Aunty Liz is com'n(or came) to town.

Before Christmas my sister Elizabeth came to visit.  I was so excited for her to come.  Liz and I have always dreamed of living close to each other but for some reason that dream has never come to fruition.  She is one of my best friends and it was so good to visit and play with her.  She must have brought some crazy Vancouver rain with her though because it rained for her WHOLE visit!  I couldn't believe it.  The weather was beautiful before she got here and it has been beautiful since she left.  C'est La Vie!  Despite the rain we got out and had some fun.  

We made it to downtown Phoenix and checked out the history museum and historical buildings.  We made some delicious gingerbread men (and women)  and took them to the neighbors.   We got in some great hot tubbing which was extra fun because of the rain, and I got in the last bit of Christmas shopping that needed to get done.  Thanks for coming Aunty Liz and maybe you should come back to experience the Arizona sunshine that we love so much. :)

A Few Lemons and a Cactus.

This weekend we were graced with the presence of Grandma Judy and Marks niece Jaders (aka Jade). Jade had never been to Arizona so we showed her a few of our Arizona favorites. We hit up the Midwestern Orchards for "just a few" lemons that we made into lemon pie and lemonade. YUM! Grandma filled her trunk FULL for everyone back in Utah. It was a beautiful day for fruit picking and we had lots of fun. Zina and Wilson have converted all the lemons at our house into balls and are constantly throwing them around. I just know that one of these days I'm going to find a rotten lemon behind the couch courtesy of Wilson.

We also go up early and headed to Thunderbird conservation park for a little hiking. We found a friendly cactus that needed a hug and when we got to the top of the trail we also found Santa!! We thought it was funny to find Santa at the top of our hike but didn't stick around for pictures because we had to get back for a little Elders Quorum flag football.

The reason behind Grandma and Jade's visit was Mark's White Coat Ceremony.  We left the kiddos with Brenda (bless you Brenda) and walked over to the Ceremony.  It was a fun evening and we were all proud to belong to Mark because we think he's pretty awesome! 

He gave us a tour of some of his labs and yes, this is the cadaver lab. We were all doing pretty good in there until one of the students uncovered his cadaver and started showing his family all the parts.  Needless to say - we left in a hurry!! 

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving this year was really a lot of fun. Mark had a 2 week break from school so we spent the first week enjoying the beautiful weather here at home. It was a lot of fun to just relax, make a trip to the pool everyday, go running together, etc. etc. The second week we made the long trek to Utah. Zina and Wilson did amazing. I so love my little family - even the 11hr drive was fun. We didn't even have to pull out the dvd player until the last bit of the trip. We played the abc game a lot. Have any of you played it? Mark always beats me but this trip I beat him...TWICE. :) You know, "a on kanab" , "b on breakfast" You have to get through the whole alphabet from signs or anything you see outside of your vehicle. Zina kept yelling "UDOT" the whole time because I got "d on udot" Everytime we got a new letter she would yell, "UDOT!!" It was funny. Helped get us through quite a few miles. It's quite a beautiful drive too - through a navajo reservation, passed the grand canyon, through Kanab UT and Panguitch (Zina told G. Thomas that we drove through Penguin sandwich) - there is some really different looking stuff. Once in Utah we did a lot of playing ticket to ride, eating, laughing, shopping, etc. etc. Visiting utah is starting to remind me of my childhood. There are a billion little kids running around, lots of food, lots of laughter. Only now I am one of the "aunts" instead of one of the "cousins" I like it.