Merry Christmas!

uploaded from my iPhone

Here's a big Christmas hug from Cooper on his first Christmas!

Nativity

uploaded from my iPhone

Elisa's sister Emily has been working on a Nativity set for us for a
year now and it came tonight! It has 25 pieces to be opened a day at
a time from our cool log cabin shown behind them. Aren't they
amazing?! The little drummer boy is Elisa's favorite (mainly for the
Biblical accuracy).

Bek and Boys

uploaded from my iPhone

Cooper is enjoying some time with Becky and her unborn boy, his future
playmate.

The Tree

uploaded from my iPhone

Kiefer really loves the Christmas tree and just can't get enough
looking and touching of the ornaments. It's funny to see him run down
first thing in the morning to turn on the lights, I think he is really
going to love Christmas this year.

Snowboarding

uploaded from my iPhone

There's snow at Snowbowl so Rich and I made an impromptu run to the
slopes this afternoon for a little boarding. We're on the lift and
have been down a few times, so far no one hurt.

More pics from the day:



The peaks from the lift, the one on the left is the back of Humphreys which you can see from our house



Rich showing his mad skills:



then waiting for the slow Todd...



So we accidentally rode one lift all the way to the top and then found out there were only black diamonds from there, so we spent about 15 minutes enjoying the view and deliberating on whether we ride the lift down :)

Ellie

uploaded from my iPhone

The Ferreiras are here visiting from Hume and Ellie is getting so big,
aren't these two toe-heads cute together.

My Rankles

uploaded from my iPhone

Kiefer loves to be held upside down by his ankles but when he asks he
says "my rankles" which really cracks me up.

First Snow

We had our first "real" snow since being here in Flagstaff, and by real I mean it actually piled up a little bit and didn't just blow around. Here is a video of some sledding we did on our street with Scott, Lew and Sheena.

The video and picture below are from Saturday morning but it snowed pretty much the whole weekend so we ended up with quite a bit.

Champions

uploaded from my iPhone

Troy's high school team, Estrella Foothills, beat Thunderbird in the
championship 79-55. Troy's team is ranked number 1 in the state in 3A
with 3 starting sophomores and were pretty fun to watch dominate the
tournament.

Basketball

uploaded from my iPhone

My cousin Troy is here from Goodyear playing basketball in a
tournament. Lew, Scott, and Sheena are staying with us and we are
having a good time watching the game.

Morning Movie

uploaded from my iPhone

Kiefer and Cooper enjoyed a morning viewing of Frosty the Snowman and
Cooper just drank it in!

No Toys

uploaded from my iPhone

So we had one of those fun parental experiences today when we stopped by the local Target, Kiefer began throwing a tantrum when he was told we were leaving the toy section and he started crying and screaming "I WANT A TOY!" at the top of his lungs. He was immediately escorted out of the Target by his loving/fuming father, screaming the whole way to the van (Elisa said she could hear him across the store as we were leaving). When we got to the van we had a nice little talk about gratitude/behavior where he was told that if he cannot behave he will have NO toys. So, when we got home his room was emptied of all toys and now my office has a large collection of toddler toys for me to play with (I can't wait to make those dinosaurs fight!)