on pictures. I have hardly taken any this summer so I am making an effort here, but if blogger doesn't start working WITH me on some level that I am DONE.

December is always a busy month. Here is a little glimpse of our life in pictures.

These pictures are mostly for Grandma. She made these headbands for the girls. It warmed up too much for them to use them last year, but this year they got lots of use. I love the second picture. I told the girls to hug each other so instead of turning around Audrey just put her arms around Ella's back.

Our favorite time of year is when the neighborhood has the Little Blue Choo Choo and Santa comes! The girls saw Santa so many times this year that Tom taught them to respond when he asked what they wanted "The same thing I told you last time.)

Their was a dusting of snow so we got the girls all ready and it had stopped by the time we got them outside. I love the one of Audrey goofing off. It shows her true personality when normally she just scowls at people she doesn't know well.

Audrey reading directions to make sure we put the tree up properly.

I let the girls really help me this year get the tree set up. They loved it. I like to call it "Cluster Decorating". Every night after they went to bed I would have to go even out all the decorations again. PS. On the picture of just the tree I would like to point out the cream ball in the top left side. That is Tom's Jazz ornament. He says I always hide it high and in the back. Proof that is not true.

This is our very first gingerbread house. We had been promising the girls that we would make it for several days but didn't read the directions until we sat down to make it. You are suppose to make the house a day or two before decorating it. Since the girls were too anxious at this point, we just used the hot glue to put the house together. (Don't worry, no candy was consumed off the house once it was put together, just from the pile of treats we were using to decorate from.)

The girls had a Christmas Program at school. Yep we can call it a Christmas Program because it is a Baptist school. Audrey would only look at me and scowl at the rest of the audience. Ella did great until she got pushed a little and then meltdown and crying ensued. The last picture is of Ella with some of her friends and teacher, Ella, Cecelia, Ms Melissa, Alexandria, and Cicedio.

This year our group of friends didn't have an Ugly Sweater Party, we did a PJ party instead. This was the only picture that I felt would be appropriate to share so that tells you that it was a pretty GREAT party.