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.

... almost Christmas

So there was supposed to have been a Thanksgiving post as well at least. Now that it's almost Christmas, I should probably get around to it. We keep busy with all of the monkeys...

We all had a great time with family on Thanksgiving. It was great to see everyone and spend time together. The kids especially enjoyed having so many people to play with.

Ezra had a lot of people to listen to his stories.

He even had more people to do puzzles with him.

Both of the kids loved playing with the piano.

Ezra got great-grandpa to play games with him.

Emma got a cute new hat from grandma.

We got to play at the park.

And we even played in the back yard a bit, as long as Ezra was where the dog couldn't get to him. I guess a dog as tall as you are trying to play with you would be a bit disconcerting.

Like any trip, it wasn't all fun and games the whole time, but that's part of life too.

Apparently, Ezra gets car sick. Knowing that, we should be a bit better prepared for future long car trips.

When we got home we put the tree up. The kids have liked it, though the presents are all in a pile in our room instead of under the tree so that Emma doesn't get any ideas about opening them before Christmas. Ezra is pretty excited about Christmas this year.

It is fun to see the kids' reactions to the lights and Ezra asking how many more days until Christmas fairly often.

As the holidays come upon us, it makes me realize more and more how blessed we really are, and I am thankful for that.

Happy Halloween

We had a fun Halloween with the kids. Aside from the small bout of being scared for Ezra from random Halloween displays at stores, it has all gone well. Although, I must say he's handled it better than last year.

We took the kids to a pumpkin patch to get pumpkins. Could have probably got them somewhere cheaper, but it was fun all the same.
Both of them were really proud of their pumpkins. They carried them around everywhere for a couple of days.
We carved the big pumpkin, and the kids colored their pumpkins with markers. Emma kind of got her face a bit too, but they really enjoyed it.

The kids had fun at the ward trunk-or-treat. Ezra still keeps asking when we can go to the Halloween party again. Ezra dressed as a knight, and Emma as Snow White.

She was originally going to be Cinderella, but it didn't really work out that way. They both liked their costumes quite a bit.
Ezra thought that the plastic sword was the best. He especially liked that there was a loop to hold it.

When we got home, Emma had to have an apple. Kind of ironic, don't you think?

Apparently, we didn't get any pictures of our costumes, but that's usually how it goes. The pictures are always mostly of the kids.

Travels

We were able to have a couple of good trips the last few weekends. We went out to Kelly & Cameron's to watch conference. The kids liked spending time with them, and it was good to see them.

The kids had fun with some balloons and figuring out how static works...
Emma kept trying to share her little kaleidoscope with Kelly ...


And Kelly introduced Ezra to watercolors. He thought it was great.

The next weekend we made a trip out to California to Disneyland with Susan's family. It was fun to get to see everyone there as well, even if the trip did end up to be a bit exhausting.

When we first got to our hotel room, we were getting situated and both kids disappeared. Going around the corner we found them, but not before they found the box of tissue.


The kids generally enjoyed the trip. They loved seeing the characters and parades and such.

A couple of mornings we went to have breakfast where they had some of the characters. Ezra warmed right up them, but Emma was hesitant at first.

One of the bears even "attacked" Shawn, and Ezra had to save him.

The kids didn't hold it against him though.

They really didn't care too much for most of the rides though. Guess they're still a bit small. The few rides that they did like were the bumper cars, a little kid caterpillar train ride, small world, the jungle cruise, and the storybook land ferry. Ezra got to spend some time alone with grandma and grandpa, which he thought was the best ever. It did kind of wipe him out though coming "home" that late.
Some of the biggest hits were the fountain area and the ball that "floats" on water. Those both kept the kids entertained for quite a while.


As they get to be a bit older, I think that trips like that will be more fun for them.

Last weekend we got the fall garden planted. Hopefully we'll have quite a bit of stuff out of that. We all loved just being outside, now that it finally is starting to not be so hot. Seems like summer was late in coming and also late in leaving this year.