December 2008!

December started with decorating and putting up the abnoxiously large Christmas tree. Pretty but, it's a 4-5 hour project.

Ray celebrated his 21st birthday!! HEHE

Breanna and her friends kicked off Christmas vacation with a party!! Girl Power!

Family Arrived!! Here's Bre with Grandma Lindsay

Here's our family at the Landmark restaurant. Really good food. A little fancy at night with kids...hence they put us in a private room. I'm pretty sure it was for the benefit of the other guests :) Needless to say we still left a impression.....about 5 minutes before this photo Braden very slyly and sneaky I might add stripped down to just a diaper and ran into the main dining room with a smile and a laugh!! It was definately a FUNNY/embarrasing moment, it's too bad I was in such a hurry to stop him that I forgot to grab the camera. Next time :)

After the Landmark we headed down the street to see the lights at the temple...so pretty and quite fun. Braden fell into the pond about 2 minutes before this photo and was shivering....poor baby.

Me and Ray @ the Temple :)

Brett and mom....such a sweety

Bre striking a pose

Blake @ the temple lights

Josh, Luke (such a cutey) and Molly

Ray with his parents at the temple.

Christmas Eve, Nativity Play

Christmas Eve, Blake our Donkey Molly, Grandpa, & Josh in the background.

Brady and mom on Christmas Morning

Ray and his parents and brother

Awaiting the come on down on Christmas Morning.

Christmas Dinner...Yummy!

Hiking around the San Tan Mountains

Ray, his dad and the kiddos @ San Tan Mountains

Ray's cousins from Tucson came to visit a few days after Christmas.

Happy New Year

This holiday season flew right by me and I found myself out of time to keep up with documenting our 2008 Christmas festivities to look back on. It's late and there's so much to write about and pictures to put up so, I'm gonna wait until the kids are back and school next week and I can do it right. :) I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years. We feel very blessed to have spent Christmas with Ray's family at our home. Holiday's are always the best with family. It was a great time for us. For those of you who are wondering where the heck our Christmas cards are?? well......they are right here in front of me waiting to be stuffed, stamped and mailed.....such a slacker I know. Happy New Year everyone!

It's Been Busy Around Here!!

I've been neglectful of my blog lately. This time of year is always so busy and each year I think to myself I just want to relax and enjoy it and you know what.... it rarely happens. It's not that I don't enjoy it, just not as much as I want. At the end of the season I'm left wanting a week
more :) Any good tips to having a less hectic Holiday season???
We've been lucky to go to a few parties this month, which is always a lot of fun. Our friends throw a festivus party each year and let me tell you they go all out. We had a blast and walked away with a 80 GB Zune from the gift raffle they have! Not bad at all.
I've attached a few pictures from our festivus party to give you all a good laugh at some of the hideous festivus outfits people come up with. Hope you are all enjoying the holiday season.

P.S. As a side note....it's been brought to my attention that one of the music songs I had on my playlist was in fact not a Christmas song at all, and was in fact a slasher hard rock song disguised with the title of deck the halls. Sorry if any of you lost a portion of your ability to hear for a day while reading our blog. Merry Christmas :)

A Little Overdue Clarification

Ray started to upload some Asia photo's but, never got back to it and didn't explain that those indeed are not "children's hands" although they sure look like it! They are actually chicken feet which was a item on the menu at one of the restaurants they ate at and they ordered it just for the sake of seeing it and taking a picture. He took a little bite and he said it was "crunchy". So there you have it folks the confirmation that Ray is not eating children's hands :) Hopefully he'll get around to posting some more photo's and descriptions. He has tons of photo's and a great story of being propositioned by a "Hooker" in Singapore! Don't worry he ran away. It's actually legal there! Chewing gum and spitting in public aren't but selling your body apparently is quite legal. A bit messed up in the morality department there.

Ray's Asia trip

10th Percentile YAH!!!!

A year ago... after many tests and a year in the not thriving category my little man Braden was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. Monday I took him to his GI for a quarterly check up and he is now in the 10th percentile for weight!! This is a big acomplishment for him and it makes me so happy that he is thriving. I had to share the good news.


Braden a few weeks ago helping me make dinner!!

I Have to Brag

Bare with me...I have to brag :) Today I went shopping at a local grocery store that had some good sales and I just so happened to have coupons for most of the items as well. I purchased 9 bags of Nestle 12 oz. chips of various flavors, 2, 25oz. boxes of General Mills Cereal, 6 boxes of Quaker chewy granola bars, and 10lbs of C&H sugar all for $13.36. Can you believe it! This is a first for me so I had to share my good moment :) Thanks for baring with me :)