Thanksgiving Weekend in Sunny Arizona!

This year for Thanksgiving we drove 12 hours down to Arizona to stay with Darin’s brother Geoff, his darling wife Jadi, and their adorable kids Kaden and Kaylee! We arrived late Wednesday night, visited for a little while, then headed to bed.

Thurdsay morning their neighborhood does a yummy pancake breakfast which was so fun! Then we went to the park followed by lots of cooking and lots of eating! Jadi is such an amazing cook and hostess! Everything looked so cute—she even gave the kids little Thanksgiving gift bags with treats and toys! Lindsay got a doll and Matt got a Dinosaur—they LOVED it!

After dinner we headed to another fun park—Matthew sure loves his cute cousins!  Darin and his brothers kept trying to do tricks, stunts, and obstacle courses on these cement walls.  They were so funny!  We headed home, watched some movies and looked through the Black Friday advertisements.

I didn’t take any pictures from Friday (nuts), but we mostly spent the day shopping and going to the park.

Saturday Darin, Matthew, Lindsay, and I headed to Mesa to visit my wonderful Grandma Hodgkinson!  It was so fun to see her, and she had just redone her whole house—it was BEAUTIFUL!!  We wished we lived closer because my grandma is so much FUN!!  We went out to lunch, did some visiting, then headed back to Geoff and Jadi’s.

After the kids took some quick naps we went to another darling park, and even got a few family pictures taken.  The kids were still pretty tired so they didn’t cooperate too well.  This is the best one that we got.

And here is one of just Lindsay and me.

After pictures we went to the Mesa temple.  It was so pretty!  They do Christmas lights like they do on temple square, but you don’t have to bundle up!  We LOVED it!

The whole weekend was just PERFECT!  It was really relaxing, but it was really fun too!  Thanks again and again Geoff and Jadi!!  We love you guys so much and miss you already!  Thanks again!!

Lindsay is 10 months!

Her two bottom teeth came in!
She’s still not crawling—but she’s still having Physical Therapy every other week to work on it.
She’s still super happy!

A Sneak Peek!

Yes, we will be wearing matching pajamas on Christmas Eve again! My mom helped me make this “nightgown” for Lindsay today—I think she looks so cute!

Oh Yes We Did!

Matthew wrote a letter to Santa this week. He asked for a blue car and a book. He was so excited to color a picture for Santa, and put the letter in the mailbox.

After we put the letter in the mailbox I said, “I love Santa!” Matthew got REALLY upset and even started to cry a little and said, “You don’t love Santa! You love my dad!!” How cute is that!? And yes, I DO love his dad—LOTS more than Santa!

Now, I’d like to get a little feedback on the whole “writing to Santa thing. Trying to decide if we should make it a tradition, or is it a little selfish to write to ask for what you want? Matthew had so much fun doing it, but I have mixed feelings. Thoughts?

Harry Potter Party

We had a little Harry Potter Party this weekend. (Does it still count as a party if it is just our family?--the kiddos were sick so we didn't end up inviting anyone over) We ate some yummy food and then watched the LAST Harry Potter (finally)—and I loved it! I only took pictures of the food.

Pinkalicious

I threw a baby shower for my friend this weekend. She wanted to keep it small, so we were able to do a sit down lunch. It was simple but really fun! We had chicken noodle soup, potato cheese soup, salad, and rolls.

One funny thing about this shower…I wanted to do a “pink” theme, but I also wanted to base the shower off of a book—so I thought of doing “Pinkalicious.”   I made my plans, and then went online to see if anyone had ever thought of doing a Pinkalicious party.  I found some REALLY cute ideas via pinterest, and clicked on the pictures which took me to my sister-in-law’s blog!  Ha ha!  No surprise, she always has the most original, darling ideas!  Great job Jadi!

Once there was a Snowman!

I love this snowman that Darin and Matt made. I especially love the tomato eyes, zucchini nose and mouth, and the leaves for a head dress and skirt.

Quick Trip to the Cabin

I LOVE the cabin in the fall!!

Darin and I went up to the cabin this last weekend. It was a short trip, but it was really fun. Nothing like sitting by a warm fire and watching scary movies up at the cabin!

The only bad thing about this trip was right as we left I said, “I hope we remembered everything we need.” Followed by, “I guess all we really need are the diapers, wipes and our clothes, and I know that we have that.”

We got up to the cabin and less than 5 minutes later, Matt had a dirty diaper. So, I went to get the diapers, and guess what…no bag! I remembered everything but the bag I had packed with the diapers, our clothes, underwear, makeup, etc. So, Darin had to make a quick trip to town to buy some diapers. After that, it was a very enjoyable weekend!

Oh, and my two sweatshirts were in that bag, and it was SUPER cold---luckily there was a coat up at the cabin for me to use!

Mr. Toad's Great Adventure

*Disclaimer: I let my dad chose the title of this blog post—this post has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Toad.

We has an awesome Halloween Party with my family last week at my parent’s house. My sister planned lots of fun games for the kids, and we all had a GREAT time! The kids made q-tip skeletons, a relay with ghost shaped marshmallows on a spoon, picking up “witch hats” (chocolate chips) with a straw, and more. We had soup in bread bowls that looked like pumpkins and decorated Halloween sugar cookies. It was such a fun night!!

We went as Captain Hook, Peter Pan, Wendy, and Tinkerbell.



Sucking up Chocolate Chips or "Witch Hats" through a straw.

The two Tinkerbells.

Q-tip Skeletons

I did this every year that I taught school. I gave each of the kids a paper with an outline of a grave yard.  Then I let the kids color in everything but the sky with crayon.  Next, we paint over the top with water color.  What the kids don’t know is that I had colored a ghost with white crayon somewhere on the paper, so when the paint goes on a ghost appears!