Awards and 36 years old!

Garrett earned his Webelos award.  He is working on his Arrow of Light. 

Sterling's awards.

Snow!

Denver and I got away for a weekend while Maddy and Tyleah babysat.  We stayed in town at the Ritz Carlton.  We received a free 2 nights stay for the use of our Jeep in a photo shoot for the Hotel.  We went hiking around the Tortolitas, went out to dinner twice and watched Star Wars in the theater.  It was  a fun weekend.  We celebrated Denver turning 36 the Sunday after since we were away for his birthday.  His cake, made from scratch ;).  Very colorful. 

Tombstone photo

Catching up-Thanksgiving and Christmas

So I have a lot of catching up to do.  

For Thanksgiving (on Saturday) we got together with 6 of my siblings  (There was 7 families in all-that's half the family!)  at Bill and Becky's in Thatcher.  Stacey and Eric surprised us all by driving from Ohio to spend Thanksgiving in AZ.   Families that were there:
Dave and Rainey (From NM)
Bill and Becky (Thatcher)
Jim and Charity (From Mexico)
Becky and Glen (Avondale)
Kristen and Gary (Mesa)
Stacey and Eric (OH)
Debbie and Denver (Tucson)

It was a big group with some 50 + people. 

Thursday we had our own Thanksgiving dinner.

 Saturday with family:

 The Clarks

 The Phelps

 The Windsors

 The Windsors

 Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the other Windsors (dave and his family) or the Tiptons.  They left too early

 Christmas:
Seeing Santa

 Making Gingerbread houses:

 He just wanted to eat the candy...

 Christmas Eve Dinner:  This year many of us got sick with the stomach flu.  NO FUN

 Christmas Eve Nativity and 1 present:

 Christmas Jammies!

  And let's not forget the slippers :)

 Everything  was ready for Christmas morning.  Even Santa came.

 Deacon opened his first present and exclaimed:  "Oh my goodness!"  It was toy cars.  We all cracked up.  Highlight of the morning for sure.

Denver's parents drove to see us Christmas Day for a few hours.  It was great to have family on Christmas day.  How did we get away without taking pictures?   

 During Christmas break we went to Old Tombstone.  We ate lunch at Brenda's Chuckwagon and went to a gun show.  Then we had old time pictures taken and did some shopping and got some ice cream.   It was a good day. 

 The show was pretty funny and the actors did a good job.  No one got shot for real (that happened a couple months back.  eek!)  The kids didn't like the sound of the gunshots so they had their ears covered most of the show and Deacon wet his pants (oops).

 And we bought cowboy hats, of course.