Having Alden home from school!

 One day we were out shopping and Alden found a nickel. He was so excited to do something with it. We talked about its worth and how we needed more to get anything. We went home he and Calvin found some change so they could use the nickel. With it they were able to ride the helicopter at the 99 cent store.

 Playing cars down the driveway! It has been nice being able to stay in our PJs and just play around the house. We love that the sunshine is still shining strong here in Tucson!

 During the year Saturdays we have a history lesson/ activity but having no school has allowed us to do history lessons more often. Here Alden played the people of Greece and Calvin played the attacking barbarians. We had fun building swords and shields.
We have also done our mini Olympics and built some musical instruments! I love having the time to just do fun history lessons.

Christmas Activities

We usually go to the temple in the morning on the first Thursday of the month.  This month we decided to go at night so that we could walk around and see all of the Christmas lights.  It was beautiful! Also this was the first time Michael and I have been able to go in together for a long while, some of Michael's cousins live near the temple and watched the boys!  It was a nice evening.

For our ward Christmas party the theme was the Polar Express.  They did a great job with everything.  We came in our pjs which was wonderful, so nice coming home and having everyone including me all ready for bed!

At one point they had all the kids go get on the polar express train, the chairs were all lined up next to a lite up train.  On the train they sang Christmas carols for all of us to listen just as they did in the Polar Express.

Then they finished with going to see Santa and getting a special Christmas Bell.  The whole activity was great! We all really enjoyed it!

This last picture was a few nights later we decided to drive around and look at Christmas lights, we came home to eat some freshly made hot apple sauce.  We all loved it!  I think that might be a new tradition, I like it so much more then hot chocolate because not only does it taste yummy, smell yummy but you feel good after eating it rather then sluggish. It was a perfect end to a nice night!

Yuma Arizona

Our trip to Sea World started with and ended with our trip to Yuma, AZ. It was midway from our home to San Diego so that is were we stayed at night. All day Wednesday we spent at Sea World, then Thursday was a little more relaxed visiting some sights in Yuma, AZ. Honestly there is not a ton of things in Yuma, but one thing we did do was visit an old prison. It was interesting reading about the history of the area and seeing how things have changed in that small area over the last hundred years.

I love it when all my boys are in matching shirts! Hence I took the opportunity to snap some pictures, Alden and Calvin love helping Benson with anything.  Here they are helping walk!  (We are grateful to Aunt Tara who keeps us supplied in matching shirts!)

Sea World

The week before Thanksgiving, Michael had his Thanksgiving break, which means two whole day off in a row.  Whenever this happens we often try to do something, this time we made a family vacation out of it, and went to Sea World!

Benson loved all the shows and was often found dancing on our laps to the music!

The dolphin show was defiantly everyone's favorite!

The boys loved the rides!!!

Because the Christmas season had started there were Christmas trees everywhere and they even had a place to visit Santa's reindeer! They also got to have a very special visit with Santa himself.

After our visit with Santa, some of Santa's helpers played an exciting game of duck duck goose while we waited for the special tree lighting

At this point everyone was freezing because with the sun going down it had started to get cold. The only blanket like thing I had was my cape, which Benson was being snuggled under to keep warm.

The very last thing we did before we left was visit the snow area. (we figured we were already cold and this could be our only opportunity to see snow this year so we stopped in for a minute.) Alden loved the sledding, but two times down was more then enough. We explained how he could go more but he said it was too cold.  Calvin was exhausted by this point, he still ran in to play in the snow but fell down as soon as he entered and then was done.  It reminded me of living in Utah, Calvin was still a toddler at the time and would often fall in the snow, I always thought he might like to play with or in it for a minute but he would always look down at his cold hands, start crying and put his hands up so I would pick him up and get him out of this cold stuff that was all around him! :)