Christmas Eve Nativity

Don't you love the ever present Christmas Nativity. You dressed up as a kid, and so now your children dress up as you take pictures and read Luke 2 from the Bible. Unfortunately our Christmas pageant usually has a little less of the O Holy and a little more of the O quick put a towel on your head, and I really don't care if it's a dog, it works kind of feel. In the end we sing Silent Night and everything comes together.

This year we performed our Christmas Eve Nativity with my sister Karen and her kids. It is fun to have all of the cousins together. Christmas is about celebrating the love of Christ and who better to do that with then family. What a wonderful evening.
Merry Christmas.

A Christmas Rose

A simple rose. It hardly seemed like enough. I went to the cemetery today to wish my son a Merry Christmas. I had imagined this year to be vastly different. As I sat last Christmas unable to eat more than apples and whole wheat bread, I thought of how much nicer this Christmas would be. But things don't always work out the way you plan them to. So here I am placing a single rose next to a simple monument. The words of my son's namesake printed on top. "Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. For the Lord thy God is with thee, withersoever thou goest." What a magnificent Christmas this must be for Joshua. To celebrate Christmas with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving Fun

This year was a Prior family Thanksgiving year. We have been alternating visits with my family for Thanksgiving and Christmas over the years and it has worked out rather well. This year, believe it or not, we were excited to get out of the heat and into the snow for a few days and we were not disappointed. In fact this has probably been one of the snowiest and coldest Thanksgivings we have had in awhile and my kids LOVED it.

With the wind chill it was getting down to -5 degrees. Way to cold for me.

Sara Sledding

We went sledding and played in the snow at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We ate LOTS of yummy food and pies. We saw the dinosaur exhibit at Thanksgiving Point and the art exhibit at BYU. Thanksgiving night and the day after Thanksgiving all the girls went shopping. I miss the wake up at 3am days. Staying up all night is a lot harder, but well worth it. I got some great deals on the kids Christmas presents and am happy to say that I am almost done.

I love the time we have with family. I love that my kids have the chance to get to know their Aunts and Uncles and cousins. I love that we have gift exchanges and play games and talk til 1 in the morning. I love that we can be crazy or relax. And mostly I love just being together. Happy Thanksgiving.

I have to admit, snow is really great to visit, but it was nice to come home and go running outside in a t-shirt again.

Catalina Jazz Festival

I have said this before, but Rebecca and her school jazz band always impresses me. You would really be surprised that she has only had a year and a half of piano lessons. She practices every day and has come a LOOOOOOOONG way. At the beginning of the year I was really nervous that she wouldn't want to stick with it, but here we are. She has asked for a keyboard for Christmas, (even though we already have a piano) and she is now planning to be a musician when she grows up.

Here are some pictures from her 1st ever jazz festival. They played two different song and received excellent reviews. Just a note, one third of the band members are 5th graders (like Rebecca). There are only 18 kids total, so what they can do is pretty impressive.

Ohh, and a funny side note. This was the first time Rebecca has ever played on a grand piano. I asked her what she thought and her comment to me was. "It's weird. I like Mark's keyboard better." Go figure, Right.

Holiday Craft Party

My sister Cindy decided about 3 years ago to have her first ever Holiday Craft Party. Following in the footsteps of my younger sister's brilliance I decided to have my own Holiday Craft Party and do it the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

I have always wanted to do something fun as a family during the holidays. Problem, December hits and life is crazy. Deciding to have a party before the craziness began was a great idea.

We invited about 14 families, (friends and neighbors) to come over to the house anytime between 3:30 and 5:30pm. I printed out instructions for each parent so they would know how to help their child complete each craft and off they would go.

For refreshments we made hot chocolate (to go with our 80 degree weather, Chad teased me about that one) and mint brownies. Other families brought treats as well. I had decorated 4 tables wrapping them in wrapping paper and then each family completed 4 tasks. They decorated hand print turkeys, made candy cane reindeer, constructed 12 days of Christmas wreaths, and put together ornaments.

I intended to take pictures, but ended up helping kids with crafts, so I only took a few token shots when everything was over. We had a great day, and with over 50 people in my home and backyard, I would say the party was a success. The only down side was the wind. We had to pick up red pom pom Rudolph noses and googly eyes a few times. As the afternoon wore on, we got smarter and just started putting rocks in the buckets. (Arizona has a lot of rocks in case you haven't noticed)

I have to thank my sister because the party ended up being a lot of fun for me and the kids. Looks like we will be doing this again next year.

A Weekend with the Robinsons

Last weekend I was able to talk my sister Cindy into coming out for a visit. She had talked about coming several times, but things never seemed to work out. We were super excited when she showed up on our doorstep Veteran's Day morning.

To keep things short, here are some of the fun things we were able to do while they were here.
1st: We went on a dutch oven cookout up in Madera Canyon.

The boys are all showing off their Karate moves.

Cindy and Jake with his November Prostate Cancer awareness Mustache.

Rebecca refusing to smile for her mom

2nd: We went to the Children's Museum in downtown Tucson.

Here is motorcycle Ty to the Rescue.

Sara built an entire city out of wood strips. It was very cool.

Jake and Blaine cracked me up. They were so into everything they were doing.

3rd: Cindy taught me some new Hip Hop moves. Boy am I out of it.

4th: and best of all, we hung out and played.

Cindy has a way of making everyone around her stop and smile. What a fun weekend. Thanks for making the trip. (Now if we can only find Jake a job down here. . . . I'm working on it)

Halloween Fun

I love Halloween.

For me, it represents the beginning of the holiday season.
For my children, it is a chance to dress up and eat lots and LOTS of candy.

This year we planned to stay home on Halloween night (because it fell on a Sunday) but for some reason my kids all still have buckets full of candy. Instead of just one night of trick or treating, we went trunk or treating at the church on Wednesday, the kids trick or treated at their school and attended a carnival at their school Friday night, and there was a parade and city festival where the girls had a ballroom dance performance on Saturday.

Trunk or Treating

My nephew dressing up like his uncle Dr. Chad

Joey and his friend Isaac are doing pushups while waiting for the Halloween parade to start at the kid's school. You have to burn off all that sugar one way or another.

Dancing at the City Festival.

The girl's group performed three numbers. The last one was a zombie jamboree where Sara looses her eye ball. It was really cute.

Happy Halloween!

Home Improvement

Every now and then, Chad and I start thinking about new home improvement projects. Okay lets be honest, I start planning new projects and Chad gets sucked into them. (I guess that's just what happens when you have a husband who can build really cool stuff.) I told my husband I wanted him to build another set of drawers for our 4th bedroom, and his response was that he wanted to first build shelving for our garage. I thought that was a great idea and so I agreed to help him complete the project.

Before we could get started on the shelving we had to first paint the garage. We had so much stuff in the garage that we could only paint the half that we were building on. Having procrastinated my indoor painting projects (do to our prolonged company) I had paint on hand that we could use. We spent our Friday night painting and the next morning Chad went out to purchase supplies. Unfortunately, Saturday was crazy so we couldn't get started on the shelving until this week.

Wednesday was Chad's day off and so my goal was to get as much done as we could. We would get the wood cut out and then realize Chad had bought the wrong screws. Then we would get the base finished and realize we needed a different screw. After several trips back and forth to Lowes and Ace Hardware, we called it quits for the day. Chad was on call the next day, so I purchased the last of what we needed and was hoping to finish on Friday. After only spending about two hours Friday afternoon this is the end result.

I love that I can finally find and get into all of our storage buckets. In the past I would spend hours trying to hunt things down. Now everything is labeled and easy to access. I love organizing things.

Because I can never work on just one project at a time, and because Micheals was having a sale on their picture frames (65% off with coupon) I decided to finally finish decorating the wall above my TV in the front room. Thanks mom for taking such cute pictures of my family.

Jakeisms

I found out on Friday that Jake likes to pass along words of wisdom to his fellow classmates. Apparently Ann (who sits across from Jake) comes home just about every day with something new she has learned from Jake.

Her two most recent Jakeisms were:

#1. If you look in the mirror and say blood fingers three times you will disappear.
(I guess Ann made her sister try this one out, but she didn't do it right because her sister didn't disappear.)

#2. If you don't cut your pumpkins into Jack'O'Lanterns by October 31st they will break.
(We still have one pumpkin that isn't carved. I guess we will have to see what happens tomorrow.)

Sunday School

After participating in the primary program, I found Joey wondering the halls during Sunday School. I told him that it was time to go to class.

His response to me was. . . "Mom, I just can't be reverent anymore."

Lucky for him the "Candy Bomber" was talking to the kids today and he was able to take home his own bag of candy taped to a parachute.