It snowed all afternoon yesterday and we woke up this morning with so much white! Here is Elisa and Kiefer in our backyard (as viewed from our bedroom window). And below is the view of white from our window:
The McWatters (Darin, Shannon, Jack, Hank, Lily, and Will) came through on their way from Phoenix to Boulder City Nevada traveling from family to family and they decided to stop off and spend the night on Thursday night. Darin painted me this awesome series of three canvases for our front room and we love how it came out! He is such a talented guy, from rock star lead singer of Everybody Duck, to writer of all our summer video productions I worked on at Hume, to being the world famous Reverend D Ray Montgomery, painting is just one of his many talents. Here is Cooper and Will:
Darin is speaking at a winter camp in Williams, so he was going to drop his family off and come back, so I hitched a ride and kept him company for the drive back to Williams from Nevada. We had a great time hanging out on the drive and Darin is really a good friend that I have missed being around since leaving Hume. I stuck around in Williams last night and watched him speak at the camp before coming home. Here he is in front of the packed Junior High crowd. How he kept their attention at 11 PM I have no idea.
Kiefer gave Cooper this great ride on his shoulders, I think Kiefer was having a lot more fun than Cooper though...
Here's a big Christmas hug from Cooper on his first Christmas!
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).
Cooper is enjoying some time with Becky and her unborn boy, his future
playmate.
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.
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.
The Ferreiras are here visiting from Hume and Ellie is getting so big,
aren't these two toe-heads cute together.
Kiefer loves to be held upside down by his ankles but when he asks he
says "my rankles" which really cracks me up.
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.
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.
Kiefer and Cooper enjoyed a morning viewing of Frosty the Snowman and
Cooper just drank it in!
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!)
