Arizona Part 1

Ok.  I am a little overwhelmed here.  I missed writing the blog last week due to Christmas and I don't know how I could possibly catch up.  I think my plan is to try to catch us up to Christmas today and they next week we will finish playing catch up. So, since last I wrote, we have been enjoying our best Arizona life.  We have been soaking up the sunshine and checking out more parks than you can imagine.

Here are Arizona highlights part 1:

Gilbert Regional Park- the girls particularly loved the zip line.

Mesa Temple Lights:

The girls trying on Grammy's wigs after they saw her without hers and got a little freaked out:

Exploring Cactus Yards: A local baseball field with 8 fields that are all replica fields of famous fields (past and present).

Riding the two story carousel and ride on animals at the local mall.  This was apparently what Elsie needed to do to "complete everything on her Arizona bucket list":

Decorating gingerbread houses:

Christmas Eve: We started the day with a hike.  Full disclosure this was more of a low light of the trip. It was called the Wind Caves but we now affectionately like to call it the Wind Carve Out as, after hiking up over 800 ft, we discovered there was not a cave but just a slight carve out in the side of the mountain.  Add to that that Elsie accidently touched a cactus and at the very end she and I tripped and her face got very scratched up.  It was definitely not the best part of the trip.  That evening, we went to Jeremy's Aunt Kay's for a Mexican feast and a white elephant gift exchange.

Christmas: Christmas was magical.  Santa came first thing in the more and brought slippers for Jeremy and I, a new baseball glove for Merrick, a microscope for Carrigan, and a Chelsea Barbie and Barbie firetruck for Elsie.  He also brought the girls a huge LOL surprise set but it was too big to bring to Arizona so it is waiting for us in Oregon.  After we opened Santa gifts, we went to church.  It was a wonderful music based program.  We then came home for brunch and all the cousins came over for more presents.  After much relaxing, we ended the night going to look at Christmas lights.  We went to one house that had a huge display with songs, a video, dancing lights and even snow.

There was one other HUGE pre-Christmas highlights, but given the length of this post already, I think I will save it for next time.  You will just have to tune in next week for Arizona Part 2.