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! :)

Michael's birthday!

Michael's Birthday seemed to come and go so fast this year. It was a great day though.  We started it with a special sausage gravy breakfast, then he went to work and we finished celebrating when he got home.  (I was thinking it was too bad he had to work so late on his birthday but then he reminded me that at least he wasn't taking finals.  When he was in school, his birthday was always just before or during finals.)  For dinner we had a classic Lasagna and an ice cream cake for his cake.

My real favorite part of Michael's birthday was the Saturday before I planned a surprise date. (We don't get a babysitter very often and really haven't left Benson much at all.) But this time we left everyone, had a special picnic and then went birthday shopping. It was nice being able to walk around, visit and shop with my wonderful husband.

Thanksgiving!

 

For Thanksgiving many of my family members came and joined us.  We loved having them all in our home and loved playing games and going places with them. In the picture above we had gone to the park and played a game of baseball.  It was a big hit and I think we all enjoyed it.

We had people travel from Las Vegas, St. George and Provo.  We were so glad that they all made the trip, so nice to have so many of the people I am Thankful for all in one spot. It was a great Thanksgiving and I indeed do have much to be thankful for.

Benson loves to play in the sand (wheat, oat, and rice) box.  It was even more fun since cousins where there to join him!

We had Thanksgiving dinner inside and the kids all ate, one thing nice about living in Tucson is on Thanksgiving day it is still usually between 70-90 degrees outside. Later on Alden put the chairs in this formation saying it was his roller coaster for people to ride on.

Just Dance on Youtube was a big hit.  We would pick a song and all dance to it.  So fun having a room full of so many dancers!!

These guys were all in their spiderman pj's the last night before Grant left.  Fun to have them matching.