Extras

Ok I think these are the last of the random 'extras' I keep finding all over our computers.  I really need to get organized.  Eventually I'll get to blogging about our Christmas adventures!

Just hanging out at playgroup one day...always happy to be munching on something 

At the playground...deep in thought

We watched Jake and Mia one night while Kristie and Wes went on a date.  It was a perfect opportunity to frost some sugar cookies with the boys.  They did surprisingly well and I promise they had a good time despite the blank faces...I swear this has to be the hardest age for pictures...they never want to look AND smile at the camera!

This was while babysitting Tyler one night...I'm so glad those two get along :)

And another last minute zoo trip before we left for VA...it's too bad my kid feels the need to climb over EVERYTHING...including animal enclosures.  Yikes.

We made sure to visit the JW Marriot at Desert Ridge again for their gingerbread display.  This year it was a Grinch theme.  I was actually amazed that Sawyer let the Grinch hold him...usually he complains that he's scary.  Maybe he was in shock.  Either way, the Grinch gave him a massive lollipop afterwards and that won him over for good.  Looks like I'll be allowed to watch the movie again next Christmas ;)

The hotel had a cute little mailbox for 'Letters to Santa' in their lobby.  Sawyer thought it was pretty cool to put some mail in there all by himself!

Violet just chillin in the lobby at the hotel.

There are a surprising amount of 'winter festivities' in Phoenix around Christmas time.  One of our favorite little out door shopping centers, Desert Ridge, did a Snow Day one Saturday.  Nate took Sawyer and they met up with Kristie and her family for a little fun in the snow!  They even built a little snowman!

We also got to help celebrate Mia's 1st birthday right before we left for VA.  I made the little '1'sie and hat so that she could be extra festive.  SUCH a cute little girl!  Can't believe she's already 1!

I made over 80 cinnamon stars as a party favor for our Relief Society Progressive Dinner this year.    They were actually super easy to make and turned out pretty cute!

Headed out to church one morning...I couldn't resist!

Before Thanksgiving

Well now that we're all back from Christmas vacation and it's the new year it's time to play some blogging catch-up.  Going through my pictures I realized there were still a couple of events I forgot to blog about.  Nate had the week before Thanksgiving off from school so we did a few things around Phoenix before heading over to Las Vegas.  Erin came to visit and we went to the zoo with her and Brooke one morning. Always a good time :)

 Sawyer finally got up the courage to touch the sting-rays.  We were all pretty excited about it!

 Another morning we got culture passes to the Arizona Museum of Natural History.  Sawyer was so excited about the dinosaurs!  

A little unsure of the 'flash flood'

They had a little children's 'discovery' room with lots of educational games and things for the kids.  I think that was Sawyer's favorite part of the day.  In fact he threw a pretty awesome tantrum when it was time to leave. :/

An old 'settler's jail' at the museum

Thanksgiving Break

For Thanksgiving Break we headed up to Las Vegas to be with Nathan's parents.  Actually the whole family was there!  Brooke's family wasn't able to come because Mark had to work...we missed them!  But it was definitely a full house.  Nathan's mom has been begging him to help her build two triple bunk beds in the play room for times like this.  We went back and forth about doing it before the break but it just never happened.  In the end we decided to build them and we all pitched in and pulled together and got one of them built the day before Thanksgiving!  The other one Nathan and his dad finished up on Friday.  I have to brag about my husband.  He practically designed and made up the plans on his own (with a little help from anawhite.com and her double bunk bed plan...we adapted ours from that).   And they turned out so great!  We didn't have time to stain them yet because people were dying to sleep in them!  That'll have to happen later.  Despite the chaos, full house, screaming children, and dozens of trips to Lowe's and Target, it was a pretty successful venture, overall.  :) 

Discussing the plans.  I'm not gonna lie, I helped for the first couple hours and then left
the building to the boys and went out with the girls to buy bedding!

Justin and I were in charge of putting together the head and foot boards.  And don't
let this picture deceive you...Justin did all the work

Sawyer and Taryn testing out the beds and the new bedding...this is one of the rare moments
these two weren't at eachother's necks!

They turned out so great and the kids love them!

We had an ugly sweater party on our last night to kick off the Christmas season...Andrea came well
equipped with lots of fun 'minute to win it' games for everyone to play!  It was a blast.

We also had a white elephant gift exchange...we learned last year to make sure and get
all good gifts for the kids on this one.  You can never go wrong with candy...

My little family forgot to pack our ugly sweaters.  But we managed to find something decent
in the house...haha

The week before driving to Vegas, Erin came to visit all of us AZ folks.  We went to True Foods Kitchen
for Andrea's birthday...

Little Red Riding Hood and the Gang

We managed to figure out a costume theme for the family this year.  I don't think we need a lot of explanation, but just for fun--Nathan was the hunter, I was the grandma, Violet was Red Riding Hood, and Sawyer was the BIG BAD WOLF (imagine this said very loudly in a 2 yr old voice whilst growling).  I was getting a little worried when he was still trying to tell me the morning of that he was going to be the grandma and I could be the big bad wolf.  But in the end he was happy to be the wolf.  We went trick-or-treating like 3 times total (Midwestern school event, trunk or treat at the church, and a neighborhood up the road with Kristie and her family). Sawyer loved it every time.  We are new to the whole 'getting mounds of candy in one night for our 2 yr old' thing...so we pretty much just let him eat it all in like 2 days (minus the chocolate which we promptly set aside for ourselves once he was in bed).  Nathan decided (as the dentist in the family) that it was better to ruin his teeth for 2 days and be done than for him to have a little every day.  I was ok with that because once it was gone I didn't have to deal with the constant struggle to find it/whine for it every day.  But anyways, we had a great Halloween this year!  Even Violet seemed to enjoy all the tromping around.

Jerai's Visit

I'm posting this out of order but I need to get it done and I'm missing some pictures for my Halloween post at the moment.  The first weekend in November Jerai came down to visit us here in AZ!  We were so excited to have her all to ourselves for a few days.  The first night she spent at Kristie's getting some fun platinum blonde highlights.  They turned out great!  The next day we packed up our kids and went to the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall.   It was lots of fun and the kids did surprisingly well.  That night we hung out at my place and just relaxed and caught up.  On Saturday Nate and Wes watched the kids so we could all go to Time Out for Women!  I've been wanting to do it for a while now and it worked out great that Jerai was here the weekend it was in Phoenix because it was such a fun thing for the three of us to do together.  I felt super uplifted and motivated when I left there!  That night we grabbed the rest of our families and walked around in Scottsdale at a shopping center and got hot chocolate.  Jerai flew back home Sunday morning.  It was a perfect little weekend together and I'm sad I don't get to see Jerai more often!  We had lots of fun memories to reminisce about and it's neat to see how our families are all growing and going different places yet our experiences as mothers and wives are still so similar!  Thanks for visiting Jerai!  We love you!

This was at Time Out for Women

At Fashion Square Mall (by the way Jerai is about 20 wks (?) preggo here...
can you even tell?!...she looks so great!

Cute little girl...even with a plug in her mouth ;)

We love our Ergo Carriers!

So I was getting frozen yogurt and Jerai captured a pretty awesome
 little scene below...

Unfortunately this is not the first time this has happened...
if that kid could just sit still for more than 2 minutes and
quit trying to escape every restraint I put on him! haha...oh well

Pumpkin Carving

We had a super fun Halloween season this year.  Sawyer absolutely loved every minute of it.  The Hurst's came over for pumpkin carving and pizza one night and we all had a great time.  The little boys picked out the design they wanted and the big boys carved them while the little and big girls sat on the couch and talked :).  Perfect.

Alright I'm posting both of these because Sawyer was only in one of them but Violet wasn't looking in that one...

Those boys are so cute

Nathan's pumpkin...way to go honey

I made pumpkin pancakes on the Sunday morning before Halloween!  Yummy!

And this is unrelated but these girls were just so cute the other day!  Ahh!  I can't decide whose cheeks I want to bite into first!

The Playground

I'm in charge of organizing the playgroup for our ward so now that summer is (finally) over I started things back up again at a playground down the street. We don't usually have a super great turn out so I recruited Kristie and her kiddos to come along the other week! Our boys just have so much fun together and we are all LOVING the cooler weather. It was a great little morning :).