Christmas Fun

We have been having a lot of fun this month getting ready for Christmas. I took the kids to the Safford light parade - no, it is not quite the same as the APS light parade in Phoenix or the luminaries in old town Albuquerque, but it was pretty good. Lots of lights, not too cold, and Santa was there, so the kids loved it.

Darci is waving at Santa. We ask her, What does Santa say? And she'll say Ho Ho Ho.

Yummy Family Home Evening treats after we learned about the true meaning of all of our Christmas fun.

Darci eating dinner the other night. Apparently the food is better if you lick it off the plate.

Making goodies for our neighbors and friends...

We went to the Festival of trees in Safford. It was fun. Anyone can enter their tree to be shown. We might have to do that next year.

Kevin's preschool class made a tree and he was proud to show it to us.

Walking around main street Safford.

Our cute Christmas girls.

Its a small world production

Kevin and Paige were in a little production of "It's a small world" at the colleges children's theater. It was such a fun experience for them and one of the benefits to living here. Every child that auditions gets a part in the play and all the costumes are homemade.

We weren't supposed to take videos, so this is the best I could sneakily get. The first video is the beginning song of the show. Paige is the one in the short little blue shorts and Kevin is the one with his hands in his mouth.

For their "London Bridge" song, you can see Paige running out on stage ahead and then Kevin going under the bridge like they were supposed to.

This is the finale of the play. Paige is making quite the funny faces.

Having fun and being silly

We went cruising around a few weeks ago looking for places to go camping in the future. We found a few good spots near Klondyke/Aravaipa around a dry creek bed. We walked around for a bit and had some snacks and took some silly pictures...

I did think we were lost a few times because everything looks the same and there are tire tracks going every direction.

Pretty Paige... took the time to blow dry and curl her hair the other day. Too bad nobody at church saw it because she threw a fit about something and daddy took her home.

Kevin loves these trains as much as Derek did. He builds a new track nearly everyday. Thankfully he's able to do it all himself. And Darci is finally learning not to destroy them.

Derek had his 7th birthday on November 10th. This is one of his favorite presents and one of the coolest books I've seen! It's a huge pop-up dinosaur book with pop-ups all over the place. (Thanks Uncle Jared)

He also lost another 2 teeth in the last 2 months. We're waiting for his other front tooth to come out now.

Darci is talking all the time and singing and now she has even learned screaming... that last one is not so fun. She only has one voice level now and that is very VERY loud!

Fun time painting...

The kids love to play in our DIRT yard. They love to dig and bury things and just get dirty.

The weather's been so great, they also love to ride bikes around in the front driveway. We were able to find Paige and Kevin both little bikes our last time in Mesa (we ran over the last two) and now we just need to teach them to ride without training wheels.

Other happenings... I began a new job as a RN with Home Health. I'm off orientation now and going to homes by myself. I have to admit, it's kind of a fun job and very flexible being able to run errands in between patients and all. I'm just PRN (as needed) so I don't work that many hours, and I still work part time at a nursing home. In fact, in the nearly 3 years that I've been a nurse, I haven't had anyone die on me. Two weeks ago at work, that record flew out the window when I had two residents die within hours of each other. I like both jobs, but I'm still trying to find a permanent part time job at a hospital again.