First Christmas

When we got back from visiting my family for Thanksgiving, Chris' parents came to our house to spend an early Christmas with us! They will be traveling to China to visit Chris' brother, Colin, & his wife, Elizabeth, so we were lucky to have them come here early!

Oma went all out and made her traditional Christmas meal, Chicken kiev! YUM!

The girls opened their first Chrismas gifts...Mouse House things!! They were so happy! Thank you Oma & Opa and Colin & Elizabeth!! We also got to drive through Tilles Park...filled with Christmas lights through a huge park. I love these special holiday fun activities!

Go sparky!

Thanks Grandpa and Grandma for taking us to the ASU football game! It was so fun to tailgate (great food Grandma!), see the cheerleaders, cheer for sparky's team, and eat lots of fun treats!

While we were at Grandpa & Grandma's house the girls got to go swimming (their favorite AZ activity!) and help decorate the big Christmas tree! Thanks for making it such a special weekend for us!

Cutie cousin Nora with Ali and Elizabeth

An Arizona Thanksgiving

We spent a special day with Nana and went on the light rail into downtown Phoenix to visit Poppa at work and out to lunch at Paradise Cafe. It was a fun day with grandparents! We also got to go to the Children's Museum...it was the greatest place! Thanks for all the fun times Nana and Poppa! :)

Thanksgiving day...Here is Matt (Wendy's friend), Chris, Elizabeth, me, Nana, Poppa, Daphine, Sheila, Pete, (Front) Wendy and Ali

Beautiful gingerbread decorating!

November decorating

Since we were going to AZ for Thanksgiving and wouldn't be home the weekend after when we usually decorate for Christmas, we decided to do it very early! But the girls were so excited about it and really got into looking at all of the ornaments. They made lines by year of all of theirs, all of our family ones, and all of the ones I had from when I was little. What a fun time of year!

The lastest Ty saga

For a while I was very upset with Ty...he tore a hole in our screen door, scratched our dining room chairs, clawed a hole in one of my new shirts, and jumped on the mantel which made our clock tip over and break.

Here is our mantel MINUS our clock...

Here is Ty and you can see the tear in the screen behind his head. Okay, so I was keeping this litany of bad things he has done in my head...and then two nights ago he DISAPPEARED! He escaped out of the house at night, we kept the garage door open a crack so that he could come back, and in the morning he still wasn't home. He had never been out that long and it's freezing now. I thought he was gone forever and I felt so guilty for thinking bad things about him! He was gone all day...the girls and I went out looking for him, Chris drove around looking for him....and then our neighbor saw a sign posted that said, "FOUND: Black cat!" It was Ty and now he is home. The girls are so happy and....so am I!

We're Proud of you Dad!

My Dad ran for State Representative in Scottsdale and he and his "team" (mostly Janey, Erin, and friends) worked SO hard to get him elected in November. I know he would have done a great job supporting education and making the best choices for the state...but alas the voters were not in the mood to vote for a democrat! The silver lining was that the girls and I got to go to AZ to visit and keep them company!

Erin and I went out the night before the election and put up more signs...it made me realize how usually I am not a very informed voter and that in the future I really should do more research into the candidates. Thank you Dad for inspiring me!