When it Freezes in Arizona

When is freezes for a few days in Arizona your children may ask if they get to stay home because of a fog day.

When it freezes in Arizona your children may spend over an hour at the park next door being amazed by the ice, playing with ice, taking pictures of ice, taking pictures through ice, and bringing ice home for you to admire.

 

 

  And when it freezes in Arizona your neighbors may make sure their trees are tucked in warm for the night.

Yep we are officially Zonies.  There is no going back.

Christmas!

New Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve

Mom and Dad got some too

Waiting to come down to the tree.

Christmas morning, before opening presents

The aftermath of Christmas morning.  I'm pretty sure Christmas threw up at our house.

Bonnie trying on her new rollerblades

Gwen with her make-your-own chalk kit

Jared and Nate boxing

Dad and Nate boxing

Overall our family had a very fun and relaxing Christmas

Nathan

Nate at 2 months old

My oldest son turned 12 this year.  I have been in a little bit of a shock.  My first-born is not supposed to get this old this quick.  He is wearing the same size shoes as I am, and I do not have small feet.  I think he grows another inch each time I look at him.  He is such a good boy and such a good big brother. I am thoroughly enjoying watching him grow up and seeing the young man that he is becoming.

On his birthday we had a small family party.

Nate got a new bike for his birthday.  He was pretty excited.

The next day we let him invite some boys from church over.  We had nine 12-year-old boys over to play night games in the park next door, eat pizza, and watch The Sorcerer's Apprentice on the projector.  He has such a good group of friends.  I am so grateful that we live in this amazing ward.  

 He received the priesthood and was ordained to be a Deacon on the 19th of December.  I am so proud of him for making this choice and for being such a wonderful example to his younger siblings.

School Activities etc.

 The day before Thanksgiving the kids school had a Turkey Trot.  Their new school does it a little different than their old school.  They have a time limit and they see who can run the most laps around the field before the time limit is up.  Every lap around their teacher puts a new mark on their hand then they count up the marks at the end.  The first place runner in each grade gets a pie.  Well, apparently my boys are runners.  They both won for their grades.  Apparently after Jared finished his race the cross country coach hunted him down to see what grade he was in because they can start cross country in third grade.  She told Jared that she needed him next year.  Nathan ran two or three laps more than the closest boy in his class, that boy happens to be on the cross country team.  It looks like next year we will have another activity on our list of things to do.

My runners

Jared and Gwen participated in a Readers' Theater for their classes.  Jared was Agent 006 and Gwen was Linda the Good Fairy.  They did a great job.

I graduated from dental assisting school at the end of December.  The did a whole graduation ceremony and I was the speaker for our class.  It seemed a bit much to me for a three-month course, but it was a good experience.  I really loved school and I made a lot of friends.

We had an orchestra concert, a band concert, and a piano recital all in December.

Jared is playing violin and he got to play a solo during the concert

Bonnie is playing the flute and the cello in school this year.

Nate is playing the trombone in the 6th grade band.  His teacher had a challenge for all the students that if they passed off several pieces of music they would be able to play a piece during the concert with the 7th and 8th grade band.  There were about 7 students that did the challenge and Nate was one of them.  

The kids have all been taking piano lessons this year and they are doing so good.  We love their teacher and she comes to our house every Tuesday to give them all lessons.  It is so nice to not have to go back and forth with four kids for lessons.

The kids with their piano teacher, Amanda Leach

Overall we had a busy, and tiring, December with school activities.

Jared and Gwen during the band concert.

Housework and Thanksgiving

In the middle of November we started a project on our house.  We decided to tear out the carpet and put in tile  We also decided to paint.

 For several days we had our table out on the back patio.  The oven was unplugged so we were cooking on a camp stove.  The kids thought it was awesome.  Jared especially loved to help with the cooking.

Now probably just before Thanksgiving was not the best time to start this project, but life goes on.  Ben's brother Jake and his family came up for Thanksgiving dinner

This is what our family room looked like on Thanksgiving morning.  It did not look like this by the time company came.

As you can see by the awesome knee pads and the stylin' outfit we were still working on the house Thanksgiving morning.

The turkey ended up taking a couple of hours longer than originally planned, but it was really good and our guests were very patient.

Some of the adults in the kitchen

The kids table

My sister-in-law Tiff and I

When the house is completely finished, it just needs a few finishing touches, we will post before and after pictures, but I love it so far!

Halloween with Friends

Ben and I, Tamina and Dastan from The Prince of Persia

Every year our friends, Brian and Cadi, host a Halloween party for couples.  There is a contest for the best couples' Halloween costume.  We had so many good costumes this year and we had so much fun.  I am so glad that we have so many good friends here in Arizona.

Our hosts, Brian and Cadi Davis

I was very proud of this awesome Halloween cake that I made

A bunch of us girls together.  Unfortunately I forgot to pull out the camera until some of the couples had left so we didn't get everyone in the picture.

 For our contest, in third place were Zac and Becky.  I forgot to get a picture of them, but they dressed up as a pinata and a little boy at a birthday party.  It was such a cool idea.  Becky is in the back of the group picture.

In second place were our geriatric couples, The Ashtons and the Pages.  The were so funny and egged each other on all night.  They  kept all of us laughing.

And in first place were the Piepers, Taylor Swift and Kanye West. 

Playing Catch Up

As you may have noticed, I have been a slacker and have not posted anything new for a while.  Over the next week I hope to get caught up to where we are and what we are doing right now.  I will try to post one to two posts a day until we are completely caught up.  If you want to read them all that is wonderful!  If you don't, well I completely understand.

For starters we are going to go back to a family trip to Lake Pleasant over Columbus Day weekend.   On the Saturday before Columbus Day we went with our friends, The Ashtons, our to Lake Pleasant.  We have lived in Arizona for 5 years and have never been out there with our family. 

We roasted hot dogs over a fire and talked and laughed.

Bella, Cindy, and Mom

Mark, Cindy, Bella, Dad, and Gwen

We fished in the lake.  Surprisingly we didn't catch anything, of course due to the kids wandering around in the water at the time others were fishing I guess its not too surprising.

Dad protecting his ears while Gwen casts her fishing pole

Dad and Mark fishing

The kids collected lots of shells.

Clearly I was not thinking quite correctly when I forgot to bring towels and swim suits to an activity at the lake, but that didn't seem to stop the kids .  I thought the water looked pretty gross, but that didn't seem to bother them at all.

We will have to take more trips to the lake.  It's about the only natural water we get to see in our little part of the world except for monsoon rain.