Temple Thursday

This time on our temple day we went to the Science Museum. We loved it and learned a lot so we think we are going to try to make it there one more time before our pass ends in May!

Football- Alden and Calvin are playing flag football and quite enjoy it. One of the last games Alden made a couple of touchdowns and in one of the games Alden made the touchdown and then Calvin made the 2 point conversion. It is fun to see them playing together. Almost every day Alden and Calvin will go outside and play football together.

We had some extra time at the temple so we walked around and snapped a couple of pictures.

End of September and General Conference

For our history lesson we learned about when sumo wrestling started in Japan, so we did some of our own sumo wrestling!

The Tucson botanical gardens..the zen garden

For General Conference this year the primary president asked the children to build a tent and have it face towards the conference just like they did in King Benjamin's time. The boys built a great tent and said it was hard to see on the floor so they created stadium seating inside. Later on we did conference bingo.  General Conference is always one of my favorite times!

Some of the cousins were together for Conference and made a lego version of the conference stand with all of the people on it. We don't have as many legos and only one person but Alden did a great job with what we have of making his own podium and speaker!

Sweet little Evan brightens up my day every day.  I love this rolly polly stage when he grabs his toes, rolls around, and is just super cute!

Going swimming! Benson is becoming more and more of a swimmer.. these were some of our last swim days because of it starting to cool down.

Benson has done really well this year in preschool. He is a young preschooler but has done well regardless. Here he is working on one of his worksheets and is wearing the necklace we made. (This must have been the day we learned about letter n.)

Train Museum. We've decided to try and do some sort of family activity in the Phoenix/ Mesa area every month when we go up to go to the temple.  This month we went to a train museum. The boys loved riding the train and the merry go round. They also liked looking at all of the model trains. Afterwards we went and let them get happy meals. (Something I don't think we have ever done before or if we have it's really rare.) The next day was Benson's birthday so we considered this a start to his birthday celebration!

Gila Valley Temple and Valentines

The Thursday before Valentines we drove to Central, AZ to go to the Gila Valley Temple.  Michael's grandma grew up in the area so on our drive there we read from her book of that time in her life.  It was neat to learn a little bit more about her life and to see the area where she was.

These were a couple of fun buildings that we found...

Alden and Calvin have been making some fun car tracks lately.  When they are done they will often take pictures of there work with my phone.  I have videos of the cars going down and close ups of each piece of the track.  It is fun to see them make them!

Valentines Day was a great day! These pictures were taken the day after Valentines when we celebrated Valentines with the preschool.  I decided to celebrate the day after just because that is when we were learning about the letter V so it worked out well! The boys had fun seeing and reading all of their Valentines that they got.  I was spoiled on Valentines day by all my wonderful boys but most especially by my amazing husband. I am grateful and very blessed to have all of them.

Phoenix temple open house

 A couple of weeks ago we went to the Phoenix temple open house. It was beautiful and so nice to be able to go as a family!

Museum of Miniatures

The Museum of Miniatures was free the month of September.  It was a museum that I thought would be interesting but was not on the top of my to visit places but since it was free we definitely took advantage of the opportunity to go.  I am glad we did, it was neat seeing all of the detail that was put into this miniature homes, rooms, towns, scenes, ext.  The boys favorite was the Christmas room.

This one was fun for Benson as well.  He had fun crawling all over the Christmas scene below him.  The one thing that was hard with this museum was most of the exhibits were too high for the kids to see and you really have to be at eye level to enjoy them.  Towards the end Michael and I were discussing things they could do to fix the problem when we saw a number of children come by with stools that collapse.  I guess we missed that at the beginning somewhere, the kids just need to carry a stepping stool with them.  We just had our boys take turns being lifted to where they could see.  This Christmas exhibit was nice because everything was at their level.

Calvin especially loved the little trains in the Christmas town.

Seeing all of the details in all of the homes made me want to add more detail to our own home.  The next day we put up our fall decorations and bought some fun Fall place mats.  It really made me think of how we need to enjoy all of these short moments in life.  Each exhibit captured a small moment and they were all so beautiful.  It made me want to make and cherish all of those small moments here in my home.  All in all it was a worth while activity! 

saguaro national park

 Another one of Michael's days off. We went to the park planning to go biking. It turns out they don't allow bikes on their trails. It worked out though we went on a little walk, learned more about different cacti, and then had a wonderful lunch!
After we left we went to Tucson river trail and did our bike ride. It was a great day!