Christmas Time

I'm so far behind on this blog. For whatever reason, I just seem to be getting more busy. Not sure how that is happening.  Anyway, let me rewind to before Christmas.

We hadn't had a lot of time to watch all the holiday movies we like, so we took a whole day to do nothing but watch movies. We set up air mattresses and a game table and we spent the whole day watching movies and playing games. I have a feeling we will be doing this every year.

Grammie's shoulder was hurting, so Emily blew dry her hair. 

We went to  my Dad and Suzy's for our family Christmas party. My Dad with make up on  makes me laugh.

Suzy did a ton of work and made the day so nice for all of us.

Granny arrived and got a group hug.

Look at all this delicious food!

Me and my beautiful Mom.

These are all my Mom's. Love these wonderful women.

This is Tiffany and her boyfriend, Triv. He's such a great guy. We all really like him.

The kids were excited to open gifts.

We played some games and had a great visit with family

Noah's Winter Christmas Concert

Noah had his winter music concert last night. It was kind of weird just going for one kid. There was a time all three had a concert, then two, and now, just Noah.

He didn't want to dress up in a shirt and tie which kind of surprised me. Noah's always my kid that is concerned with his appearance. He looked cute though.

 

Speaking of appearance... we are walking to the bus stop the other morning and I say what's in your hair?  It looked like a jelly fish. It's huge glop of gel. I told him it's best to rub it in your hands and then rub it on your hair. We were laughing and I was massaging gel into his hair while we were walking in 20 degree weather. This kid. He makes me laugh.

 

Back to the concert... not a good picture, but he finally got in a great place where we could see him perfectly!  He was right on the end with no huge kid in front of him. It was perfect.

 

And I got this pic of him and his best friend, Collin, in the back. They are in different classes this year, but still play together at recess.

 

And if you want 6 minutes of cuteness, here's the video. I thought it appropriate they sung Mele Kalikimaka since we are going to Hawaii in a few months. 

It was a fun night and then we went to see the Christmas lights!

Ben's Play

Ben was in his very first school play! It was the entire American Revolution in 40 minutes or less. It was so good. These kids all did great. There were a ton of lines and not easy dialogue.

 

He's in the middle with the giraffe inflatable. Those were horses. It's a low budget play.  HA! 

 

He's the third one in with his broom stick as a rifle. 

 

And here's the cast, well, half of them. 

 

He had a lot of lines and did a great job. I only filmed little bits of it, but I'll get the whole thing on DVD soon and maybe I can get that on you tube and share it.

Emily's Piano and Violin Recital

We had Emily's piano and violin recital last weekend. I wish I could say that Emily was super excited, but piano and violin have taken a back seat to color guard, high school and everything else that a 14 year old girl wants to do. We've been battling with her for over a year to even practice once a week. I'm so torn as part of me says we are wasting our money. The other part says if she quits now, she will forget everything in a few years. Even if it costs $1,000 a year in lessons, it's worth it just to keep her playing.

She wants to quit. I quit violin when got into junior high and cheerleading became a priority. You know what?  After I graduated high school, I've never picked up my pom poms again, but I could certainly pick up a violin and play today if I had kept with it.

Anyway, here she is super excited.

 

These two best friends have been doing this for years together. How can this be the last one? 

 

Sorry, the lighting in the senior home is awful. The played as a quartet and were so good. Her teacher LOVES teaching violin. 

 

Here's videos of her performance:

 

She finished and I was sad. But, then she said maybe she'd keep doing lessons, but only piano. What? I had no idea she'd even go for that. But, okay! I'm giving her a few weeks to make up her mind and then we will let her teacher know. If all she does is piano, I'm okay with that!

A Grown Up Bathroom (Again)

  We've been in our house for over 10 years.  The inside walls are starting to get just dull and scuffed up. The whole house needs a fresh coat of paint and I'm honestly a little bored with the colors. We still need tan on all the main walls, but a want a lighter, brighter tan. 

I somehow convinced my husband that we can paint the entire inside by ourselves. Mind you, we haven't finished our bathroom...from 10 years ago. We bought a paint sprayer and we will tackle it after the holidays.  Then, I've convinced him we can do new flooring where we have carpet. He agreed to that too. He must really love me.

Up first was Emily's bathroom. The green looks more yellow here, but it's a green bathroom. Really green, like Kermit the Frog. It was cute when we moved in and we had a little kid bathroom. It was originally decorated in frogs.

 

 Then, 4 years ago, we did a new theme of owls for Emily, but didn't paint. This is a better picture of the green.

It was cute, for a 10 year old girl. But, now at 14, she wanted a grown up bathroom. I didn't think there was any way to pull it off with Kermit splattered on the walls.  So, we painted it yesterday.

Emily did help some. When we paint the entire house, these kids will help a lot, but this space is so small, you can hardly fit two people in there. David needed the ladder for a lot of it. 12 foot ceilings are great until you need to paint.  I wanted to put up hooks instead of the towel rack. Our shower curtain needed to be moved back. It was a lot of removing nails, patching holes, redrilling, painting. More work then the rest of the house should be since there is so many cut outs in this little bathroom.

 

And here's the final product!  She's wanted a gray chevron bath curtain for years. It's finally all done. She picked out the paint too.  I still need to get some sort of metal art thing for the other wall, but it's done and we all love it.  Even the boys like it. It's not girly, not babyish. It's just right. And as David said, we will never paint that bathroom again.

 

 

We'll be hiring painters next time!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we all went to Suzy's daughters house. She lives in Mesa, which is about a two hour drive from here.

It was pretty nice not to cook the big feast for everyone.  Mike smoked a turkey and Nikki prepared all the fixin's. It was delish!

We hung out in the backyard. Of course in Phoenix, it was warm enough for shorts!

Here's sweet Aunt Nikki with my three kids.

My Dad and Nikki's son, Brett.

My lovely niece and her boyfriend.

On the left is Amanda, Nikki's daughter. Then, Mike's Mom and sister came too. They were so sweet. It was great to meet them.

My Mom took this photo of the five of us.

I took two pictures the whole time. Bad of me, but I didn't have my phone out.  

Unlike these three on the sofa.  My dad and Emily were texting each other.  HA!  :)

And here's the whole crazy bunch.  My lovely mom is there on the left, and all the rest of us. Talk about one big blended family. The crazy part is we all get along and love each other. We genuinely do!  And that is a lot to be thankful for.

Sedona

I can't believe I haven't blogged in a month. I've just been busy and uninspired to write I guess.  We took a day trip to Sedona for our 15th anniversary.

The kids loved the sand. It's silky smooth and red. They would've been fine to just stay there and play in the sand all day.

Someone drew a cool sun in the sand. Sedona is very hippy, earthy, free spirit, that kind of place.

We started off on the hike. I had read about the hike so I knew it wasn't too hard for the kids. And I found a side hike that made it a little more challenging.

The scenery was awesome.

This part was straight up to that arch. The rest of us stayed back. This was the side hike and there wasn't really a trail, just rock and cactus.  David went all the way to the arch.

We tried to get a picture of us, but it was way to shaded.

At the end of the trail, you hike up again and it's got a great view.

Here's our other attempt.

It really was just gorgeous around every turn.

Then, we had a yummy lunch at Wildflower. It was a 3 day weekend, so Sedona was packed. I mean BUSY. It's awful when it gets that bad. Next time, I'll bring a picnic and we will forgo the main area.

All in all, it was a nice trip.

And look at these two. I never thought I'd see the day.