faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamily aka I finally get to breathe/nap sometimes and people will help hold babies.

The first couple of days in Arizona were spent at my parent's house just to recuperate and breathe and catch up on sleep. We did so much enjoy playing outside with Max though, he loved it too. The first picture is Max living his life as close to the edge as possible on those sidewalks that kindly curve down towards the street...

Finding a box of cars at Granny's house was an ultimate prize.

Cousins came over to play (bless my SIL Blair for always brining over heir kids to visit us all the time when we visit). And everyone began meeting the twins and holding and loving on them. It meant so much that everyone made us feel so special and loved.

These 3 girls can't get enough of baby holding. They're always coming up to me asking if they can hold a baby, ha, I love it. If I could I'd take them back with me and pay them $1 an hour to come play at my house entertaining/babysitting Maxson and holding babies!

A wild game of duck duck goose. I think that was Max's first time playing. He'd get up and run around the circle anytime someone else did, it was quite entertaining.

The end of our first full day in Arizona.

some last tidbits about utah/end of the semester before we get into all the "holidays/family" posts that will inevitably come...

done with school.

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
utah teased us with alight dusting of snow last week (which was beautiful and completely welcomed)
i wore sweat pants everyday and may or may not have worn the exact same outfit two days in a row...
and then of course, the glorious tesing center/jsb lines

cody and camille came all the way down to provo from indiana just to see us!

well...kinda. there may have been some other people involved in the whole familytoseeinthewest ordeal...

our excitement to see jaden was like a kid on christmas morning.

WE COULD NOT WAIT TO SEE THAT KID.

he's gotten so big since 4 months ago when we last saw him!

he was obsessed with casey and wanted nothing to do with me.

i'm used to it, kids are obsessed with casey...as am i.

we went over to the grandparents for dinner, chatting, and GAMES.

games up the wazoo.

even the grandparents stayed up til 1 am with us playing games, ha!

oh, and when we left their house that night, 19 degrees!!!

blah! we couldn't have been more excited to be in AZ the following day!

mom sent up about a bajillion lemons with my brother to me.

i kid you not, a full bajillion.

i finally made time to do something with all them lemons.

lemonade.

my wonderful friend had a juicer so i juiced away!

the perfect lemonade is equal parts sugar and lemon juice, and twice as much water.

try it,

it rocks.

more cute pictures of abby girl while she was playing with us at our house.

she pretended to not be interested in reading books but as soon as you'd flip the page, she'd stop in her tracks and strain her neck to see what was next! 

so funny...

and lastly, we drove down to arizona!

yipee!

the drive was extra pretty this time around,

sunny skies with snow all around.

pretttttttyyyyyyyyyy.

we listened to the BYU v Baylor game (so close!!!!!!) and the 2nd book in the hunger games series.

and made it in 9 hours with exactly one stop.

woah, i know.

oh, christmas tree

yay for christmas trees!

i love turning the lights on that baby and watching it glow.

we try to leave them on as much as possible (especially at night),

so you can see it shining in our window from the street.

itt is a glorious sight if i do say so myself :)

this plastic baby was a wedding present actually, fun gift, huh?

i'll admit, fake does have some benefits...

 but i grew up with a real tree and we hope to buy real trees after BYU.

for now, this is our tree and we love it.

when it comes to decorations we abide by these rules:

more is more.

old, new, glittery, dull, we like them all!

pretty much our theme is whatever is on hand is gonna go on that there darn tree.

and you know what else i love about putting up decorations?
there's tons of new ones i forgot i bought at the end of last season!
so it's like a pre-christmas present to myself each year!!!

i now present, our tree.

song: pennies from heaven from the movie Elf

here's our tree from 2010, and 2009.
after looking at last year's tree, it looks almost like a duplicate, event though we did add a bunch.
we'll need to spice it up next year!

christmas lovin' and yard workin'

did i tell you our chirstmas decorations are up?

instead of writing a 3 page, single spaced paper, we hung up our christmas decorations the night we got back from thanksgiving,

(all of aunt malinda's decorations in montana got me oober excited)

more to come on our decorating the tree :)

we've also been cutting out lots of snowfalkes for fun.

like, legit ones.

some patterns are from the internet, some were created with our very own T.L.C.

we've also consumed approximately 2028910832037 gallons of hot chocolate this season and not sick of it one bit.

the landscape management club had a little service project last weekend:

raking up leaves and pruning bushes/trees for the (old people) community in provo.

it was freezing, but we sure had fun together.

the best part was getting to knock on their doors and tell them we were going to clean up their yard for them, FOR FREE!

it was the best activity we've had all  year long, we were all together, happy, and serving others in need.

 

in other news,
it's the last week of school,
2 fist pumps for us!
and then we have one week of finals and we will be arizona bound!

the final touch

Our Christmas decorations are now complete!

Facts about our tree this year:

-it will only be up 1 week for us to see/enjoy...sad.

-it is fake...sad, i know, but it was a wedding gift last year and still works wonderfully

-our "star" on top is a compilation of star ornaments we had

-ornaments are from my childhood and we hope that next year we can get casey's too!

i really do wish christmas season lasted longer, 2 months would suit me perfectly :)

we'll call it our lover fern!

recognize this?

yep:)

it was once our christmas tree!

so apparently it was one of those "living" trees- it's in a pot as you can tell

we couldn't bear to throw it away and kill it after christmas!

so our plan was to bury it somewhere,

well it's winter,

the ground is hard,

we don't have a shovel,

nor know of a spot.

so til then it'll be our little "lover fern/tree" til the spring!

hahaha, i smile every time i look at it

happy getting ready for valentine's day! and casey's birthday!

in a matter of 1 minute

oh so silly :)

thanks for the pics weston

a white christmas

ok well maybe it's just december here's a bunch of pictures of our christmas celebrations so far! we picked out our little christmas tree and we love it! these are all the little sections of our christmas decorations! pretty much i only have decorations because of my mom!!! thanks mom! and last of all, it snowed today! so pretty and we loved it!

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