Mom and Dad ♥

It's been such a great week! My parents drove down from Utah to visit me here in sunny AZ this past Friday. And we've had such a great time with them here. My mom and dad are wonderful!

On Saturday morning, Ben was busy volunteering as a medic at the Phoenix Open. He was so excited to get to be involved in a PGA Tour event! While he was enjoying being around the golfers, the rest of us got to work on Valentines. :) I'm not a big fan of buying the pre-made boxes of Valentines, if I can help it, for the kids classes, and I like having the girls help out as well - so after much searching I finally found a simple thumbprint Valentine idea. Dad tried to keep Jake entertained with Toy Story while mom and I worked with the girls and whipped out about 80 Valentine cards for all the kids Valentine parties.




Ben apparently declared it golf day, cause soon after he got home from volunteering, he went out golfing with my dad and Emma. This was officially Emma's first time to experience a full round of golf and she came home so happy that she got to spend time using her clubs, driving the golf cart, and spending time with daddy and grandpa.






While they were golfing, my mom and I took Becca and Jake on the little hike by our home, and then to play at the park. We definitely tried to take advantage of the wonderful weather while my parents were here to escape the snow...










On Sunday, the kids really loved having grandma and grandpa come to church with us. And Emma bore her testimony by herself for the very first time during Sacrament meeting! I'm so proud of her! I was glad to have my mom in Primary to help me out with my busy class of 4 year olds. :) After church, we got busy getting plenty of food prepped for our little Super Bowl party - Ben's parents came over to enjoy the festivities. None of us are really big fans of football really, and for most of us, the Super Bowl is the only pro football game we watch every year - but every year, I really do enjoy it and I actually do watch the game closely, while eating lots and lots of food and goodies.

On Monday we did some shopping while the girls were at school in the morning - it's always a must for my family to make a visit to Trader Joes while they are here and I also got to help pick out an early birthday gift for Emma and some little cute pink gifts for the baby on the way. After Emma and Becca got home, we packed up a lunch and headed to the zoo...














On Tuesday morning, we did another little Valentine project - this time for the girls school teachers. I'm not usually good at preparing little gifts for the teachers, which seems sad considering I was a teacher... this time I decided to be fun. They turned out really nice I think, but next time I might get a larger amount of chocolate melted so I can cover more of the pretzels in it and also use larger sized, brighter colored sprinkles so the red color shows up a little more. I guess if you used white chocolate the red sprinkles would pop more, but I am just not a big fan of white chocolate. I saw this idea HERE, plus the link shows you lots of other things that can be decorated in a similar way - great ideas for gifts for any holiday if you just switch up the sprinkle colors.






Early that morning, my dad had gone out on an epic long walk, and went exploring in the cactus covered hills that surround our neighborhood. He offered to watch the kids while mom and I went on our own little hiking adventure. I've been wanting to venture out on the longer hiking trail, but hadn't ever had a chance with all our little ones. I do love that these trailheads are just a 5 minute walk from our front door...









A view down towards our home and the surrounding community... I've really come to love the desert!.

That afternoon, we went to the Heard Museum downtown. I wanted to take my parents here, mostly because I knew my mom would really appreciate a museum dedicated to Native American art and culture....








The rest of my parents visit was kept busy with playing plenty of games, Family Movie Night, neighborhood walks and a trip to Yogurtology for FHE. Thanks mom and dad for coming! We miss you already!

New Years in Utah!

Oh, how I love to visit my family in Utah! On the Monday after Christmas, we loaded the car early and took off to Sandy, UT.... the drive went miraculously well and we arrived in my parents driveway 10 hrs after leaving ours. We hadn't done the drive that efficiently since before we had kids! It was awesome. We only stopped TWICE - once in Kingman and once in St. George. We also attributed the quick drive to the new Hoover Dam bridge! It felt like a dream just driving over and past that darn dam. :) I know many people come far and wide to see the Hoover Dam, but I have NEVER done the tour or gone through the tourist stuff there... I just look at it as a thorn in my side as we have to slowly make our way through the winding road on our way to and from Arizona. SO happy that that route to Utah is much quicker now. :) Anyway, as always our Utah visit was full to the brim with activities and games and fun family time. I love love it!

My mom put together a gingerbread house with the girls. Mom did the frosting and the girls did the candy. Isn't it cute? :)






We went to Salt Lake to visit my Grandparents. We spent some time chatting at their home and then they took us out to lunch...




The kids played in the snow in the backyard... when we first got to my family's house, the snow was sparse, and then on Wednesday evening, the snow started coming down like crazy! The kids were so excited they immediately wanted to get out there, even though it was super windy and blizzardy. They had such a fun time out there in the freezing cold. :)




We also played lots of Kinect! We were sure to bring it along with us since we didn't get much time to play with it before leaving to Utah. And, we also got 2 new Kinect games from my family for Christmas! We had a BLAST playing the sports games. We were surprised to discover that Emma is crazy good at the boxing. hahaha! She's spins her arms like a windmill, crazy fast, and beat Ben, Sarah, and then almost beat Aaron, but we blame her loss to the fact that she was getting tired after beating the pants off of everyone else immediately beforehand. Sorry Aaron. :)



And speaking of Christmas gifts, we had a mini Christmas at my family's home when we first arrived. In addition to the Kinect games, we got some favorite movies on DVD (Eclipse, Inception, and How to Train your Dragon), an Olive Garden gift card, plus some new clothes for Ben and I, pillow pets for the girls and a new outfit and batman toy for Jake. I'm happy to see that Jake is finally getting a good collection of boy toys. Now he'll have more than just a pink kitchen and baby dolls to play with. :)

We also went ice skating at the Gallivan Center downtown. It was COLD. But it was so fun! I didn't skate because of my big prego belly, so I stayed on the sidelines taking pictures and keeping Jake warm and happy (but he was mostly mad 'cause he wanted to be skating). Emma was quite good at the skating! When we went roller skating earlier in the year, she really struggled, along with Becca... but this time around on the ice, she could actually skate without holding anyone's hand for a little while.





See, Emma's so fast, she's a blur! :)








After skating, we walked up to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. At the skating rink the cold was manageable, but when we got up to the temple, we were all freezing our tails off. Jake was MAD. But we hurried through and tried to warm up a bit in the visitors center... brrr.... but pretty!










On New Years Eve day we went to the Dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point...


































That night we let the kids stay up a little later than normal (but not till midnight... that would have driven me crazy!). Around 8:30 we sent them outside to bang on some pots and make a ruckus. They gave some weak attempts and Becca looked mostly forlorn to be shoved outside in the cold to hit a saucepan with a spoon. hmmm... i thought they'd like it!


The adults on the other hand, stayed up till midnight (yay for me!) and ate lots of food, played many games, and made much ruckus in the process. It was a great evening! Happy 2011!! On New Years Day (and our last day in Utah) we went sledding at the nearby park. It was great sledding day... plenty of snow on the ground, and a sunny sky. The kids all loved it. This was Jake's first time sledding...








On the 2nd we drove home to Arizona. We were sad to leave. It's been weird coming home from a week long trip and holiday celebrations and immediately starting back up with kids in school. But I'm happy to say that Ben is doing research for the month of January, so he is working from home for the next 4 weeks! This afternoon he took Emma to the nearby golf course to practice with her clubs at the driving range. They both came home quite happy!