November Fun!

Some random pictures, stories and tales of our November fun!

Grant found a little kid toilet at swimming lessons and was SO proud of himself!!!  My mom says it is time to potty train.  But I am not that brave or stupid quite yet.

Emma taking pics of herself with an orange crammed in her mouth.  She was laughing so hard, she almost gagged herself on the orange.

Greg and Grant both asleep during our stake conference.  Good listening boys.

Emma in her first set of hot rollers for family pictures.  They were a HUGE success and I am so excited I have finally found a way to curl her hair well!!  It brings me back to my days of youth when my Mom used to hot roller my hair.  And Emma's locks look just like my did back then.

We bribed the kids with a carousel ride after family pictures if they were good.  Emma did fantastic.  And poor Grant was slammed with a double ear infection that day and basically looks stoned in all of our pictures because of the medication.  He is usually so smiley, so it was sad that we did not get many good pics of the little man.

Cuddling up for a family viewing of the Polar Express.  It is a win-win movie because Emma loves the characters and Grant loves the big train.  I have a feeling it may be viewed a few more times this holiday season.

Emma and Grant with our felt Christmas tree.  Grant will not leave our real Christmas tree and ornaments alone, so I pulled an idea from pinterest and thought we could make the kids their very own.  It was Greg's idea to make it 3-D for a real tree effect.  I used flannel tree skirts from the dollar store and Greg cut out felt ornaments.  So far the kids have really enjoyed decorating it to their heart's content... but it has not deterred Grant from continually touching the REAL Christmas tree as well.  Oh well.  We tried.

And Grant's newest hobby.  Taking off his pants and running around the house screaming, "I naked, I naked".  How endearing.

Thankful for Thanksgiving!

Our Thanksgiving was a wonderful, fun-filled, enjoyable weekend!

We had family in town visiting, which is the VERY best. Jamie and Gina and kids came from Texas and my brother John drove from Provo. We were so so so happy to have them all here! I'm thankful for beautiful Arizona weather that draws people to our lovely state during the winter!!

John got in late Tuesday evening and on Wednesday we took him to the Scottsdale Train Park after he graciously took Emma to swimming lessons while I baked pies!

Wednesday evening Linda and Mike hosted the Adams Family Thanksgiving Dinner.  It was so fun to be together and the kids had a blast playing.  So sad that Anna and Blue live in Texas and we don't get to see them as often! :(  Emma has spent all week moping around the house telling me that she is lonely without her cousins to play with.

Thursday, we got up, watched the Macy's Day Parade, prepared our food for the Krebs Thanksgiving dinner and set out on our way to Sharron's home.  Lauren and Dylan offered to cook the turkey for the event and it was one of THE BEST turkeys I have ever had.  The spent days preparing, brining, basting, and it was amazing!  A special thank to them!  Yum.

JJ and Zac and kids also joined us for the festivities and it was wonderful to have them.  Especially because JJ provided these very classy turkey hats that made us all look so Thanksgiving chic.

Grant was really diggin' on George's exersaucer.  So cute.  And he kept putting his hands on his knees saying in a squeeky high voice, "hi baby george".

He does have a cute Thanksgiving shirt on, but you can't see it very well.  Boo.  One day a year he gets to wear it, and I didn't document very well.

Here is Lauren digging in to their amazing turkey leg.  You go girl!!

Greg and I wearing the super cool hats. You know you are jealous!!

Relaxing after our huge meal.

Emma taking a self portrait which also happens to be the only picture of her in the special Thanksgiving shirts.  Silly Mom.

And yep.  You guessed it.  We braved the crowds and went black Friday shopping that night.  John stayed with our sleeping kids and we actually had a lot of fun!  We bought the kids a trampoline from WalMart for $157!  So great.  And our crowds were really not horrible.  We proceeded to also shop at Target, Toys R Us and KMart.  So FUN!!  Great deals!

And then (cue scary music) the horrible stomach bug hit.  And when I say hit, I really mean HIT.  It got everyone in our whole house, except for my two kids (and Emma just got it yesterday).  Poor Blue found the toilet first and then it came to the rest of us all within 24 hours.  So we spent most of Friday and Saturday lying around watching movies, television and puking.  Awesome.  Just the way we wanted to spend our last 2 days together.  Ugh.  We did manage to get a little energy on Saturday to put up our Christmas tree and some of the decoration... but that about did us in.

John (Uncle Bubby) left on Sunday morning, but not without leaving us a special sidewalk chalk message about how much he loves us.  Aaaa.  So cute.  The kids LOVED having him here and so did Greg and I!  Since he just got home from his mission in August, it was really great having him all to ourselves!  Love that guy!

And a few parting shots of some fun cousin time at Jump Street.  What a great way to entertain kids for hours and hours and hours and hours...

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Our Oregon Cousins!

We just returned from a WONDERFUL trip to Oregon.

Allegiant Airlines had some killer deals from Mesa to Eugene and we just could NOT pass up the inexpensive opportunity to visit Jeff and his darling family.

Greg flew up with the kids and I, stayed for the weekend and then had to come back on Monday evening.  The kids and I stayed for a week!  And it was TOO short!!  Wish we could stay forever!

Here are the kids in front of the Oregon duck when we landed.  It was cold and rainy when we landed and we were all THRILLED.  Coming from a sunny state, rain and cold is actually enjoyable for a BIT.

Having some IPAD fun with the cousins...  Emma could play on photo booth FOREVER.  Especially with others to enjoy the silliness with her.

Saturday morning we went to a belated Halloween Party.  Ashlee and her awesome friend had organized this incredible Halloween party.  Unfortunately, Ashlee got kidney stones and was in the hospital.  (Nobody should ever be cursed with pregnancy AND kidney stones... how horrible!)  Anyway, they delayed the Halloween Party for another week so that Ashlee could attend the party she planned.  We are glad it got postponed because it meant that we could join in the fun!  These girls were SO organized and every game, craft, activity was really impressive!!!

Sonic and Silvermist.

Luckily the rain does stop in Oregon and we got to spend lots of time outdoors!  Here is Greg wrestling with all the kids on the tramp.

Jeff and Greg got into a bragging competition about their "primes" on the play ground.  Jeff claimed that he was the "king" of jumping off a high swing.  We decided to make him prove it.  Not quite as impressive as an adult.

Meanwhile, William and Grant found a puddle to dump themselves and their shoes... boys will be boys.

During stake conference... when we should have been in the sacrament meeting room... but we found a room where it was being broadcast and the kids went crazy.  Definitely not our most reverent church.

We took a GORGEOUS drive to the coast and enjoyed seeing the ocean!  It was Grant's first trip to the ocean, the water was too chilly to get into, but it was great to see it.

Jeff thought it would be fun for the kids to play "close" to the ocean... so we decided to stay close to the tide when it came in.  And then there was a wave that was a tad larger than we planned.  We all ended up in the water up to our knees.  Greg grabbed Emma, I grabbed Grant, Jeff tried to grab Will, but it was too late and the wave ended up grabbing Will.  Poor little kid was DRENCHED from head to toe. Luckily, Ashlee is an awesome Mom and had packed extra clothes.

Then we ventured to a light house for more photo opps...

Tyler had the camera and told Emma to pose... this is what she came up with.  Cute...

Emma grabs Tyler around the waist for a picture and Tyler says, "I don't feel very good about this pose".

On Monday we went to a park to meet Jeff for lunch and drove through the Wildlife Safari.  Greg had never been and really enjoyed seeing all the animals up close and personal.  We even got to see the elephant play a harmonica!!!  True story!!

Here we are at the train park.  Grant was pretty excited to see a train right in the middle of the park!

Ashlee looking like our heavenly angel...

I may or may not have made fun of Ashlee wearing this lovely outfit while the kids rode bikes in the front of the house...

Evening swimming at the YMCA!!  I had our bag all packed and then left it on the couch like an idiot! Luckily Emma was already in her swimsuit and Jeff was holding out towels.  Grant and I missed out on the fun though!!

Tyler jimmy rigged these goggles to fit around his head with some string... that kid is always so creative!!

Emma reading to Grant.  Melts my motherly heart!

And the cousins joined in!

Some bounce house fun.  Jeff accidentally called this play "Jump It Up" and the kids laughed for 10 minutes...

They also had a train table which Grant played with more than the bounce houses.  Guess what Grant is getting for Christmas??

All tuckered out!

Craft time with the cousins!

Another walk about the Wildlife Park on our last day.  These kangaroos were just roaming free in this area.  It was amazing!!!

It was raining when we got there, so we brought our sack lunches inside the restaurant, ordered some fries and ate our food while the rain stopped.  When we finished lunch it was a CLEAR day and we enjoyed all the animals.  Great timing!

Poor Ben had to miss out on a lot of the activities because he was at school every day.  If you are wondering why he is not in as many pictures.

We had such a great time being with our family and Emma and Grant could not get enough of their cousins.  They still talk about them every day and all the fun things we did together.  Too bad they are so far away!!

Here are some funny memories from the week:

• Grant could not get William's name right and kept calling him JoJo.  Even when I would say "William" he would repeat back "JoJo"
• I told Ben that he was such a smart reader and must be as good as a third grader.  He replied, "You mean a college grade?"  
• When we left Oregon Ben prayed that he would not cry when his cousins left. :(
• Jeff was talking to William and Will said, "Dad, it smells like you farted in your mouth"
• The kids were constantly in trouble were talking "potty talk".  When will this end??!!??
• They loved to play pretend and play fight on the trampoline.  Emma is not quite used to as much wrestling in our family and would constantly tattle that she was "kicked" during the "kicking game" or "hit" during the "hitting game".  Um yeah Emma - listen to the name of the game sweetheart.