One month later...

The last month has been pretty full, but it's been good.

Before Christmas the kids had fun making cookies with mommy.

They were both good helpers.

The kids made out pretty good with all of the presents. Ezra really got excited with opening everything. His were all opened before anyone else was done. Emma, on the other hand got too distracted playing with the toys to open things too quickly. It was nice to have a year of Christmas at home where we didn't have to drive for a few days.


We enjoyed having Susan's parents over. The kids thought that playing games with grandpa was the best thing ever.


We had a nice meal of smoked turkey. We cheated and only smoked parts instead of a whole bird... it's just easier that way.


The day after Christmas made for a good day to go to the zoo. The kids really enjoyed themselves, as did the rest of us.


Grandpa even took Ezra on a camel ride, which apparently he really didn't care for, but that's okay, it was memorable at least.


And out of all the animals, of course the favorite was the tortoises.


For the night before New Year's Eve, we went and visited with Kelly & Cameron. The kids had fun playing on the stairs, like always.


At one point they got a little tired and decided to lay down for a bit.

On New Year's Eve we just stayed home and played games around the house. We figured that we might as well start/end the year right with our nice surf & turf dinner.


The weather has finally stopped being rainy and colder, and our normal Arizona winter weather has come back. The kids have enjoyed being able to play more outside in the backyard.
Ezra is even starting to sort of figure out of how to throw a frisbee.

For Shawn's birthday we had some ribs, having a smoker is a wonderful thing. Eventually we'll get a nice one, but for now the cheap one does a decent job.

Susan even made a vanilla bean cheesecake with some of the vanilla beans that she got for Christmas. It was really good.

Our winter garden has been doing very well. It is kind of interesting having two main growing seasons. We'll see how the freezes go to see how much we'll replant here in the spring.

The kids like to help dig in the dirt, and seem to like to help do things in the garden. Hopefully, that is something that lasts.


We've picked all of the lemons from our tree. There were about 14 total this year. I suppose that at some point we will have a ton of lemons and will be giving many away, but for now we enjoy the few that we get.

Emma actually ate a whole little carrot out of the garden. We were both proud. We've got peas that we'll start harvesting soon, along with more carrots, lettuce, spinach, cilantro, and eventually some broccoli and cauliflower assuming it puts on.


Finally got the gravel in the backyard, which makes it seem quite a bit more finished, and makes the yard a little more fun to play in without there being mud everywhere when it rains. 12 tons is a lot of gravel. Luckily, Shawn got talked into renting a little skid loader to move it from the street so it only took about 5 hours or so to move it all. Our great home teacher and his son came over and helped spread it and that helped out a lot.

As spring comes, there will be quite a bit more planting, both of flowers and vegetables. Likely, the army of quail will move back into the yard when the tomatoes come on, but there should be plenty to share if we get as many tomatoes as we did last year.