More fun times...

Here's Bowen and Riley at the park. As far as journaling our whole visit with the Sainsburys and Stephensons I'm not doing well. Day 3 we took everyone 5 and up to climb the rock wall at Mountainside. Sadly, aunt Emily was the only one who could make it to the top of the rock wall! Aunt Holly and baby Brody got here this night too after delayed flights. Day 4 we went to church together and uncle Bob cooked dinner for everyone (oh yeah, that was every day). Day 5 was hair cuts and shopping in the morning. In the evening we headed over to IKEA where the kids played in the playland while we shopped and had a dinner of hot dogs and cinnamon rolls. We then headed to Mesa to see the temple lights in the pouring rain. Day 6 we went to Surprise Park and played around and Matt met us there with Scout and took her to the dog park (our kids love the dog park). We went to the Drive In Movie this night (after stopping for $5 hot and ready pizza at Little Ceasars) and saw The Tale of Despereax and Madagascar 2.

Christmas Vacation

I am what feels like forever behind on my blog and so I just haven't done any posts because I don't know where to start. We had a great Christmas with my family who came from Texas and Mississippi. Our guests included my sister Amanda, her husband Bob, and their 5 boys (Robby, Carson, Easton, Tyler, and Bowen), my brother Trevor, his wife Holly, and their 4 boys (Garrett, Porter, Mason, and Brody), and of course Mom and Dad. The festivities began on the 18th of December when the Sainsbury clan flew in from Mississippi. Day 1: Pick up Sainsbury's from airport after 5 flights (due to poor weather) and a stop at In-N-Out on the way home. Day 2: I took most of the clan to work with me at the gym child care while Amanda and Bob bought the van pictured below. These guys have been waiting to buy a 12 passenger van and found one in CA and had it sent here. So, Day 2's other event was the entire Sainsbury and Smith families piled in to this van for a tour of Christmas lights. It was great fun, although Matt was in the very back with the kids and may not have been having the time of his life.

Slowly, the next 10 days of our holiday will make the blog.

Putting up the tree

We finally got a fake tree this year. It was sad at first, but we found this 9 foot tree and ended up loving it. We're finally starting to collect a few ornaments so it was fun to decorate. I didn't get great pictures because it was late and the kids were 1/2 in PJs and 1/2 in regular clothes (and the girls were each in both) and I'm not really sure how that happened. But I wanted to post these anyway so we could remember the year we gave up on real trees.

And I still don't know how to turn my pictures...

Nate's Christmas Concert

Like last year, we didn't get there quite early enough to get a good seat, but we could still see him OK and he was quite a singer this year. Very cute!