teenage boys weekend

While I was enjoying time with these ladies,

Kyler and Collin were hanging out, too.

It was a last minute decision, but we were so glad that Collin was able to come down and spend the weekend with Kyler. Those two have been best friends for a while now and I'm so glad they have had each other.

Kyler and Collin mostly hung out around our house, but Eric dropped them off at the movie theater and to play laser tag, too. They joined us on some of our outings, but we were also really good at banishing them to their own table at restaurants.  Ha! Poor boys. But I didn't feel too sorry for them since they were both skipping school and still got to have plenty of adventures.

We are so grateful for good friends!

And I also want to give the biggest praise right now to some pretty amazing husbands/dads who are the absolute greatest! There were four men who did an awesome job at taking care of our families back home so that we women could have this time to relax and get together. I know back in washington, the "brother husbands" were even helping each other out at church christmas parties. Ha! We hope those men get together for their own guys weekend sometime, too.

the rest of the girls weekend

Ok, let's get back to that really fun weekend when some of my favorite people came to play in Arizona.

It takes a village, and so as "sister wives" everyone sweetly came and cheered Layla on during her musical theater class performance. You can kind of see her 7 person plus support system in the reflection of the mirror all there to watch her.

And a shout out to my cute niece performing with Layla, too! Those twin cousins love having class together each week.

So proud of our girl!

We spent the rest of the day eating mexican food and shopping at Santan Village. This of course included a stop at Sodalicious! 

I was so sad that our weekend was winding down and I had to say goodbye to these ladies again, and that we all head to get back to real life the next day. 

We ended the trip watching the sunset at hole in the rock.

 Poldark especially loved it here. He couldn't stop smiling at the beauty of the rocks, the city, and the gorgeous sky!

It had been a long time since I talked so much and laughed so hard in one weekend. I hope it's not too long before we get together for another girls trip!!

These ladies are the best!

pre-christmas things

We went to Jacqui's house to make cookies and play games.

While the littles made the cookies, the older boys found their own form of entertainment. They were not going slow by any means.

Kyler and Kacin also participated in their first Christmas piano recital under their new teacher. I was so proud of these two! Kyler played "Angels we Have Heard on High" out of the hymn book and Kacin played "Silent Night."

That's their awesome piano teacher, Travis, on crutches back there.

We went with a huge group of families in our ward to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children.

We went to eat at Pizza Mart in mesa (oh the memories! and it hasn't changed one bit) and to see those beautiful temple lights as a family.

Perry was feeling a bit wild that night. Clearly. He refused to move for awhile and spread himself out on his back right down on the walkway. This kid is getting too big for me to lift easily. So he laid there while I stood there guarding him from hurting anyone. We worked some magic (aka Eric came and scooped him up) and eventually got him to go with us again. But it wasn't until he went into the visitors center and he got to listen to the videos of the prophets (press the buttons) that he truly calmed down enough to finish a walk around the grounds.

We had a true Arizona snow day. Our neighborhood community trucked in and dumped snow in one of the parks. We had a fun morning playing.

We got to visit with Santa while we were there. Layla made sure to tell him she would please like a robot dog for Christmas.