Winterhaven and Andrew comes to visit!

One thing we love about being in Arizona is going to Winterhaven to see the lights.  They always do a great job.  It was fun this year because my brother Andrew was in town to go with us.  The boys have loved having their Uncle Andrew around to play with, read them stories, and watch them do all of their crazy tricks!

When we returned from winterhaven the boys got to open their first Christmas present. Aunt Tara had sent them matching Christmas PJs and then they got to spend the night sleeping under the Christmas Tree.  It was a fun end to a nice day.

Random pictures and it's cooling down!

This is before and after of Alden loosing his first tooth.  He couldn't have been more excited to have that first tooth fall out. It fell out while he was eating an apple at preschool.  He told me, "Mom this apple is too hard"  I looked over at him and said, "Alden where is your tooth". I then looked at the apple and found it stuck into the apple.

These are a couple of random pictures of Calvin and Benson. Calvin will often ask me to take his picture ad will then stand with a straight face, right after the picture is taken, he will get all excited and come running over to look at it.  Below is the day we learned about Charlemagne.  Alden loves it when we do some sort of craft with the history lesson and will often want to save whatever he makes for weeks.

It's finally starting to cool down.  We even have turned on our heater at night! In the morning the boys enjoy snuggling with a blanket.

Michael's birthday!

From what I could tell Michael had a great birthday.  He did have to work but we tried to make the most of the moments we had with him here at home.  I think the thing Michael is probably most excited about is that he has almost worked his last Thursday.  For the last few months Michael has been working 6 days a week but the end of December marked the end of 6 day work weeks!!

We were grateful that Michael got off early enough one night for us to go out, get and decorate our Christmas Tree together! I love putting up and having all of the Christmas things up in our home. It was fun to be able to do it all together this year!

I think this picture was actually taken on Michael's birthday.  In preschool we learned about the letter B and painted little banks.  (We also just learned about pennies.  Counting them and using them to buy things.) All of the preschool kids got butterfly banks to reinforce the letter B but after preschool Benson got to paint his Gorilla Bank.  Benson loves gorillas, it was fun to see how much he enjoyed painting his little gorilla.

Thanksgiving with the cousins!

One thing I have loved about living in Arizona is that my brother and his kids will always come and visit us at Thanksgiving! We love having all of the cousins over, it is one thing that I will miss when we leave...we will just have to start working on convincing them to travel farther.  The day after Thanksgiving we did a little piano recital and they all played a piece they had been learning.  We then did a music sing along where they all had little instruments while we sang Christmas songs.

On Saturday their grandpa took us all to the Peanut movie at the movie theater.  It was a great movie with great company!

Last Sea world San Diego trip

Last year in November we went to Sea World the week before Thanksgiving.  We bought a one day pass that in turn counted for a year pass for 2015.  We have taken a few trips this year. We took our last trip again the week before Thanksgiving.  The boys have grown and were able to ride one of the big roller coasters which was one of the big highlights for them.

Most of our trips have been short one day visits so other then going to Sea World we haven't been able to do much.  This time Michael took a day off work so we could spend a couple of days.  We loved being able to spend some extra time with him and enjoyed seeing more of San Diego.  We went to the Mormon Battalion which was a great little place to visit.  It is really well done.  We then went to a couple of little museums by the Battalion.  A police museum and a train museum.  The boys had fun visiting and being put into jail.

We spent a good while at the beach.  So nice to just relax and have fun with my favorite boys!

We were lucky, we wanted to go see the San Diego temple but it turned out the night we went was the day they were testing the Christmas lights! We were grateful to see all of the beautiful lights surrounding such a beautiful building!

Grandma Great Fuller

Earlier in the month of November Michael's Grandmother passed away.  She was and I am sure still is a remarkable lady.  I am grateful I had the opportunity to get to know her a little bit before she left this earthly existence.
A couple things I want to remember about her is how loving and optimistic she is. I remember feeling so loved by her from the first moment I met her. The day I married Michael she told me how she felt as though I had always been apart of the family and how she just felt as though I was already one of her granddaughters. She was also always so complimentary and encouraging with anything and everything.
Another thing I always loved about being around Grandma Fuller was how excited she was about life. The first time I spent much time with her was just after Michael and I were married we went to South Carolina for Christmas and to have another wedding reception there.  Grandma Fuller talked about how exciting it was that we were having so many parties and activities, the reception, Cathrine and her birthday, shopping, Christmas ext. Even the ordinary activities were exciting on her list. I remember thinking at her age it seems as though any of the activities we were doing would be kindof old to..because of how many times she had done all of them in her lifetime, but Grandma Fuller found joy and excitement in all of them.

The funeral was lovely.  I always enjoy going to funerals because of the spirit there, you can often feel the spirit of those that have left and not only that but they are very inspirational as you learn about all the good the person has done.  I was grateful that Michael and I were able to play our violins together.  I love being able to play with Michael and also I know how much Grandma Fuller loved music and more especially loved to hear her decedents playing music.