Just Another Day in Paradise: Goodbye Christmas, Hello New Year!

Its fun having Christmas on a Friday so we can enjoy the whole weekend together. Saturday we biked and played games. This favorite was sent to us by the Burr's and really gets us cracking up.

Adam especially loves it.

The girls wore their new Chinese dresses from the Lees to church on Sunday as we said goodbye to half our ward. Our huge ward split, but we still know where they live! The new year for us will start with a new ward.

Adam wore his new brown church outfit. I know he's not happy, he wanted to enjoy his lunch rather than take it on the road. Its rough when church starts at his lunchtime. Next year 9 am will suit us just fine.

We spent the week after Christmas enjoying a stay-cation to truly convert to being Arizonans, its been 5 years now.

We started out seeing Hohokam ruins in Casa Grande. The name means Big House, which is what this super old builing is, a 4 story house they believe was used for studying astronomy, I'm thinking maybe a small temple? All the little homes around were very interesting, Rachel especially liked seeing the jewelry artifacts in the little museum. It was extremely cold and windy, 42 degrees. I'm not used to cold anymore.

Do you see little Rudolph's nose? On Christmas Day after flying our airplanes Adam was playing with a puppy on the way home from the park. The puppy went between his legs and Adam fell over on his face, causing a red-nosed Adam and a lot of tears. He's okay, in fact he looks very festive.

On to the Romero Ruins in the Catalina Mountains. The girls were exstatic to find some pottery pieces. Now they are real archeologists. Sadly we had to leave all our findings behind for others to find and enjoy.

Little Buddies

Adam was loving this kind of "roam free" vacation. Lots of throwing rocks and running outside, just his style.

It had been a lot of hiking that day, our little ones were tired. I'm so glad I'm strong now to be able to do this kind of vacation, no more wheel chair vacations for me!

We realized the BYU/UofA game was about to start right as we were passing Tuscon and decided to go! We stopped for a quick dinner, you can tell we're in Wildcat country by the poster behind Adam. We paid $10 for parking, hiked over to the ticket booth and learned it would cost us $200, obviously we reconsidered. Oh how I miss BYU student prices. (Don't worry we were able to sell our parking spot to someone else, they were very happy to find one, in fact I had two people bidding for it. Boy are we cheap.)

In the end we all enjoyed a little extra snuggle time with Dad as we watched the Cougars beat the Wildcats from the hotel, much better seats if you ask me.

Then we went to...

Have politicians always been shady? Tyler's standing in front of the sign to hide the bad word. Honestly most of Tombstone's history and feel are not family friendly. As I read the plaques to the kids I kept having to edit parts about China Mary's booming prostitution business. I hadn't expected that, so we merely referred to them as "successful business women." Ahem.

We strolled up and down the streets looking at the interesting old buildings, but the highlight was our silver mine tour.

Our little rock lovers were in heaven 100 feet down in a pure granite cave looking at all the different types of rocks and treasures of the past. We learned an appreciation for how difficult mining was way back in the late 1800's when they worked with just a mallet and chisel. It was led by a miner who was very knowledgable and told us fascinating things about the industry, how it began, and has evolved. We couldn't help but think of how they cut all of that granite out of the mountain for the Salt Lake Temple, its just so much work!

The drive home...
Little Rudolph with his giant milk shake.

Little Rudolph did not want to share giant milk shake.

Mickey and Blankie make him happy!

So happy!

We made it home in time to celebrate Tyler's birthday, and New Year's Eve of course. It was a huge and wonderful celebration full of games, treats, movies, but mostly...relaxing. Isn't it funny how much relaxing you need after a relaxing vacation? We made a giant "cushiony world" (that's what me and my sister called it when we'd gather every blanket, pillow, cushion, and stuffed animal in the house to make a giant mosh pit). We watched a movie in cushiony world and ate "pop pop." That is what Adam calls popcorn. He is saying a few words! Whenever he hears the word popcorn he opens the cabinet with the air popper and points to it saying "pop pop." Grandpa Cole would be proud.