Disneyland November 2009

This post is overdue big time. Last November we took a vacation with the "Phillips" side of the family to Disneyland. That included our family, Micah's parents, his two older sisters and their families. Unfortunately because of the move (one week after the trip) and the Holidays you are seeing it a few months too late. Better late than never I suppose.

We had to get a picture in front of Cinderella's castle. While we were there they were getting out all of the Christmas decorations. It was so fun to see all the buildings and rides transform into their Holiday decor. To our little princesses it really was magical.

The great thing about going with family is that we were able to spend time together on some things, and split into groups to do others to keep everyone happy. We were surprised that Aliza would go on anything. She was so happy and content going from ride to ride. She even went on Pirates of the Caribbean several times when our other two girls wouldn't. She had no fear and loved it all.

One afternoon I had these cute cousins with me to ride Bugs Life while Aliza took a nap. We had a great time.

Decisions. Decisions. It was so hard to pick just one. Avery ended up with the silver sequin Minnie Mouse ears. One of my personal favorites too.

Aliza was a Minnie Mouse princess. We couldn't get these ears off of her most of the trip.

Abbie's pick.............front

and back. Surprisingly each pair of ears they picked fit their personalities all too well.

One evening we ate dinner at Goofey's kitchen. It really was fun to get some one on one time with a lot of characters. That is the way to go if you want to see characters without chasing them down in Disneyland. Aliza was so enthralled with Minnie. She was cute to talk to Aliza and let her play with her nose. To this day she talks about this meeting with Minnie Mouse. We had a lot of fun that night.

Abbie and the Fairy Godmother.

At Goofey's kitchen Avery was hiding behind anyone and anything she could find. She wouldn't even talk to any of the Characters. They have always made her very nervous. The funny thing is that as soon as Cinderella appeared she was out of her chair and ready for a picture. Too funny!

What a catch!

Abbie had decided to spend the last portion of her money on a portrait of herself. She loves this picture and has it hanging in her room.

Micah was a great sport on this trip considering he HATES Disneyland. It took a lot of coaxing just to get us there. Well, maybe I should admit that it took a lot of fighting to get us there. I'm glad we are through that hurdle and we had such a great time.

Pure happiness.....

On our drive home from Disneyland we stopped in Vegas to stay in Micah's hotel room (he was still living there at the time without us) one night. We got a kick out of Aliza's static hair from the long car ride. Plus we had to get a picture of her independent personality taking care of her own bags. We were not allowed to touch her bag and she had to know where it was at all times. We had such a great time and hopefully we will make it back someday.

Christmas 2009

Christmas this year was a very different experience being away from home. We had a great time visiting with family and really enjoyed our time with them. I think being away from them really makes our time spent together more "quality" time. Our first stop was to our old neighborhood to visit with some great friends. Our girls had such a great time playing with friends and getting hair cuts from our favorite hair lady (thanks Kristen).

Christmas Eve was spent with the "Phillips" gang at Micah's parents home. Each year we eat yummy food and wait for Santa to pay us a visit. He always brings us a fun gift to open to start the Christmas festivities. We look forward to our Christmas Eve party all year.

Abbie was fretting over what to ask him for. It's hard to narrow it down to one last request on Christmas Eve. She finally decided on a lava lamp for her new room.

Santa makes Avery very nervous if you can't tell from the picture. She is definitely keeping her distance, but she did it (the present in his hands is a great incentive).

Aliza is not so sure of this big red man either. Can you blame her?

Of course Micah and I get our one last requests in also. He asked for warm weather which he got when we pulled into Vegas.

I asked Santa to send his elves over to paint our house, after all they are done making Christmas toys for the year. He politely informed me that they hated painting and would not be making the trip for me. Bummer.

This crazy bunch is all of the cousins on the Phillips side of the family. What a great looking group of kids! Tradition is that we all get new P.J.'s to wear to bed Christmas night. Micah and I even look forward to this tradition.

Making a human pyramid is always fun (unless you're on the bottom). As you can imagine it didn't take long for this to come crashing down.

Christmas morning was spent at my parents home. We had a great time opening presents with them and having a yummy breakfast. Avery's favorite gift this year was a box of makeup from my parents. All she wanted to do is put on more and more until her face had a permanent pink tint. We then made the rounds to see great-grandma and exchange gifts with their cousins. Then we headed back to my parents for more yummy food, and time with my sister. The day was exhausting, but fun. The next day was crazy too. We squeezed in family pictures, shopping, and dinner with my cousins. As much fun as we had we were glad to get home and just spread out and play with our new toys.
This little guy was a fun new tradition we added to our family this year. We named our elf on the shelf Fredrick Hansel. The month of December he was with our family and he will definitely be missed until he returns next year. Each night he would return to Santa and report on how well our kids were behaving, then he would reappear in the morning in different spots in our home. We found him hanging from lights, on high shelves, and even in each of their rooms. He was a fun tradition that we can't wait to continue next year. The story is that he flies away with Santa on Christmas night until next year. We will miss you Fredrick Hansel!

We had a fantastic Christmas. We can't wait to visit Utah again soon and be able to spend more time with our friends and family with out feeling rushed from place to place. Especially having time to let our kids play with their friends. We will be visiting again soon.

Advent Calendar

A few of you had asked for instructions on our advent calendar. Unfortunately the box we made was a scrap booking kit at Target last year, but this is a great time of year to get one on clearance. I just saw a wood one at Target tonight that was only $8.oo. I was so tempted to buy it only because it was such a good deal (unfortunately I'm good at buying things that are a great deal that I don't need). Here is a list of thing we did each day if anyone would like to copy it. We copied it from a friends blog last year (thanks again Jamie) and we had so much fun doing it this year. This is what we came up with:

Day 1: Wrote a letter to Santa

Day 2: Made Gingerbread Men (Gingerbread houses would be even better)

Day 3: Read A Christmas story together

Day 4: Made paper snowflakes

Day 5: Called Grandma to sing her a Christmas Carol

Day 6: Put up our Nativity and read the story of Jesus birth

Day 7: See who can eat a candy cane the fastest without biting

Day 8: Take a silly family picture

Day 9: Santa Craft (I just found something easy on the internet)

Day 10: Make a Christmas treat

Day 11: Share the Christmas treat with someone and door bell ditch them

Day 12: Drink eggnog and share a Christmas memory

Day 13: Make popcorn and watch a Christmas movie

Day 14: Drive to see the lights

Day 15: Color a Christmas picture

Day 16: Drink hot chocolate by candle light

Day 17: Call another Grandma and sing her a Christmas Carol

Day 18: Go out for a special treat

Day 19: Play M&M game (the one where you roll the dice and when you get 7 or 11 you suck by straw Christmas colored M&M's until another person rolls 7 or 11)

Day 20: Read a Christmas story together

Day 21: Went to see a live Nativity (Our favorite one by far)

Day 22: We were off to Utah to visit family

You can of course make this to fit your family. We had to change a few days here and there because making snowmen and sledding were on the list. I'd like to see us try to do that here in Vegas. Like I said before we absolutely loved ours. I just wish we had taken more pictures along the way. There is always next year I suppose.

I'm really doing it this time. A few months back I mentioned that our blog would be going private. If you left your e-mail before you don't have to leave it again, but if you didn't please leave us your information so we can include you. We want to keep in touch with all of our friends as much as possible. Thanks!!!

Early Christmas

With this being our first year traveling for Christmas we decided to start a new family tradition. Tonight we all put on our PJ's, ate Christmas breakfast for dinner, and had a little Christmas celebration with just our little family. We knew Christmas this year is going to be extra hectic trying to visit all of our family in such a short period of time, so spending this night together, with just us, was perfect.

We opened gifts that we had picked out for each other. Abbie, Avery,and Aliza were able to take a trip to the store with mom or dad to pick out the "perfect" gifts. It turned out to be a great opportunity to learn how to budget their money and think of what someone else would want other than just what they wanted for Christmas.

Dad was surprised with this great #1 Dad mug that Abbie had picked out for him over a month ago. As he opened it she said "it has a special message Dad." She was so ecstatic to hand out each of her gifts. Abbie really had put a lot of thought into each gift this year.

This is Aliza showing off her new dress up shoes. I have loved watching her the last few weeks really get into "dress up." She really thinks she is a Princess.

Can you just see the excitement on Avery's face? Although we opened these gifts a few days early we figure they will have something new to enjoy for a few days. Plus, we don't have to carry these gifts home with us (we are really worried about getting everything home after Christmas.) Having Christmas away from home this year is going to be a very new experience for us. We're very excited and can't wait to spend time with our family!

Christmas Time

I just can't even believe that Christmas time is here again. Though we are still unpacking box after box we have made time for some fun family activities. My parents and sister came into town right after Thanksgiving. We were able to show them our home, and hit the tree lighting in Henderson. They had carriage rides, fireworks, and of course welcomed the big red guy for the Christmas season. We had a lot of fun watching the huge tree light up and had a yummy dinner at Lucille's.

Wearing light jackets all of the time seems so strange to me at Christmas time. I'm looking forward to seeing snow when we travel back to Utah for the Holiday's.

Avery is always in the mood to strike a pose.

Last year a friend of ours blogged about her cute advent calendar. I somewhat copied her idea and made us an advent calendar of our own. Each night after homework is complete and we are ready for bed (that explains the PJs in these pictures) we open a box to find out what activity we will be doing that evening.

Our first night was decorating these yummy gingerbread cookies.

We've called family members to sing Christmas Carols, wrote letters to Santa, read Christmas stories, completed Christmas crafts, and even drank egg nog by candle light while telling our favorite Christmas memories.

Delicious!!!

I have been laughing at all the blow up snow men many people here have on their front lawns. It just seems so out of place for Vegas. But, then for one of the activities we made these snowfalkes to remind us of home. I guess paper snowfalkes on the windows is just as silly (especially with the pool out back).

While watching Mr. Kruger's Christmas we had a competition to see who could eat a candy cane the fastest without biting it. We all had a hard time not taking a bite. We also tried to take a silly family picture. Needless to say it did not go very well so we are not posting any of them at this time. Maybe we will try again another day.

We are all doing really good and can't wait for our trip to Salt Lake for Christmas. Abbie and Avery seem to be doing really well in school, and we are starting to feel a little bit more settled each day. Micah and I spoke in church today and are liking our new ward more and more each week. It's very different, but everyone is really nice and welcoming to our family. Abbie is really excited to go to activity days this week and we are really praying that our girls meet some good friends in our ward soon.

Quick Update

The past few weeks have flown by, and what a whirlwind of events. Here are some of the highlights:

Avery lost her first tooth at school on November 17th. This day just happened to be their last day at school in Utah. It was a fun surprise to see her toothless grin when I picked them up from school. The following day we loaded up our car and the girls and I headed for Vegas (to really stay this time.) The car was so jam packed that we could all hardly move. We couldn't fit everything that we needed, but did get the essentials to make it through a week before my sister and parents drove down with the rest. While the carpets were being cleaned and while waiting a few day for our stored belongings to arrive we stayed in an extended stay hotel where Micah has been staying for the past three months. It was a tight squeeze for a few nights, but we were also just glad to be together.

The first Sunday that we were in Vegas Abbie was having a little anxiety over her first day at the new church. Considering that we were definitely not "settled", nor did we even have our things back we decided that it would be a good idea to just relax. We knew that the following week we would be somewhat more normal, and the girls would have an easier transition to the new ward. We took this time to visit the Las Vegas Temple grounds. The weather was beautiful that day, and we really enjoyed looking at the beautiful "desert" landscape. BTW- Avery was the photographer if you thought we were missing someone.

Me and my girls. I completely had to bribe them to take this picture with me. Isn't that sad?

Monday, November 23rd was the day we felt like took years to come. We FINALLY had our belongings delivered to our new home in Vegas. The girls were so excited to see each piece of furniture arrive. I had to take a picture of them watching the delivery men. They were quarantined to the kitchen to keep them out of the way. We were so excited to just start ripping open boxes and see our things again that were packed away for a few months. I don't know how many times I have heard the phrase "Oh, I remember that" over the past week.

Yes, this was in our house. We have had a total of five scorpions in the home since we received the keys. We are hoping that the cause for so many scorpions is that the home sat vacant for so long. Now that we are living in it we are hoping that they will not be INSIDE any longer. I honestly didn't think about the bugs here until we were in the house. I hear they get really bad in the Spring/Summer. Something to look forward to I guess. Yuck!!!

We did attend church the following week in our new ward. The girls went with no hesitation to each of their classes, and to our surprise both met a friend that they are excited to see again this upcoming week. The following day we started school. They were both very nervous to say the least (mom too), but went with a good attitude. Avery has been saying for a few days that she didn't want to go back, but is slowly making friends and transitioning better than I thought she would. Every day when I pick them up I ask them if Today was easier than Yesterday. They always respond with a big "YES" and are realizing that each day gets a little easier.

Our new school is a public school, but requires uniforms. Finding uniforms after school has been in for a few months was tricky, but we did it. I love the idea of uniforms, and think it will be great for our girls. We are now also on year round school which will be nice for taking trips back to Utah to visit.

On the first day of school Aliza went with us to tour the school before school started. She had to pack herself a lunch, and carry a back pack just like her older sisters. I had such a hard time getting her to come home with me when school started. She just seemed so sad for the first couple of hours that Abbie and Avery were at school then was back to her normal bubbly self. She really loves to be with her sisters.

We are still unpacking box after box, and can't wait to feel like this is home. Just like the girls and school, each day is getting better and better. More pictures and updates will be coming soon.